Optimist
Ann Street in Fortitude Valley is one of the inner-city's busiest streets, no matter what time is on the clock.
As it passes through the middle of Brisbane's nightclub district, the more alarming times for driving down Ann Street are late on Friday and Saturday nights as the city's bright young things flit like moths between the strobe nightclub lights on either side of Ann Street.
The traffic -- ranging from motor scooters to 60-tonne trucks -- doesn't matter in the slightest to them as they wander across the road like Browns' Cows in their trendy black clobber at the street's darkest spots.
I'd just dropped a mob off at the Empire Hotel, right in the middle of the Valley, and was bailing back to the CBD when Oliver the Optimist frantically waved me down at 11.30pm.
A fare's a fare, and thinking he'd be in the cab quickly, I reefed the cab across to the kerb and whacked the hazard lights on. This part of Ann Street is the beginning of the on-ramp for the Story Bridge, but hell, the cab would only be stopped for a couple of seconds.
Or so I thought.
"I don't want a cab," Olly said as he opened the back door, "I'm just looking for the phone I left behind in it -- oh, you're not the cab I caught."
Yep, at 11.30 on a Friday night, this bright spark decided that the best way of retrieving the mobile phone he'd just left behind in one of Brisbane's 1,800 taxis was just to stand in the city's busiest street and hail every passing taxi until he eventually found the cab with his phone in the back.
He's probably still there.
Elsewhere on Friday night, a budding young Schumacher's weekend took a rapid turn for the worse in Logan Road when he panicked on approaching an intersection.
It was about 9pm, and our Juan Manuel was roaring up Logan Road in Woolloongabba in his Mitsubishi Cordia at about 180km/h -- an impressive feat in an inner-city street with a 60km/h speed limit -- when something made him jump on the brakes as the car roared past Lewis Street.
The brakes locked, and the Mitsubishi skidded across the centre traffic island and down the wrong side of the road for 100 metres before skidding across the Deshon Street intersection and coming to a rest against the post supporting a set of traffic lights.
The traffic island didn't divert the car's course at all.
Although the car was only good for the scrapyard's crusher, the driver somehow managed to get out of it with barely a scratch.
As for the two policemen in the police car that was stopped at the red light, they must have thought Christmas had come early. They didn't even have to chase this bloke, after all. There he was, skidding virtually straight into their laps.
The skidmarks are still in Logan Road. All 120 metres (400 feet) of them.
As it passes through the middle of Brisbane's nightclub district, the more alarming times for driving down Ann Street are late on Friday and Saturday nights as the city's bright young things flit like moths between the strobe nightclub lights on either side of Ann Street.
The traffic -- ranging from motor scooters to 60-tonne trucks -- doesn't matter in the slightest to them as they wander across the road like Browns' Cows in their trendy black clobber at the street's darkest spots.
I'd just dropped a mob off at the Empire Hotel, right in the middle of the Valley, and was bailing back to the CBD when Oliver the Optimist frantically waved me down at 11.30pm.
A fare's a fare, and thinking he'd be in the cab quickly, I reefed the cab across to the kerb and whacked the hazard lights on. This part of Ann Street is the beginning of the on-ramp for the Story Bridge, but hell, the cab would only be stopped for a couple of seconds.
Or so I thought.
"I don't want a cab," Olly said as he opened the back door, "I'm just looking for the phone I left behind in it -- oh, you're not the cab I caught."
Yep, at 11.30 on a Friday night, this bright spark decided that the best way of retrieving the mobile phone he'd just left behind in one of Brisbane's 1,800 taxis was just to stand in the city's busiest street and hail every passing taxi until he eventually found the cab with his phone in the back.
He's probably still there.
Elsewhere on Friday night, a budding young Schumacher's weekend took a rapid turn for the worse in Logan Road when he panicked on approaching an intersection.
It was about 9pm, and our Juan Manuel was roaring up Logan Road in Woolloongabba in his Mitsubishi Cordia at about 180km/h -- an impressive feat in an inner-city street with a 60km/h speed limit -- when something made him jump on the brakes as the car roared past Lewis Street.
The brakes locked, and the Mitsubishi skidded across the centre traffic island and down the wrong side of the road for 100 metres before skidding across the Deshon Street intersection and coming to a rest against the post supporting a set of traffic lights.
The traffic island didn't divert the car's course at all.
Although the car was only good for the scrapyard's crusher, the driver somehow managed to get out of it with barely a scratch.
As for the two policemen in the police car that was stopped at the red light, they must have thought Christmas had come early. They didn't even have to chase this bloke, after all. There he was, skidding virtually straight into their laps.
The skidmarks are still in Logan Road. All 120 metres (400 feet) of them.
posted by Roy Wilke at 4:02:00 pm
1 Comments:
Holy crap! That idiot is lucky not to be up on manslaughter charges. I can't believe he didn't hit another car or a pedestrian on the Gabba stretch of Logan Road at that time on a Friday...
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