Party Crashers & The Crackhead

Over the years, I've crashed dozens of private parties. The free alcohol and food is only a small part of the fun. Being somewhere forbidden is great and the exclusivity of it all is usually worth the risk.

The day in question Fred & I had nothing better to do. This Friday night in Cleveland seemed tame and we already drank at a few bars in the flats with nothing going on. We decided to head uptown to a swanky hotel next to Tower City. We had one drink at the hotel bar when I heard some girls mention a private party to honor Les Paul. I knew he was some great guitarist back in the day and had a lot to do with the electric guitar being made. So we decided to look for this party. We went up & down in the elevators, checking on many of the top floors, but couldn't find any parties. There were some floors we didn't have access to and we needed a plan. Somehow we found an employee elevator. It had paddings on the elevator walls and looked pretty shabby compared to the other elegant elevators. We kept going up floor by floor until we heard the roar of the party. We got off and wondered to the party door.

We almost walked right in, when some skanky chick asked for our passes. Fred, looked at the woman and said, "Passes? We were told we didn't need them" She asked who would have told us that. At that moment I knew how to continue the story. I had interned at WMMS, our local rock station, the previous year. I still had a shabby looking expired ID. With a little luck & a lot of bullshit, that would be our pass. I showed her my ID and said we were here to cover the party.
You could tell in her eyes, it could go either way. What put it over the top was Fred's crazed & annoyed demeanor. She reluctantly let us in and we headed right to the drinks. We got some bad wine first but soon found the woman with the beers. Later we got glasses of champagne when we realized they were celebrating something. I can't recall what it was, but it was something like 50 years of the electric guitar or maybe Les's Birthday; who knows.

After hanging at the party for an hour we took off. It was only about 11 and we were still bored. Fred decided he wanted some weed. Neither of us really smoked it, but boredom will make you do crazy shit. We found some guy at the corner of street and Fred asked him if he had any bud. He said he just sold his last joint but had some hash. I didn't really believe the guy at this point, but Fred was drunker than me as I was driving. We paid $25 for the stuff and were on our way. We went to some bar and put the stuff under a glass & lit it up, just like your supposed to. At some point we realize it was not real. I thought it was a piece of tar from the street and went outside and found many identical pieces laying around. Now, Fred was mad. He wasn't going to be taken by some homeless crackhead. He said, we're going after him. I told him the odds of us finding him were pretty hopeless. We went to the corner where we bought the hash which was near the flats, but he was gone. We looked at a few other spots, while stopping to have a few drinks, but couldn't find him. We decided to call it a night & started driving home.
Up by 55th street and 60 blocks away from the flats, we saw the guy.

We pulled up and Fred demanded our money back. The crackhead denied our request. I started acting like a maniac, thinking I could scare the guy into submission. I yelled for Fred to get my gun out of the Glovebox. I didn't even have gloves in there, but thought it was a decent bluff. What really helped is while I was trying to open the glove compartment, Fred was holding it closed yelling, "Don't shoot him, Don't shoot him!". They crackhead was scared now & started throwing money into Fred's side of the car window. He gave us $22, mostly in singles and yelled, "I swear, that's all I have, I swear." He turned all his all is pockets inside out for us to see, but a small joint fell out. I said, "We'll take that too, if you want to live". He gave it to us and we were on our way. We had to leave quickly as I was holding back a lot of laughter throughout the whole ordeal.