I had been eating red snapper fried crispy, still succulent, my beer as per instruction kept under the table and out of site when the police passed. When they drove by for the second time, and without any real provocation as far as I could tell, a garbage bin and an array of expletive loaded abuse was hurled at them by the owner, a tall sturdy women named Sylvia. Her gang, other women from the street, came to her assistance, hurling more bins and abuse, a few grabbing their own crotches to indicate I think, that the constabulary were less than real men. By the time the police had pumped cartridges into the breach of their shotguns, many of the tables, food forsaken, had been hastily cleared.
It was a situation that almost became deadly serious. One that could have been avoided with a more reasonable attitude. The women who lived in the party street of Calle 8, which of course was really Calle 14, I was now convinced preferred the confrontational approach. Perhaps the Calle Ladiana had been brought up in was just as hard arsed.