Faced with a stressful week of work, my girlfriend and I decided it was time for a pleasant dinner in the Roads this past Saturday. We had passed Old Lisbon many times. After stepping into the cozy restaurant, the rich aromas of flaming Linguiça and stewing codfish grabbed hold of us and the twenty-minute wait for a table passed easily amongst the handsome couples who chatted in dulcet Portugese.
What a nice place to be. What a great night out in Miami.
About twenty minutes into the meal, a thunderous banging captured the attentions of the shi-shi dining crowd. Someone was whacking the front window. “He’s got a gun!” one woman shouted, setting off a Latin gender bomb. A handful of women, dressed to the nines in fashionable evening gowns, dove under their table. The men stood up, puffing out their chests and making way towards the front door.
One hefty graying Cuban man in a sleevless T-shirt insisted on being let outside. “Tina, he’s just a little punk,” he rasped to his companion. “No punk’s going to keep me from walking down the street.”
Tina tossed her peroxide blond hair in consternation. “You’re not going out there Carl,” she cried. “I have a heart condition; I don’t need this shit!”
A pair of gay men sitting in the far corner giggled at the absurd spectacle.
Several patrons headed into an archway in the middle of the restaurant as if bracing themselves for a tornado.
For the next twenty minutes, the deranged young man terrorized the entire restaurant. He stood, on the corner of 17th Avenue and Coral Way, in a dirty white shirt and khaki pants screaming at the restaurant. He had no shoes, no belt and, clearly, no gun.
At one point, he pulled down the front of his pants and waved hello to his aghast audience with his penis. When he finally tired of shouting and pacing, he wandered off (nice response time, MPD).
Several minutes after his grand exit, the entire restaurant poured out of the side door, laying into the single valet parking attendant like a pack of wolves. They hurled dollars, snatched keys, and drove off as though running from the devil himself.
It’s nice to go out in this town. --Calvin Godfrey
