At 8 o'clock last night, the line for the Arby's drive-thru at 5th Avenue North and 34th Street stretched and snaked for multiple blocks through the neighborhood, requiring police assistance and snarling the traffic returning to U.S. 19.
For Arby's.
Oh, the humanity.
Other Monday Irma losses in addition the public's sense of culinary shame (just kidding, I love Arby's) included the Dali Museum's famous Wish Tree and St. Pete's historic Merriwether building. Wicked irony, that last. Both may be salvageable, but let's maybe get the power back up first so people don't start stabbing each other over packets of Horsey Sauce.
Clearwater finally made the Tampa Bay sewage spill hat trick, joining Tampa and St. Pete in infamy by accidentally dumping 1.5 million gallons into Stevenson Creek after an equipment malfunction. Never woulda been better than late in this particular case, one supposes.
A neighbor's tip led St. Pete police to arrest a suspected looter in the act. Nobody falls for the "one sketchy guy nervously un-boarding an evacuated house just to make it easier for the homeowners when they get back" story, folks. Maybe that shit flew in the '50s, but now we have nextdoor.com and widespread justifiable paranoia.
And finally, somebody's suing Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd over the constitutionality of his comments about arresting people with warrants who might seek shelter from the hurricane. And also about them just kind of being sort of a dick move. No Arby's for you.
