Dressed appropriately in an old 24OP shirt and bearing a 500 page paperback, I rolled into the self-surrender lot to do my bid in Tent City – a full service resort and spa for the Valley’s miscreants and minor scofflaws. For $199.35 a day, I would get all the amenities the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Dept had to offer.
The helpful staff of Detention Officers were there to attend to my every need. The minimum requirements of a high school diploma and no misdemeanors in the past year fetched an unparalleled talent pool of the mildly able and the bitter, 4 out of 5 of whom seemed genuinely out of shape. We were greeted upon arrival by a big-gutted beady-eyed little man who had a nasty comment for every one checking in, and his quiet but equally-sloshy looking bilingual partner. Frisking, photoing, order-barking, and seemingly endless moving from one concrete room to another – sometimes in cuffs and with some pat-downs – began the 7 hour process of intake.
Why it takes 7 hours to get checked in for a 24 hr sentence where I’ll be in a giant pen with about 500 other dudes belays the fact that the helpful staff, heretofore referred to as Camp Counselors, don’t give a flying fuck about your convenience. You are one of many cattle to them, you are their property, and they want just about as much chit-chat from you as from a cow. My wishing for a better customer service attitude served as another potent reminder of having screwed up and landed on the wrong side of the law. You don’t have quite as many rights as you are used to.
The decor of every holding cell and the facility in general was just a step down from 80’s era DMV – stark concrete rooms with concrete benches and florescent lights, designed to withstand most anything a person who’s been frisked could do to them. Except piss, that pools right on the floor, but a courtesy-culture of sorts formed immediately in every room. Such an aberrant act simply would not do amongst the decent folk in the holding tank. Dirty, bilingual, foolish, rich, poor, stupid, and/or socially-maladjusted – yes. But no one in minimum security wants to do anything other than get along and get out. There is nothing I saw that would provoke much trouble-making when everyone can see the end of their 24 hr or 6 month line. Plus most of the cells had a toilet and some dry paper. I know, as I spent 2 hrs sitting next to one. At least I was not the guy who spent 2 hrs sitting on one in the crowded room.
Shitting is definitely frowned upon in the holding cell; pissing is ok. But you risk losing a good seat in the corner if you go. I did not try, I did not think golden-chair applied in our cell, so even the good seats were unpleasant. About half the time it was so assholes-to-elbows that making your way to the can was pretty untenable, and everyone was doing their best to share the space and be unobtrusive, and not be either hot or cold. You’d think people would be surly, but the holding cells were mostly hilarious. Nothing to do but talk, and the brothers really are far funnier than the white guys. Nonetheless, the room emptying of half the people prompted a wave of relief farting and pissing.
Most of the people I met were ok. Everyone was behaving and watching the clock. I didn’t talk much, minded my own business and kept my gaze down, but you have no privacy so can’t be rude and thus wind up meeting your neighbors pretty quickly. Its a lot like living visiting your parents in Florida. Probably 3/4th of the people were in for DUI or some driver’s license issue. I was the low-end of experience, first-time guy who made a mistake. Others were on a 2nd or 3rd misdemeanor or violation. Some made me wonder about the deterrent effect of punishment, and if it works or if people are just plain stupid. I saw guys on their way out trying to arrange gun sales to each other. Other guys simply could not get by without driving to work, living 50 miles from their jobs. Its amazing how easy it is to get caught in the web once you get behind it. I can’t fathom what it must be like if you don’t ride a bike, if you don’t live a rideable distance from work. I can’t judge, I might fuck up again some time, but this whole process has sure made an impression on me.
At 2am I got a bedroll and a top bunk tucked into the corner of a giant circus tent, with a thin vinyl-covered mattress and hard steel frame that had to be negotiated on each entrance and egress. You are allowed to bring a jacket with you, and I deeply regretted having skipped that. I figured it’d be easier to worry only for my book, car key and ID in the middle of summer in Phoenix. But oh how i missed my fleece. At 3pm it was 95 and the sun heated up the canopy a foot above me as I read my book and pooled in my own sweat on the vinyl covered mattress needing something to wipe it with, and at 2am I was friggin cold. A jacket could have been used as a pillow, a cushion, or most of the things Douglas Adams praises in a towel, none of which were available in Tent City. Still, it was more comfortable than bike-packing.
5 hrs of unsatisfying psuedo-sleep and creeping dehydration later, i woke to the waft from the dumpsters 6 feet from my bunk, and the smell of dogs being incinerated at the animal shelter down the street. The counselors didn’t give us breakfast til 10, so not having had anything to eat in about 14 hrs turned out to be a good thing. I stared out my tent flap at South Mountain and pretended I was riding.
Security was mostly non-existent. The whole expanse of chain link and razor wire was manned by about 4 Counselors, the ~500 guys in their own clothes allowed to meander about just about all the time. So I meandered to the bathroom and back hourly, tried to drink as much water as I could stomach from the skanky fountain, and stretched. A nice feature of yoga is you can do it just about anywhere, most of it anyway, as some does not lend itself to gravel and asphalt. But the tent floors were paved and my bunk about as thick as a yoga mat, so over the course of the day I managed almost an hour of stretching and calisthenics for my aching back and legs. Other people passed the time playing dominoes on a set made out of soap bars, reading, or waiting in line at the commissary.
Tent City has a robust commissary full of vending machines, and apparently it is supplied by the Arapaio’s vending machine company. It distributes everything from sodas to toothbrushes, and the line for it in ConTents never subsides. Anything other than gravel, tepid water or institution food in Tent City comes from Sheriff Joe’s family’s vending machines. The Counselors milk this one-and-only carrot for everything from soliciting volunteers for scut work to chasing people to their bunks for headcount. You are allowed to bring $40 at a time into the prison, and many guys feed that right into the machines. I did not bring anything in, not sure what would happen to my money and assuming my stint couldn’t possibly be harder than Yom Kippur, but by the end I swore I would never give a dime to Sheriff Joe or his cronies.
The food did not make this an easy decision. I am a very eager eater, I’ll eat leftover cream cheese and crusty bagels at the end of a workday. The most menudo-esque dish in our fridge will be assimilated with a spot of cheese and some hot sauce…but I was disgusted by the food in Tent City. Breakfast was a few damp rolls, a package of ham i stuffed so deep into them and gobbled so, a pint of milk to spread over some cereal and some oranges. The rank ham aside, it was not far off from my normal meals. Dinner was just plain nasty – some sort of vegetable stew short of everything but mashed potato mix, and accompanied by a side of spinach that made me gag. The Tent City Spa and Resort becomes fat-camp for chollaball missing his workouts for the Barn Burner.
The day passed, I read, I sweated, I filled my milk carton from breakfast with water and pissed every hour. Not all that different from the beach in Mexico. As I neared the end of my book one of the Counselors waived me and some others out of our tent in expectation of our kick-out and the arrival of new intakes. So for 3 hrs I sat on my bedroll in the dirt, finished my book, and questioned my decision to have dinner. A bit after 7 when my 24 were up I asked one of the Counselors if we would be getting released soon; he looked right through me. What was I going to do, complain to the manager?
In fairness to the Counselors, they were mostly civil and to the point, though the occasional lapse into 3-yr old counter logic got demeaning — if you don’t put away that crate, i will take your commissary…you don’t want me to take your commissary do you? I tried to be polite, and still had about 5 questions over the course of the day…multiply that by 500 guys, when none of the questions make shit worth of difference anyway…i kept coming back to never being here in the first place if I hadn’t fucked up.
At 7:30 a bunch of us were walked while cuffed to another dude about a mile back to the intake area. 20 guys, 20 free hands, 2 fat guards trailing everyone in a golf cart. The exercise felt really good, optimism and…*Shawshank Redemption moment*…hope washed over me. The guy i was cuffed to was in my cycle and we had chit-chatted for the past day, and it was like have a cool hike with a bud. Highlight of the trip! Never got his name.
2 more hours crept along while we got processed out. One Counselor shuffled through our files, while 4 others sat on their asses and stared slack-jawed at the concrete walls, finally releasing me 3 hrs late. Sir, would you like to fill out a comment card? Then finally it was over, I pulled out my car key where it’d been in my left quad pocket for the past 27 hrs, hopped in my car and went home. Sunday I roadied to Saguaro Lake, enjoying the responsiveness in my newly-tuned wheels, but mostly cause i needed the wind and the sun and the space. My quads ached and I fought off a bonk the entire 2.5 hr ride from my general lack of nutrition and hydration. Many people I met were heading back the next day or next weekend to continue or complete their sentences around work furloughs or scheduled intakes.
*shrug* I went to the Art Museum.