You are mad as hell, but make no mistake about it: You are most definitely going to put up with it, probably forevermore. Fact is, you’re pretty much powerless over everybody. We all are. And so, you hate. We all do. It’s our common denominator. Makes us feel closer, more connected—kind of like love, except, you know . . . pissed off. We hate the cabbie who listens to The Bible on Tape as he transports us after our night of drunken debauchery. We hate the lazy mother who lets her kid pee in the parking lot. We hate Google Street View for its sneakiness and cell phone talkers because of their loudliness. We hate people who make up words. We hate it when old friends leave us for no reason. We hate carnivals at the church next door and parties at the neighbor’s upstairs. We’re ambivalent about people who ride unicycles. We hate people who write their rants in “I, Fink,” but we love to read them. We hate ourselves for that.

Google Street View, I tried to make it work, really I did. When the privacy advocate in San Francisco (whose house you depicted so clearly you could see her cat, remember?) went on TV and bashed you, I defended you in philosophical arguments with my friends—about how you’d make it easier to get directions and to relive road trips. But then you came to Long Beach, to my home town, and now . . . well, now I’m a little weirded out. Is it because I can easily look up a street-level photo of my girlfriend’s place of employment and see her car parked out front? Is it because anyone with a web browser who types Broadway and Cherry into a Google search can now see pictures of my dead father’s old condo? Well, frankly . . . yeah. Not to mention the crystal-clear pictures of my high school, which brings back memories I’d rather forget, or the fact that your all-seeing blue lines are creeping ever closer to my mother’s house. I used to think you were exciting and unique, Google Street View, but the closer we’ve gotten, the creepier you’ve become, and at this point, honestly, I think it’s better if I just go back to MapQuest.

Look, I know the Law & Order: SVU episode that’s playing on the TV at the laundromat is so enthralling that you can’t bear to peel yourself away from it, but you don’t have to pace in front of it, talking with your white trash wife about how you need a new cell phone because the Nextel one from 1992 that’s glued to your ear “just isn’t cutting it.” Furthermore, dude, while laundry day gear is inherently heinous, you don’t need to brag about your recent trip to the airbrush booth at Magic Mountain by sporting your “Can you see my boner?” shirt—and no, the fact that there is a skeleton posing like a Playgirl model doesn’t make it any less horrible. I wonder what other sorts of items are lurking in the dryers: Maybe your girl wears “90% Angel, 10% Devil” shirts, or you have one that says “I love hot moms.” (I saw this wandering around Disneyland’s Toontown once—was that you?) Regardless, I hope that when you got home, you thanked the poor woman you were talking to on the phone—she’s the only one who can, and will ever, put up with seeing your stupid, airbrushed boner.

You are the old, lonely, angry, tired-looking, greasy man coming out of a Chipotle last week. I am the stunned newlywed you yelled at because I was hugging my blushing bride as we talked over where we should take the remaining seven dollars in our checking account for dinner. You specifically yelled—like some crazed combination of a revival preacher and a fucked-up Jim Morrisson—“Those of us, who have CHILDREN, do not APPRECIATE, your DISPLAYS, of AFFECTION.” While my wife and I both find it troubling that you managed to spawn a little baby version of your old, lonely, angry, tired-looking, greasy self, we’re both also stunned at your utter lack of basic human civility. I mean, we weren’t on the ground grinding gravel into our naked asses, we were hugging, for Christ’s sake! The song was called “All You Need Is Love,” not “All You Need Is to Protect the Future of the Country by Screaming at Happy-Looking Innocent Young People.” Next time, take your self-hatred out on your liver like the rest of the country, and save the public display of aggression for someone who gives a shit.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. At least I think I did. See, at 4:30 a.m. last Saturday, a most dreadful thing happened: We ran out of booze. Cigarettes, too. But lo, one of our party remembered that the V-Room opens at 6 a.m.! So I made a pot of coffee, we stayed up, called a cab at 5:45 and reunited with that sweet, sweet nectar of yours—vodka, via a very strong Bloody Mary. Things were going great (thank you Jesus for bartenders like C.J.!) until around 9 a.m., when we called it a night—and another cab. Here’s where it gets confusing: Lord, you know I’m always down for you throwing a little bit of the Good Book at me, but did it really have to be in the form of my cab driver? After 16 consecutive hours of boozin’? With my head spinning on my spine? Sure, sure, I may have forgotten about “moderation” and at some point lost all good “decorum” but why God—oh, why—did you force that cab driver to press play on his books-on-tape copy of the Bible before he drove us home? My hangover was penance enough. Learning I was going straight to hell? Come on, Man. Give your people a break!

I have a lot of patience, but none for people like you, the Traffic Circle mother who lazily decided to let her kindergarten-age son take a piss in a strip mall parking lot. Not only did you make sure he was nowhere near your shot-to-shit minivan (instead you tucked him between two otherwise well-meaning cars), but you tried to hide it. You stood in front of your kid like a flabby, fleshy stall door, thinking that nobody would notice the pool of piss snaking its way out into the middle of the road. But everyone did. I understand that your son probably really had to go (everyone has had a few of those bladder-bursting moments), but what I can’t figure out is why you would let him pee onto the asphalt when there were about a dozen restaurants and shops nearby that would’ve gladly let him use the restroom. No, instead you decided to have him let it go out in the open, where it ceased being your problem as soon his stream hit the ground. Have some goddamn decency.

You used to work at my favorite bar. Then they got smart and fired your rude ass. I don’t know why you got canned—I can only hope you went down in flames, that everyone finally saw what an angry snotty bitch you really are. You were actually so rude (and so good at ignoring paying customers in order to chat with your boyfriend) that my friends and I vowed to never come in during your shifts again. Then you were gone and all things were good again. Until they mistakenly hired you at another one of my favorite bars right down the street! It is obvious you hate your life and hate other people—so why would you find a job where you have to serve the very same people you treated so poorly before? Find a job somewhere else—like somewhere in hell—and stop giving all of these good Long Beach bars a bad name. They should put up a sign when you are working so the good people of LB know when not to come in to your new bar. Thanks for the shitty service, bitch!

It’s three in the morning and your friend is still playing Godspeed riffs while you, stoned out of your gourd, play the same retarded pattern on what sounds like a floor tom with a blanket over it. FUCKING ENOUGH ALREADY. I came over once and asked nicely, really nicely. You answered the door and the first thing you said was a patronizing “Oh, are we playing far too loud?” Hmm, yes, well it was 1:30 on a Monday night back then, and back then you were playing a full drum set—perhaps it was a bit “far too loud.” (Who the fuck talks like that?) Then for at least a half-hour your friend meditated on the notes E, C sharp, and B. I know this because I play guitar, too, and having said that, the least he could do is fucking shred. Were he practicing Yngwie Malmsteen riffs into the night I could at least take comfort knowing that he’s motivated to do something other than jerking off over a delay pedal for three hours. DELAY PEDALS ARE FOR PUSSIES. MUSIC SUCKS.

You were the well-meaning, ill-informed and self-righteous author behind an I, Fink who, after being offended by an anti-rape slogan, felt it necessary to educate us all on the nature of rape. I am the District reader who felt it difficult to keep her lunch from coming up. It’s funny (not funny-ha-ha, but more funny-sad-and-slightly-enraging) that you urge people to take a step into the real world, yet at the same time regurgitate one of the most common misconceptions of rape: that all rapists are insane. We live in a world where women (and men) are sexually assaulted by ALL types of people, most of whom are fully sane. In fact, less than two percent of perpetrators of all reported rapes have been classified as having any sort of mental issues. Sexism (along with racism, classism, heterosexism, etc.) is deeply ingrained in every facet of our culture—not just waiting in the bushes while we struggle to find our car keys. The only way we—men and women—can stop rape is by educating ourselves and working together to recognize and resist this, not putting the responsibility on women to structure our lives around the fear of it. Please do us all a favor and take the Thelma & Louise VHS out of your deck and your head out of your ass.

You are the just-too-good-doer who holds a couple of 10-k races a year on the Long Beach Bike Path for your local nonprofit charity. I’m a guy who likes doing good, too, which is why I laid out the $30 entry fee to participate in your folksy run-for-fun fundraiser rather than a bigger, tricked-out event that was being held on a Los Angeles beach bike path the same morning. But my desire to do good extends to the race. So it was disappointing to learn—as the field was gathered at the starting line—that no times were going to be provided at each mile . . . that, in fact, the miles were not even going to be marked. You explained that it costs thousands of dollars to hire a company to provide automatic timing, money that would cut into the good deeds of your nonprofit. You announced that your 10-k race was really just a fun run. But most runners find it’s more fun when they have a chance to do their best. Expensive fully automatic timing wasn’t needed. But placing volunteers with watches at each mile mark doesn’t cost much. And simply placing a marker at each mile so that runners could check their progress on their own watches costs nothing. Having a 10-k run without such basics is like having a fundraising dinner and not providing silverware.

To my neighborhood church:
I know you’ve been here for a century, so you basically own the block and the lives of all who live on it, but I’m going to be honest about something that really ground my gears. While I respect your need for a revenue boost, the church carnival this past weekend was an annoying inconvenience. I am aware that suffering is necessary to live a truly pious life; it’s just that the playground where you set up those rickety rides and unregulated food stands is kitty-corner to my apartment, bringing the suffering straight to my front door. If I had known I would have to listen to the blood-curdling screams of Kamikaze riders for three days straight, I would have spent my last $100 on a hotel room across town. Instead, I tried to remember some of the things I learned while studying for my catechism—sadly, though I attempted to accept the things I could not change, I was not granted the serenity necessary for it. So next time you decide to host a similar event, you should write into your plan a nearby reserved parking spot for me, someone to pick up all the popcorn bags and abandoned children’s bikes, and some goddamned funnel cake (with strawberry goo on top). Don’t make me start praying again. Also, have mercy on my short temper.

To each and every liquor store owner in Bluff Heights:
As you may or may not be aware of, the Ralphs on the corner of Fourth and Orizaba recently closed for renovations . . . seven months of renovations, to be exact. While this is certainly an inconvenience to me and my neighbors, it’s not so bad: Old Ralphs was horrible, and New Ralphs promises to be the kind of grocery store our neighborhood deserves. What is bad, and terribly disappointing, is how you all have failed to jump at this opportunity to capitalize on what is surely some profitable late-night business. Old Ralphs was open for booze until 1 a.m., but I’ll be damned if there is a liquor store open around here past 11 p.m. What the shit is that? Not only is Bluff Heights/Rose Park the nexus of fraternity/sorority land (ugh), but there are also tons of people here just like me—people who crave a bottle of Smoking Loon, some hummus, and pitas at 11:30 p.m.; or who are prone to heading out to a party (with a 24-pack of Pabst) at midnight. Do your part, guys (clean up your stores, carry some non-crap-food foods, stay open later), and I personally guarantee you will be rewarded. Hell, I’ll even shell out for your liquor-store prices. I’m a generous drunk.

Big thanks to the meter-maid assholes who keep giving my wife tickets for parking on private property—our driveway. Don’t you douchebags have anything better to do? Oh, but wait: This is Long Beach. And in Long Beach, it’s illegal to park on an unpaved section of your own driveway. If it’s unpaved and you’re treating it as a driveway (we are, until we get our driveway repaved), then the police will be by to give you a ticket every chance they get—twice so far. This really justifies all the paranoid gun nuts out there with fully automatic assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition in their garages. They’ve always known what I’ve just figured out: There’s no such thing as your driveway or your house or your car. You’re just a sharecropper and The Man just lets you keep it until he wants in. And then he’s gonna push your door in for a search or light you up and pull you over, or just give you a parking ticket. And there’s nothing you can do about it, because The Man makes the laws, and he owns you. And you’re lucky if it’s just a parking ticket.

You’re the well-meaning artist who stenciled a political message on a sidewalk on Fourth near Junipero—something like, “Men Can Stop Rape If They Want.” I wanted to stencil you back: “No, they can’t.” Because what you’re missing here in the real world—not the Hallmark world in which you dwell as painted by Thomas Kinkade, the painter of light—is that rape isn’t the product of some kind of rational decision-making process. No sane person rapes someone else. So the only person capable of stopping a rapist is a woman, preferably a woman trained to use a gun. A small but powerful handgun, maybe. And she should aim for the head, because a rapist has no heart. It’s a fact. Look it up.

Well, hello. If you simply cannot take the few steps to your own trash can and you must use mine for the occasional bag of dog waste and cans of botulism-infested vegetables, at least take them to the ones closest to the driveway. The occasional bag of feces won’t make much difference when mingled with the scent of dirty diapers and cat litter; furthermore, this way, your items won’t sit in the can ossifying and putrefying—those last two cans in the row of six are dragged weekly into the alley—by me, of course. Sure, I may be anal about my space and my trash cans, but they’re my trash cans and it’s my anus. As for what comes out of your dog’s anus, please be a decent neighbor and use either your cans or the ones in front. Any questions? You know who I am.

You, my most interesting neighbor, are a 30-something female and the dedicated owner and frequent walker of a very happy dog. I can only assume it is a dog: It appears to be equal parts Boston terrier, Chihuahua, and Steve Buscemi. Whatever he is, it is a truth universally acknowledged that we love our pets because they love us—and apparently he is completely untroubled by all of the things about you that so alarm the local real-estate agents, flier distributors, and those middle-school students who sell candy bars at odd hours. Things like, oh, for instance, your delight in conversing with the rear license plate of every car in every driveway as you make your way around and around the block. Or the strange but fetching bald patch on the back of your head. Or the muttering. One day you followed me for two whole blocks, all the while endlessly repeating, “See, I told you so” in a variety of accents and attitudes, sometimes loudly, sometimes softly. I felt as if I was attending a master class on improvisation. I also felt as if I might be living my final moments on this Earth. Our stroll ended right at my front door, and if I seemed a little frantic with my keys, please forgive me. Your dog, like a sweet little laughing Buddha, stood on my stoop and smiled up at me calmly, filling me with a desperate hope that you weren’t as agitated as you seemed. But then again, perhaps he has grown accustomed to the occasional bludgeoning of strangers. In short, dear neighbor, what I really want to know is: Friend or foe?

It was a Sabbath-afternoon miracle: First, you, in your hulking, taupe-colored Hummer nearly scraped the side of my car as you cut in front of me. I slammed on my brakes when I caught sight of your license plate—“GODTANK”—and prayed that my car wouldn’t slam into your vehicle of God. So it must’ve been by some heavenly force that I stopped short right as you zipped into another lane. But you were only half of it. A few hours later, I was coming up Second Street when it happened again—same ugly Hummer, same reckless abandon. I took a look at the license plate—“GZUZFRK”—and hit my brakes even harder. As you cut into another lane, I thanked whomever I could think of (certainly not God this time around) that I survived your little congregation of gas-guzzling evangelists.

To the woman who wouldn’t pull forward:
I hope your day got even worse. I asked you to pull forward one measly foot. You wouldn’t. I bet you don’t quite yet know how hard it is to find parking in our neighborhood after 7 p.m., do you? And then your mother comes up and threatens to call the cops. Are you kidding me? They’d probably tell you to not be a stupid parker, ha! I’m challenging you, Long Beach. Let’s all make a conscious effort to park better. If there’s room in front, pull forward; room behind, pull back. Every foot counts, and they add up in the long run. Be respectful of your neighbors, and everyone (including you, bad parking lady) might just find it easier to get home to our loved ones.

You were my best buddy—like, for 40 years—as we grew up on the same Bellflower street, went to the same high school, got drunk together for the first time, were best men at one another’s weddings, leaned on each other when those marriages didn’t work out. But when you totally flaked on me during a crisis four years ago, I called you on it—then a few weeks later, apologized for doing that. After all, nobody’s perfect. Apparently, however, you expected me to be—you never accepted my apology. Instead, you cut off communication between us. Then, a few weeks ago, I saw you driving on the 91 freeway. I sped up to catch you, pulled alongside, honked my horn until I got your attention, smiled and waved for you to pull over. You looked at me without any expression on your face, and drove on. Okay, I get it . . . I guess. Have a nice life.

I fink youse cops are all right: I was having a bad party at my apartment and it got so loud and bad—dudes pissing out the window, barfing in my sink, dry-heaving in my bed—actually this was all the same guy and these days, I kind of miss him—that someone reasonable called you, the police. That’s fine. At that point I was actually leaving my own party to go mess around elsewhere and I met you in the elevator, and I said, “Can I help you, officers?” Yes, you said—the guy in unit B is having some kind of party. Unit B? That was me! “Unit B?” I said. “That guy’s a great guy—go easy on him!” Sure, you said. Then while I split the premises you went to my unsupervised party where all sorts of consumption and possession statutes were certainly being violated and some girl I never even met told you she lived there and said it was her mom’s place and she was so sorry and everyone was laughing at you and taking pictures making bad finger signs behind your back and all you guys did was say, “Okay, well, keep it down.” So the only thing that got busted that night was my sense of civic decency—you could have took people out in handcuffs and you could have got me, too, if I had ever come back, but all you did was walk out smiling. I’ve never had another party again.

You are the homeless man who sleeps outside the neighborhood church whenever it gets cold. I am a young woman who lives next door. It could just be the weather getting warmer, but I haven’t seen you in a while, and I’m sorry—sorry that I never walked over with that pair of socks, or cup of tea, or spare blanket or sweater. You picked our neighborhood for the same reasons I did—it is safe, friendly and quiet. I only wish that I’d made it a little more welcoming. Hope to hear you snoring again soon.

Thanks, mysterious stranger, for inspiring me—and grossing me out at the same time. I was the disheveled guy buying paint rollers at the Anaheim Street Ace Hardware. You were the old, half-naked white guy who rolled up on the unicycle as I was leaving—though I’m not really sure that’s a fair assessment, since all you wore was a pair of shorts and athletic shoes. I was blinded by the glare coming off your skinny white legs. Let’s say three-quarters naked. But whatever. You, sir, are a genuine living relic from the days when Long Beach was the Coney Island of the West.

First, I’m not sure how much time you had on your hands to learn, but unicycles are generally impossible to ride, so you get points for that. (Even though, I have to say: You looked pretty homeless, so maybe learning to ride a unicycle was just your project for the week.)

But you also have my respect for throwing hygiene, sun screen and comfort to the wind and just rocking down the sidewalk basted in your own sweat. The saddle you had wedged up between your legs looked homemade when you peeled it out of there, and I know those slim-fit shorts (which looked a lot like a bathing suit) must have really chapped your leathery hide.

So I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I have the image of a retired, sweaty circus freak permanently seared into my brain. On the other, this is exactly what I expect of Long Beach—and in a weird way, knowing that you’re out there on a unicycle makes me wanna do something crazy with my life, too.

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Tags: church, coney island, crimes, I, Fink, law and order, Long Beach, parking, public urination, thomas kinkade