The Joys of Craig's List

As I may have mentioned, I've been trying to trade my extra DVD player for a VCR. I have some home videos I'd like to put on DVD and I currently don't own a VCR. Consider my logic: A new DVD player runs in the neighborhood of $35. So I could probably only get $10-15 for my good quality, but used, one. A new VCR would also cost me $35 or so which is more than I want to spend for something I'll hardly ever use. A trade seems like the most logical choice.

So I put up my ad, and going by the unspoken rules of Craig's List, I went with the first guy who responded to my message. I met him at the taqueria, kitty corner to the Balboa Park BART station, and we traded our respective consumer electronics.

When I got home I discovered that he'd given me the world's cheapest VCR. It had a bright orange face, the play, stop, fast forward, and rewind buttons were all bright pink, it was mono (as opposed to stereo), and it had NO CLOCK. The hallmark of any VCR is the blinking clock that nobody knows how to set. I've never not been able to set my VCR clock, so I can't see why having a VCR without one would be a positive. In addition to the VCR's aesthetic drawbacks, I had to turn up the TV to hear the sound over the noise generated by playing a tape.

For two weeks I've been trying to get my DVD player back. At first I thought it was going to be easy. He suggested we meet at 7pm at an IHOP in Redwood City on Tuesday, a day when he goes to visit his mother. How nice. 7pm rolls around at the International House of Pancakes and I walk over to a guy sitting in his car obviously waiting for somebody. "Hi," I say, "weren't you driving a van last time?"

"No," the man replies.

"Well, here's your VCR. Can I have my DVD player?"

"I don't think I'm the person you are meeting," the man says, explaining his lack of DVD player and choice of vehicle.

It was dark at the taqueria, so I was on the apparently overly generic lookout for a portly, bald, bedandruffed man with skimpy mustache.

7:15. Nobody. I leave a message asking where he is.
7:30. Nobody. I leave a message asking where he is and informing him he's got 15 minutes before I go home.
7:45. Nobody. I leave my final message, tell him I'm going home, and letting him know that he can drive himself to San Francisco to give me back my DVD player.

A couple days go by and I send him a couple of emails. He finally writes back saying that he hadn't checked his email after he suggested the IHOP rendezvous, and that his car had broken down on the way to Redwood City, and that he'd forgotten his phone in the car at the shop where the car had ended up. Super.

Relenting somewhat from my demand that he bring the phone to me, I wrote him an email asking when might be a good time to come get my DVD player. A full week goes by before he finally writes back and suggests, again, the Whipple Rd International House of Pancakes tonight at 8pm. He also cheerily suggests that he'll bring a possible substitute VCR for trade, as the DVD player was destined for a single mother that attends his church. I love it when irritating, unreliable, sleezeballs play the guilt card.

I got to IHOP early and passed the time by reading Make Magazine (which is awesome) and listening to the man two tables down ask the waiter how to say various things in Spanish, ignore him, and make up his own Spanish.

"I'll ceiro el shrimpay con excellanto."

His wife ordered a glass of wine. White wine at an IHOP.

Anyhow, when 8pm rolled around Captain Nose Grease showed up and offered me the worlds dirtiest VCR. Non-plussed, I pointed out that I'd like to test things before I trade from now on, not adding that I didn't trust him as far as I could smell him.

At long last my DVD player has made it back home. Next week I'll try again, this time making sure that all trades will be made in the company of an available TV and outlet.