StreetWars: Day One - Research

7:15am - okay, so I was supposed to have gotten up an hour earlier and stake out my target at home. It's a Monday, I'm lazy, you get the picture. Zzzzzz.

8:00am - Caught up on sleep, turned on the television and flipped to the building's security camera channel. Yeah, that's right - cameras at strategic locations, right there for my viewing pleasure. I kept it on while I got ready for work, eyeballing anyone around the building with suspicion.

9:05am - ready to go. I'm a little earlier than normal, but I figure unless someone takes off from work they won't be stalking me at home; I'm just too damn far uptown to make it easy. Still, no sense taking chances. I've got two guns in the gym bag, one in the jacket pocket, and one in hand when I leave the apartment. I'm also not taking the "direct route" outside the building, luckily I have more than one option. Plus two different trains I can take, neither in the same direction, and multiple routes and entrances for each. I'm still paranoid as hell as I walk to the station, aiming my pistol around every corner.

9:35am - at my work station, and I have two moments of sudden insight. One: don't leave a watergun in your pocket, it leaks. I don't think people will believe you when you stand up and there's a water stain down your pants. Of course, since it's on the side of my pants I can just shrug, grin and say "yeah, it IS that big!" Two: it is probably a bad, bad idea to pull out a watergun in a place where there are a contingent of cops. I may have to get some yellow electrical tape to wrap my blue and silver watergun with, just in case.

I did a little research, trying to see if I could find out more about my targets. Google is a wonderful, wonderful thing. John Westside is surprisingly available on the web. I've got a nice fat dossier on him so far: description of his building, some of his extracurricular interests; I may even have found a much better photo of him and his girlfriend. All that's told me one thing: he's going to be hard as hell to get. He lives in a luxury condo in a landmark area, which means there's no way I'm getting inside. He's an athlete, but does he exercise outside or use his building's built in gym? He could walk to work, or - does he drive the 12 blocks? There are so many subway options he could take, it staggers the mind. I'm betting on one route in particular, but I'm concerned about staking out his building. I'll need to check out his building in person before I can come up with a solution.

Jane Eastside, by comparison, is a virtual non-entity in the digital world. That's fine, no problem - so I spent my lunch hour checking out her neighborhood. There's a lot of possibilities there; an Associated supermarket around the corner, a Starbucks a block away, a crosstown bus line that takes her directly from home to work, east to west. There's even construction going on across the street from her building, a perfect place for a potential stalker to hide out.

So what's the problem? She lives...well, it's near yet another NY icon. And there are cops, EVERYWHERE. I gotta tell you, a black man stalking an east side building in the dark with a gun-shaped object...not high on my list of "smart things to do". But I'm gonna do it anyway, because I'm retarded that way. If you read about me on the news being shot 20 times by a rookie cop, refer back to this blog.

I don't know as much about Jane, but if I can spot her I can stalk her. John, I feel like I know already - but he's less accessible. I'm thinking, get John at work, get Jane at home.

One of them gets stalked tomorrow morning. Tonight, I've got plans. And I'm avoiding my own stalker :)

BTW: after a sudden insight of my own, I locked down my Myspace profile. Can't have people getting too much information, now can I? :)