Part 3: The Stanley Street Hooligans − 1 July, 2001
This is part 3 of a three-part series. You'll want to read Part 1: The two Spokes and Axles and Part 2: The Twilight of Web 1.0 first.
Summers in San Diego can be very pleasant indeed. If you're not too far inland, then you get a nice ocean breeze day and night. The air is clean. The water is all-knowing. You can never stray too far into privation because, I don't know, what would be the point of that? Life is for living, you know?
San Diego was having that kind of effect on me anyway. Seems like the summer was full of soccer, barbecues and the beach. The evenings were designed for front-door entertainment, dog-walking and iced coffees where you could be seen enjoying life and its finest offerings. Maybe that's why I was in such a giving mood.
On one of these characteristically lazy summer evenings it was damn hot. The front and back door were open. Lou Doggy was lounging at the screen watching traffic. I was at the computer whipping something up for amusement. The phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Is this Kelly?"
"Yes. Who's this?"
"Kelly Abbott from Spoke-and-Axle?"
"Yeah that's me. Who is this?"
"Are you currently hosting nosepilot.com?"
"Yeah. Why do you ask?"
"If you don't stop hosting nosepilot.com we will kill you."
Click.
At first I didn't believe that it was possible that I had heard what I heard. I looked around for validation. The dog, the breeze. They were real enough. I looked back at the phone. I hung it up and thought for a few moments. What does one do when one receives a death-threat by phone?
I looked for the phone book and dialed the San Diego bureau of the FBI immediately. I don't know what I was expecting, but I felt certain I'd get a recording and have to have someone call me back the next week. It was a weekend. Surely the FBI in San Diego would be taking the day off. What's to investigate on a Saturday night? To mysurprise, someone answered the phone.
I explained the call I had just received. The woman on the other end of the line took my statement. I locked the doors and checked them twice before falling into a restless, one-eyed sleep. A week goes by - nothing. Another week - again, nothing. I wasn't too worried anymore by the time they called back. "So we found your boys. Looks like you made some pretty bad people angry. You might want to hear this."
It turns out that the former host of nosepilot.com was a fly-by-night operation put together by Russian gangsters. The mob. The perestroika mafia. Honest-to-goodness thugs of the drug, prostitution and gambling underworld. A cliche come true. The hosting business was both a money laundering scheme and a source of credit card numbers. AlSacui's Internet campaign to have them exposed and boycotted had me at the source; he was, after all, hosting his site care of me. That much they had right. The FBI agent gave me their address and told me they might get in touch with me later if they needed a witness. I never heard from them or the mob again.
When I used to live in LA, I lived in a neighborhood in West Hollywood that had lots of Persian and Russian immigrants. My landlord was this really nice Persian Jewish couple who now lived in West LA. They loved little Lou Doggy and would bring treats whenever they responded to our maintenance requests (which they always addressed promptly, I might add). The neighborhood was filled with first and second-generation immigrants who were reallybuilding things. Life in West Hollywood had been good to them and they were giving back to the community in a big way. It was clean. It was safe. What more can you ask for? We lived south of Sunset, west of Fairfax, north ofMelrose and east of La Brea (see map below). I'd take the dog walking in the neighborhood and get to talking to the old ladies and their dogs. They wouldn't talk much, which was fine by me. LA is a big city and what do you say to a 250-poundseptuagenarian walking a Pomeranian in her bedroom attire?
One afternoon, I was walking Lou Doggy and one such woman comes straight for me with a crazed look on her face - it was either happiness, surprise or outright distress - you tell me which. "Stanley!" she shouted. "Stanley!" she shouted again and grabbed me by both hands firmly.
"I'm not Stanley, lady!" trying to break free. Lou Doggy was getting ready to hump her leg.
She held me by the shoulders now, pleading again, "Stanley!"
"I'm not Stanley. Look," I said, stepping out of her grip. "I don't know who you're looking for, it's not me." I'm not Stanley."
Then it occurred to me that we lived two blocks away from Stanley Street. She was lost and needed help back home.
Lou Doggy and I led her back to Stanley.
A year after I moved to San Diego from LA, I pieced it together. The address the FBI gave me? It turns out the Russian Mobsters were two doors down from where this boy scout dropped off one confused babushka.
Summers in San Diego can be very pleasant indeed. If you're not too far inland, then you get a nice ocean breeze day and night. The air is clean. The water is all-knowing. You can never stray too far into privation because, I don't know, what would be the point of that? Life is for living, you know?
San Diego was having that kind of effect on me anyway. Seems like the summer was full of soccer, barbecues and the beach. The evenings were designed for front-door entertainment, dog-walking and iced coffees where you could be seen enjoying life and its finest offerings. Maybe that's why I was in such a giving mood.
On one of these characteristically lazy summer evenings it was damn hot. The front and back door were open. Lou Doggy was lounging at the screen watching traffic. I was at the computer whipping something up for amusement. The phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Is this Kelly?"
"Yes. Who's this?"
"Kelly Abbott from Spoke-and-Axle?"
"Yeah that's me. Who is this?"
"Are you currently hosting nosepilot.com?"
"Yeah. Why do you ask?"
"If you don't stop hosting nosepilot.com we will kill you."
Click.
At first I didn't believe that it was possible that I had heard what I heard. I looked around for validation. The dog, the breeze. They were real enough. I looked back at the phone. I hung it up and thought for a few moments. What does one do when one receives a death-threat by phone?
I looked for the phone book and dialed the San Diego bureau of the FBI immediately. I don't know what I was expecting, but I felt certain I'd get a recording and have to have someone call me back the next week. It was a weekend. Surely the FBI in San Diego would be taking the day off. What's to investigate on a Saturday night? To mysurprise, someone answered the phone.
I explained the call I had just received. The woman on the other end of the line took my statement. I locked the doors and checked them twice before falling into a restless, one-eyed sleep. A week goes by - nothing. Another week - again, nothing. I wasn't too worried anymore by the time they called back. "So we found your boys. Looks like you made some pretty bad people angry. You might want to hear this."
It turns out that the former host of nosepilot.com was a fly-by-night operation put together by Russian gangsters. The mob. The perestroika mafia. Honest-to-goodness thugs of the drug, prostitution and gambling underworld. A cliche come true. The hosting business was both a money laundering scheme and a source of credit card numbers. AlSacui's Internet campaign to have them exposed and boycotted had me at the source; he was, after all, hosting his site care of me. That much they had right. The FBI agent gave me their address and told me they might get in touch with me later if they needed a witness. I never heard from them or the mob again.
When I used to live in LA, I lived in a neighborhood in West Hollywood that had lots of Persian and Russian immigrants. My landlord was this really nice Persian Jewish couple who now lived in West LA. They loved little Lou Doggy and would bring treats whenever they responded to our maintenance requests (which they always addressed promptly, I might add). The neighborhood was filled with first and second-generation immigrants who were reallybuilding things. Life in West Hollywood had been good to them and they were giving back to the community in a big way. It was clean. It was safe. What more can you ask for? We lived south of Sunset, west of Fairfax, north ofMelrose and east of La Brea (see map below). I'd take the dog walking in the neighborhood and get to talking to the old ladies and their dogs. They wouldn't talk much, which was fine by me. LA is a big city and what do you say to a 250-poundseptuagenarian walking a Pomeranian in her bedroom attire?
One afternoon, I was walking Lou Doggy and one such woman comes straight for me with a crazed look on her face - it was either happiness, surprise or outright distress - you tell me which. "Stanley!" she shouted. "Stanley!" she shouted again and grabbed me by both hands firmly.
"I'm not Stanley, lady!" trying to break free. Lou Doggy was getting ready to hump her leg.
She held me by the shoulders now, pleading again, "Stanley!"
"I'm not Stanley. Look," I said, stepping out of her grip. "I don't know who you're looking for, it's not me." I'm not Stanley."
Then it occurred to me that we lived two blocks away from Stanley Street. She was lost and needed help back home.
Lou Doggy and I led her back to Stanley.
A year after I moved to San Diego from LA, I pieced it together. The address the FBI gave me? It turns out the Russian Mobsters were two doors down from where this boy scout dropped off one confused babushka.
stanley
Comments:
pepero (February 7, 2007. 03:08am)
what a crazy, scary story. i heard the russian mob was worse than the *real* mafia.
kga245 (February 7, 2007. 03:16am)
You know, one of the things that I wanted to mention here is that since this experience I have met a lot of very nice Russian immigrants my age. Not a single one of them is a mobster. I even started Dandelife with one of them. :-)