Catch a (crime) wave

Coast Guard Festival 2012 is complete. Finito. Cha-ching! The carnival's down, the big boats are sleeping in, and the tourists are shedding asscrack sand on their own couches now.

It's been several years since I've ventured west of US-31 during the festival, and this year was no exception. I love the midway at night, the street bands, the smell of food that no one should ever eat but I do, and the fireworks bonanza - Grand Haven skimps on July 4th and then shoots its wad at the end of Coast Guard. All of these things I do adore, but I'm just too old and grumpy to drive into that mess, find someplace legal to park, and then wade through acres of whippersnappers. I can hear the fireworks show out here, but this far from the shore, it sounds like the Jolly Green Giant beating his dick on the sand dunes.

I looked at the Tribune yesterday, and I'm kind of glad I wasn't downtown with all the touristy ruffians.

As festival begins, police calls escalate

It's true. The spit-shined streets of Grand Haven went mad with Coast Guard fever. Allow me to highlight a few of the atrocities to which our local men and women in blue responded last weekend:

• A life ring was found off its hook on the south pier about 9 a.m. Saturday.
  Police replaced the life ring and slapped the callers for not just fucking doing it themselves.
  
• A person climbing to the top of the lighthouse was reported at 7:55 p.m.
  The climber was safely lassoed, retrieved, and water boarded. Responding officers were heard to inquire, "How's the view now, Spiderman?"
  
• On Friday evening, police went to DeSpelder Street at Robbins Road to check on a couple of children in a vehicle.
  Chill, people. They were just headed to Meijer to get some more Jager for Mom.
  
• Later Saturday night...there was an intoxicated woman reported to be sitting at a picnic table near a downtown ice cream stand.
  I - I mean she - was cited for operating a picnic table with a blood alcohol level higher than .17, and for gulping ice cream with no regard for the caloric content. She was released into the custody of the first passing stranger to give the officers two dollars.
  
  
• Just before midnight, police checked out a call that a skunk might have gone inside a house in the area of Fourth and Elliott streets.
  Officers departed the scene when they discovered that the house was owned by a P. LePew, but later returned when outstanding warrants for stalking and sexual harassment surfaced for Mr. LePew.
  
• An injured possum was reported at Slayton and Beacon.
  Police offered no comment when asked if this could be the work of the notorious Duncan Woods Possum Kicker.
  
• At 6:48 p.m., police responded to a civil dispute over a playpen in the area of Elliott and Fifth streets.
  After a tense standoff, Skeeter VanderPander, Jr. agreed to spend two hours in the playpen, while Mama VanderPander promised to stay awake while smoking a cigarette on the sofa. Both apologized to neighbors for the stray gunfire and flying diapers.
  
• At 11 p.m., someone reported a pink shoe found on top of a planter at Washington Avenue and Fifth Street.
  "Hello? Police? I need to report a shoe. A pink shoe. Oh, dear god - it's horrible! It smells like headcheese and haddock, and I'm pretty sure there's Beagle poop in the tread. Yes, Beagle. It has a very distinctive taste. Please, please, drop the possum and get your asses over here!"
  Responding officers would neither confirm nor deny that the caller had been involved in a drunken picnic-table incident earlier in the night. The pink shoe was examined and declared to be disgusting but harmless. The shoe (a Croc) was cited for loitering, and for crimes against fashion.

Mean streets, people. mean streets. Grand Haven: It's not for pussies.