Category: Wren’s Eye View

There has been a little gender confusion in the San Diego crime scene lately.

HILLCREST – Police are looking for a man dressed as a woman – French manicured nails and a pink bra – who held up a bank yesterday.

The robbery was reported at 1 p.m. at a Union Bank on Fifth Avenue near University Avenue, said San Diego police Sgt. Rodney Vandiver.

The robber handed a teller a note demanding cash, then left with an undisclosed amount of money.

Witnesses described the robber as Hispanic. He is 6 foot tall, weighs about 200 pounds and has short brown spiky hair. He was wearing dark pants and a white shirt.

It was at least the third time this year that a man dressed as a woman has robbed a bank in the general vicinity.

Police reported similar robberies Oct. 19 of a Union Bank on Fifth Avenue in Core-Columbia and July 25 of a Washington Mutual bank about five blocks away.

— Mark Arner, “Man dressed as woman robs bank,” San Diego Union-Tribune, Nov. 15, 2005.

How did witnesses know this guy wore a pink bra? Did they see a pink strap peeking out from the neck of his shirt?

Maybe the robber’s shirt was one of those thin polyester tees and people could see right through to his bra — I hate it when this happens to me. It’s hard enough to color coordinate my clothes without worrying about color coordinating my underwear, too.

At any rate, this sounds like it was a very entertaining bank robbery! If I were ever a crime witness, it’d be my luck to witness a boring bank robbery, where the bank robbers only put nylon stockings over their heads. How much more interesting to have a six-foot, 200-pound man flashing a pink bra and manicured nails at us witnesses!

And how do the police know it was a man, exactly? What if it was really a woman? A woman did rob another bank about 2 hours later:

CHULA VISTA – A woman wearing hospital scrubs used a demand note to rob a Washington Mutual Bank branch on Telegraph Canyon Road yesterday afternoon, police said.

The woman wore large dark sunglasses and a blond wig when she entered the bank at the Vons shopping center near Interstate 805 shortly after 3 p.m., said Chula Vista police Lt. Gary Ficacci.

No weapon was seen, Ficacci said.

— Brian Hazle, “Woman in hospital scrubs hits bank,” San Diego Union-Tribune, Nov. 15, 2005.

I think these two robbers are the same people! Look at the facts: neither robber is reported to have used weapons, and the second robber wore a wig, which could be covering the “short brown spiky hair” of the first robber. If the second robber was a really tall and hefty Hispanic lady with a French manicure, it’s a sure bet she is the “male” robber in the first report!

Think about it: after her 1 pm bank robbery in Hillcrest, she realizes her scrubs always camouflage her pink bra better than her white shirt, so she goes home to change and stash her loot. She’d have plenty of time to make her 3 pm Chula Vista robbery, even with the afternoon traffic.

I swear, I should have been a cop.

Humor, Chula Vista, Hillcrest, Crime, Bank, Robbery

There weren’t any in Minnesota, and visiting family members from Ohio rolled their eyes when they first saw one outside our Carlsbad supermarket. This makes me wonder if it’s just a California thing.

These islands of disinfection are in all the supermarkets I visit, and I’ve seen them in Orange and Los Angeles Counties, too.

They first showed up this winter when the flu vaccine shortage was headline news. The attached signs told us the wipes were for wiping off shopping cart handles, but seemed to really be saying, “Quick! Come inside! You’ll be safe from the flu in here!”

It’s summertime now. The flu and its flaming sword is long gone. And yet the disinfectant wipes remain.

So do all the signs apologizing for any solicitors who interrupt our pursuit of double coupons. And so do those self-checking machines that replace living cashiers and baggers—thanks to them, we don’t have to stand in line with other shoppers if we don’t want to, or have to tell the checker “credit” or “debit” if we don’t want to, or even answer that age-old question, “Paper or Plastic?” Not if we don’t want to.

And now these little disinfectant wipes stand guard at all entrances, ensuring our protection against any ickies left behind by careless, germ-laden shopping cart users. We don’t even have to come into contact with other people’s fingerprints if we don’t want to.

I sense a trend here.

Hot and smoggy and me stuck in L.A. traffic on the I-5. The exhaust fumes were so bad I had to roll up the windows. And since I couldn’t run the air conditioner without overheating the car, the air just got thicker.

I turned up the radio but after a few seconds it was drowned out by someone who pulled up beside me, someone with a loud, mufferless engine filling the air with an immense throbbing that made my ribs vibrate like our washing machine on the final spin cycle.

For a moment I wondered if I’d been squished by an 18-wheeler and deposited in Hell, only to learn it was staffed by demons on mufferless Harleys. If so, Hell looked a heck of a lot like the I-5 on a smoggy summer day in stop-and-go traffic.

But no, it was the regular ole’ I-5. And as I waited patiently for the chopper to pass so I could more fairly question the owner’s ancestry… I realized the chopper demon wasn’t a he, but a she.

She finally pulled up ahead of me and I could breathe again without rattling ribs. The picture is blurry because I was moving and my windshield was dirty (the bees are swarming in Carlsbad) but you can still see what I saw: a woman who waits for nothing and no one.

Me, I’ve spent my life waiting to lose some more weight before I do stuff like go to a pool party and actually go swimming, but I’ll bet this gal goes swimming at ALL her pool parties, and wears the tiniest bikini she can find—maybe even a thong.

Frankly, she appears to be the kind of woman who told the world the hell with it, I’m gonna get me some tattoos and a tube-top and some low-rider jeans and the biggest, baddest Harley sold in America today, and while I’m at it, the hell with the damn muffler, too.

Nobody gets in front of her at in the “9 items or less” line with 32 items and a fistful of expired coupons, nobody whips into the parking space at the mall that she was waiting for, and nobody EVER dings her van when she’s sitting inside it waiting for kids to finish swim team.

And even though I was taking a picture because it would last longer, I knew she could easily poke my eye out with her little finger if she was so inclined—so I didn’t spend any time trying to get the perfect shot. I just put the camera back into the bag and continued my stopping and going on the I-5, all the while wondering how big my butt would look on a Harley.