[Contemplating 2017 c/o the Asian Carp at my AirBNB] Part 1: In Which I Ally with Asian Grandmas, Acquaint with Carp

Enter scene.

It is midnight on a Tuesday evening in San Francisco in February, and it is pouring rain.

I reach my Airbnb in the Haight Ashbury region of San Francisco after 10 hours of transit, only to discover that my AirBNB host -- a very wealthy man named Barry --  **did not leave me a key to enter his house**. 

Thus I am locked out, on the street, in the rain, with nowhere to go.

45 minutes of attempting to course-correct quickly prove doomed: the host and his “helper” do not respond to my >10 desperate calls / texts / messages. My attempts to get the attention of 4 different neighbors  fail swiftly. AirBNB’s late night ‘guest services’ prove non-existent (read: consist of leaving you to hyperventilate on hold to infinity+, while the AirBNB phone-robots blast shitty, Lumineers-esque pop-folk hold music into the sharing-economy abyss).

I force myself to quickly accept the facts === 

I am locked out, in the rain, at midnight, with a pile of luggage, on the street >>>> and therefore I am: ***oh yes*** ***quite fucked***.

Naturally -- I begin to openly weep. 

(PSST >> read more, after the jump!)