So last Friday some really weird stuff happened.<\/p>\n
That night my friends Chis and Tam and I went out to dinner and a movie. For the purposes of this story, you should know that Chris and Tam are married.<\/p>\n
Our evening was at a place called The Bridge, a large complex here in LA with lots of restaurants and a big movie theater. We decided to eat at On The Border. When we walked in, Chris asked for a table for three and the hostess asked us if we’d mind sitting in the bar area. We looked around and the main restaurant area was fairly empty, so we didn’t understand why, but she pushed us to sit at a table at the bar area, and we didn’t really argue.<\/p>\n
We were sat in the booth furthest in the back in the bar area. I sat facing the back wall and Chris and Tam sat facing into the bar and restaurant. While we’re eating our chips and waiting for our drinks, a black girl walks up to the table. She’s dressed casual. I prepare for some sort of sales pitch, but she says hi and asks how we are. She proceeds to ask Chris and Tam if they are together, which they confirm they are. She then asks me if I’m single, which I also confirm. It’s all starting to feel like some sort of scam.<\/p>\n
A bit of small talk later, and she says, to me, “well, I don’t know if you like women of color, but my friend is interested in you.”<\/p>\n
Well, that was about the last thing any of us were expecting. I went from thinking it was a scam to thinking maybe it was just two girls who were socially inept at a 6th grade level. Maybe. A scam was still a possibility, of course. I noncommittally respond. She says her friend’s name is Stephanie and notes that she just came over to scope things out and somewhat implies Stephanie is a bit more shy than she us. She then asks if she can send Stephanie over. I said sure, and she ran off saying Stephanie would stop by.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later our drinks arrive, and by this time, we all assume that Stephanie probably isn’t coming. We snack on chips, and eventually order some food. After some discussion, we’re still not sure quite what that was all about, but scam seems to be the most likely.<\/p>\n
To make things more interesting, girl #1 (we didn’t get her name), is walking up to every guy in the bar area and talking to them. It’s a pretty safe assumption she’s saying the same thing to them that she said to us. Chris and Tam gave me the play-by-play of this since I couldn’t see it.<\/p>\n
After our food arrives, Stephanie comes over. Stephanie has her name tattooed on her arm. Big. Think prison tat. Perhaps, she’s forgetful, and thought that’d be a good way to remember. Once thing is for sure – this girl is not<\/em> shy! Now, Stephanie isn’t ugly<\/em>, but she’s definitely not attractive either. We exchange names, and pleasantries. Despite my lack of moving over, she attempts to sit on the small bit of booth that’s next to me. Stephanie, however, is not a small girl, and according to Chris, watching her balance on 5 inches of chair was highly entertaining.<\/p>\n After no more than 30 seconds of small talk, she noted that she didn’t want to disturb our dinner. But she then looked at me as if that was a question. When none of us said anything, she then said she could, perhaps, stop by after we were finished. To this, I responded “uhhhhh.” After some more silence, she finally offered the logical “how about I leave you my number?” to which I said “that would be great!” She then stared at me. I noted I didn’t have anything to write with or on. She then stared at Tam, who also said she had nothing to write with or on. I said that the wait staff would likely have something, and she said she would ask them, and promptly disappeared.<\/p>\n It was a good 10 minutes before she came back, and we noticed a few things. First, the two girls were regularly talking to a white guy with a bushy mustache and a mediocre suit between each table they’d go. Second, we remembered that the hostess has pushed us to sit in the bar area when she found out we had an uneven number of people – and these festivities were limited to the bar area.<\/p>\n At this point it occurred to us that this might not be a scam, but instead a sting operation. Clearly, whatever it was, the hostess was in on it. Further, the mustache dude was very obviously a cop. But, the only thing we could think of it being a sting operation for<\/em> was prostitution. However, On The Border is a reasonably nice restaurant, and The Bridge isn’t exactly in the ghetto. It’s certainly not where you’d go to find a prostitute! It’s really the wrong place for such a sting operation. And if you must<\/em> do it there, then at least realize that, as Chris put it, if you’re going to go fishing, you at need to use attractive bait!<\/p>\n I gave the number to Tam, because she’ll get a kick out of calling. Oh, and she’s a lawyer! But for the rest of the night, we were trying to figure out what exactly had been going on there, and how they managed to get the restaurant in on it. Really Weird!<\/strong><\/p>\n So – scam, sting, or setup? You decide!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So last Friday some really weird stuff happened. That night my friends Chis and Tam and I went out to dinner and a movie. For the purposes of this story, you should know that Chris and Tam are married. Our evening was at a place called The Bridge, a large complex here in LA with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}