Food, Guns and Good Times!

Last night, in celebration of my work not giving Christmas bonuses this year (another story, another day...), I decided that Stacey and I both needed a night out, so upon her arrival home I asked if she'd like to go out and eat some Chinese food for dinner. She did not hesitate in her response; "OK!".

We have a new fave restaurant on the main drag in the Albany area; King Tsin. It's not quite as good as the fancier place Joe and Sue turned us on to (Renee's Place), but it's much cheaper (again, thanks for the thoughtful bonus...) and the food is really good. Of course being cheaper, I'm sure that their meats have been tortured and fed toxic swill during their unfortunate lifespan (Renee's Place serves happier and less traumatized free range meat), but it still tastes great and is just as dead as the free range stuff.

I offered to drive which is pretty rare. (I don't like night driving due to my unique...vision in my special eye, and I do like to have a few cocktails with dinner). As we parked, we both noticed that there were police everywhere within a 2 or 3 block area of King Tsin. The side roads were roadblocked and I thought that maybe it was a special holiday practice of DUI checkpoints. Hmmm. Maybe Stacey will need to drive home after all...

We started to walk to the restaurant and a policeman said "I wouldn't walk on this side of the street if I were you". It was then that I noticed he had an assault rifle in his arms. This is not a DUI checkpoint after all, it is a crime scene! The restaurant next door to King Tsin had just been taken over by 2 gun toting bandits that not only robbed the cash register, but all of the customers as well! (Several years ago, a similar chain of robberies hit the same area, but I believe the culprits were eventually nabbed.) We looked around and there must have been at least 20 police cars in the area, including a "Crime Scene" van. Evidently, the police thought that they may have the suspects penned in somewhere in a 2 or 3 block radius. The perimeter was in place!

We figured there would be no way we could possibly get robbed now, under the circumstances, and decided to go ahead with our dinner plans, so we entered King Tsin. The woman owner greeted and seated us and told us that they were robbed, probably by the same bandits 2 weeks earlier! Great. There goes the neighborhood. Again.

Anyway, there were plenty of other customers eating away, and since we were near the front window, we had a great view to the exciting action going on out front, which really wasn't a whole lot. Just many groups of police walking around. We ordered our food and ate with no interruptions.

On our way out, the other owner (husband I presume, to the woman greeter) was very excited to tell us the whole story of their robbery. 2 guys entered ("I knew immediately that they were going to rob us") the front door (7:00pm), and one guy aimed a pistol at the man at the register. He seemed rather rattled that the pistol had a laser beam sight on it, so there was a little red dot on the poor guy's chest! He gave the robber all of the cash. The other robber went into the dining area and also at gunpoint, took all of the customer's cash. For some reason I looked and noticed that the owner had a watch on, so I asked him if the bandits took jewelry also, which he said they didn't. I assume the robbers wanted to get out of there ASAP.

What a frightening thing to have gone through! You could be sitting there enjoying a great meal, and suddenly you could be faced with the fact that this could be the last time you see your wife, your husband, your kids, your friends, or even your waiter. That sucks. I hope they catch the bastards.

I must say, though, that at least for last night, it was very comforting to have a huge police presence right outside the door. And the food was excellent!

Gil