It was the summer of 1994.

I was on my way back to my home in San Francisco from a triumphant road trip throughout the Southwest, visiting friends and seeking adventure. The highlight of the trip was visiting the artist Agnes Martin in Taos. The low point was visiting ex-boyfriends. Anyway, I woke up in the morning, 500 miles from home and decided that I absolutely had to sleep in my own bed that night, so I drove like crazy from 9 am to around 11 PM. I was very excited when I arrived in SF. To celebrate my victory over the road, I went to the Mission district to buy a burrito at my favorite place, El Toro. I got there just before closing, got my burrito, and headed for the Upper Haight, where I lived with several roommates in our Victorian floor-through. Of course, there was no where to park, so I double parked in front of my house, unloaded all my valuable stuff (including the burrito) into the lobby of the building (which is behind a locked door), then went off in search of a parking space.

This took about 40 minutes. When I came back, all my stuff was gone except my burrito. My first assumption was that my wonderful roommate had taken it upstairs for me, so I ran upstairs. She was surprised to see me, and said that she hadn't taken the stuff upstairs. I realized I'd been ROBBED! The guy who lives on the first floor returned from his walk, and saw me freaking out, and told me he'd seen some weird looking guy who wanted to get into the building, who claimed that all the stuff was his and he was waiting for a cab. This building had about 6 apartments, and though we weren't all friends, we all knew each other by sight, and he should have known that the guy didn't live there. The neighbor didn't let the guy in, but he left the scene. Feeling bad, he went out running around the neighborhood in search of the guy. The next morning at 5 am I got a call from some weirdo who claimed to have "found" some of my stuff, and was willing to return it for a reward. I met him down the street, with a friend waiting at the top of the hill with his dog, watching over me. I forked over some dough and he gave me some of my stuff.

He pretended that some people had managed to find the robbers and that they were hard at work on my behalf, getting my stuff back. I spent the next week having a series of meetings with several people who all were part of this big-hearted effort to get all my stuff back to me for a price. The most aggravating part was when a woman who was giving me some stuff back thought that I should give her more money; she gave me a speech about how she was a humanitarian, doing community service to help me.

The funniest moment was when I was tipped off that I could find my clothing in Buena Vista park at the top of the hill; I brought a cop with me for protection, and the cop was rooting around in the bushes finding my conditioner, my underwear, my jeans, etc. I got back almost everything that was stolen, except my collection of cassette tapes. I really, really wanted them back, and I kept telling them that I wanted them back and that I'd pay good money, but they never materialized. The most valuable thing I got back was my journal, which had a year's worth of writing in it. The least valuable thing I got back was some pieces of paper from my backpack, which I refused to pay for.

I was relieved that I was planning on moving back East a week after this ended, because I was so bitter.