I had the following incident in downtown Detroit just this past Saturday night:
The wife and myself were out at a restaurant in Detroit (Woodward area near Campus Martius), used valet parking. Had a wonderful dinner, etc.
Afterwards, back at the valet station, we are waiting for our car.
A black man (6' 2" about 270 lbs) comes up to us wanting to know if we wanted to buy any fragrances, and he has a small bottle in his hands to show us.
I kindly said no.
After I said no, he goes into this abusive verbal assault on us, asserting we are not buying from his because his is a black man and that we are white suburban racists.
By that point, my emotions are running high, and i'm like we support Detroit and the businesses here, etc.
He goes on the racist bit again, he is screaming at us, even saying try calling the police, they aren't going to help you, and after that, go to SW Detroit and see how long you last there!
All the while, the (white) valet guy is just standing there doing nothing. he even appeared to know this guy.
After a couple of minutes of escalation of engaging with this guy, both my wife and myself blood is boiling over, I started to thing what if this guy pulls out a gun, which i'm thinking there's probably a 25% chance of that.
At this point our car is waiting for us, and I grabbed my wife by the arm and said we have to leave now and got the heck out of there.
We called the manager of the restaurant and bitched them out, etc.
Never in my life was I in that kind of position where I didn't know if a gun was going to be pulled out on us. Most of the time, you get approached by these panhandlers tell them no, then they move on. This individual certainly had a vendetta against white suburban people.
My wife said if she had a CPL she would have popped him right then and there as one could say this guy was about to become violent. He was definably violent in his speech.
Best thing that we did was just walk away.
My blood still boils just thinking about the incident! Maybe a good shoot of pepper spray in this guys face would have done the trick!!!!
Good job to walk away, 300.
I rarely speak to strangers, especially those who are battling mental health issues.
As gamblers, we excel at assessing risk and reward.
Safety is a state of mind.