Leak

It’s been awhile since I’ve been drunk but I remember how great it feels to take a leak after a night of heavy drinking. More specifically, it feels wonderful to take a leak after drinking all night, punching a few frat guys, making out with your best friend’s wife, doing a line of coke off a strange Asian girl’s ass, stealing a car, stealing a new flat screen TV, stealing a garden gnome, throwing a burning trash can into a crowd, spitting on a reporter from The Star, break dancing and making it home after evading a police helicopter.

Well I imagine the only thing that feels better than that leak is taking the city for a cool quarter of a million bucks after they failed to fix one of their leaks.

The City Council on Thursday approved a $224,000 settlement in a lawsuit filed by Ronda Reyes, who slipped and fell Feb. 24, 2003, on a large patch of ice in front of her house in the 3000 block of Belleview Avenue. She broke her left leg and had to have three surgeries and extensive physical therapy.

The money will come from water department revenues. The settlement included $104,000 for Reyes’ medical expenses and lost wages, plus money for pain, suffering and disability.

Reyes’ attorney, Laurie Del Percio, said a water main at the top of Reyes’ street had a chronic leak. Water would flow downhill and create a sheet of ice, she said. Del Percio said the leak was first reported in March 2002, but it was never properly fixed.

The pipe still wasn’t fixed by December 2003, months after Reyes’ fall, she said.

Yep, a good leak is a reward unto itself. But a payoff from a city with crumbling infrastructure and piss poor public services is fucking sweet. I bet with the nice chunk of change in her pocket, the poor lady could move to a place that takes care of its citizens . . . someplace like Johnson County. However, I'm sure that somebody with a Spanish surname moving into the golden ghetto is bound to make a few neighbors pissed.