Never liked that car anyway

There it is. My car was smashed by a drunk car service driver in Brooklyn. I didn't even find out about it until I happened to glance down the street. I thought, "Huh, why is my hood open?" Then I knew. I rushed down the block to find the little as yet unnamed Honda crushed on two fronts, shards of colored plastic on the ground surrounding it.

Ironically, the car was parked in front of a bar. I went in, slightly in shock, and asked the first waitress I saw what had happened to my car. She looked at me like I was crazy. "Didn't you notice the car smashed up right outside?" "What?" was all she could muster. I looked for a bartender. He said that he wasn't working when it happened, by he heard from the previous tender that my Honda got hit the night before, almost 20 hours before I first noticed it.

I called 911, they sent a patrol car full of veteran cops with perfect Brooklyn accents. "Oh yeah, that happened last night as I was finishing up my shift. They arrested the guy, DUI." The precinct had an accident report filed already but the helpful clerk I spoke to there said she couldn't give me any information about the case. "It's just our policy." I don't have collision on my car, it's not worth anything so why waste the money? But because this crap wasn't my fault, I might be able to collect from the drunk dude's insurance. Problem is, I can't find out what his insurance company is because the cops won't tell me until the accident report is processed. We're talking weeks here.

So I got the thing towed. AAA was a pain because they wouldn't let me tow it if the car hadn't already been moved from the scene of a crime. Apparently, if the cops had deigned to move the Honda ten feet, then it was legal for AAA to move. If not, which the cops were too lazy to do, then it was illegal. I talked to the supervisor at AAA for fifteen minutes until I was like, "Can we just start this conversation over with me saying that the car had been moved?" To his credit, whether he knew it was an asinine bureaucratic policy or if he was just annoyed with talking to me , he capitulated and sent the truck.

Luckily, as the car was being towed, a random hipster came up to me and told me that his SUV was the vehicle that my car was pushed into (there's barely a scratch on his bumper, BTW.) He was at the scene when it happened, and filled in a few blanks for me. The car was indeed a livery car. The dude was indeed arrested. He apparently swerved to avoid hitting something, rear ended my parked car, which then smashed into his car. He gave me his card and said he took a bunch of photos. He emailed them to me the next day, the pic at the top is his.

I played detective for the next day or so, trying to track down who hit my car. The livery guy's license plate number was on one of the helpful hipsters pictures. I went to this site and searched for it. The car is registered to Saleem Motors, which has an address and phone number listed in Long Island City. Problem is, the number is never answered and goes to a fax machine eventually. Who knows what's going on there? I could drop by the address, it's not that far, but it's cold out, and there's prolly nobody there.

So I'm playing the waiting game. I can't do anything until the report is available. My car is being stored at an auto body shop and will get estimates done on it on Monday. I'm pretty sure it's toast. Look at this photo, the radiator and grill are smashed, the hood is gone and the battery is dislodged. The car only has a blue book of about $1400 anyway. Repairing it is going to cost way more than that. I've started looking for new cars in the hood. These look promising but I kinda wish I had something right now. You don't realize how much you use a car in the city until you can't.

The frustrating thing is that in no way is this my fault (I wasn't even in the car) but somehow I know that I'll be the one penalized. One day I had a perfectly working car. The next, it's gone. Fucking bullshit.