The scene opens in The Legionnaire, a bar located near the heart of downtown Oakland, California. It's roughly 8pm Pacific Time, the sun setting down stiff Telegraph Avenue, its silky golden rays slowing sliding off of Oakland landmarks, such as the Fox Theater, the Paramount, and the Kaiser Permanente campus. It's a brisk 60 degrees, with lesser Oaklanders discarding shorts for pants, and their Golden State Warriors jerseys for Oakland A's hoodies.

The street is its usual calm, but with the typical slew of homeless and mentally ill roaming the sidewalks, parading around the Telegraph Quality Market. The camera catches an elderly looking black man chastising the 30-year-old Pakistani clerk for a miniature bottle of Jack Daniels. The argument ends rather predictably, as the man (who it turns out, wasn't elderly, but 40 going on 70) had five dollars to his name, and was promptly kicked out of the store, following an extensive string of curse words.

The camera leaves the Market, strolling down the sidewalk. It catches a man in his late 20s, white but with an ashen cover to his skin, playing tic-tac-toe with a young boy and his insistent (on leaving) father. To the right, the Good Hop Bottle Shop, a mark of gentrification in a city worn down by drugs, poverty, and crime, yet lifted up by the rising housing prices of San Francisco, resulting in migrant employees from the likes of Google, Facebook, and Salesforce taking their lives to the East Bay, looking for cheaper rent and a tourist-like yearning for Oakland jazz and counterculture.

The camera strolls past a Taco Bell, which, conflicted by the Oakland of old and new, has to shutter its doors at 8pm (to avoid the surrounding vagrants), but leave its drive-thru open for extra cash. The tan outside of the building is marked by a wall known for graffiti and human "leftovers," partly from people disappointed in the early closing hours. The inside is just full of sad employees, the increase in the minimum wage in California clearly not enough to lift them out of the dump they found themselves in.

But this story isn't about Oakland's socioeconomic condition, it's about, who else, but Tony Santos.

We find ourselves back in The Legionnaire. The floors surprisingly don't shine, having been walked over and not cleaned following multiple days of Warriors playoff games. To the left lies the bar, backlit and adorned with all of the cheap liquor to be found. The bar is surrounded by a combination of barflies from as long as a decade ago, a couple from San Francisco visiting a friend, and some buzzed mid-20s women, currently working at Uber and awaiting the impending move of Uber to a building down the street.

Santos: But, what are we all here for, really? Like, just sit here, and let me know, why? Why are you here? Why am I here? Why are we sitting by an ATM, asking for it to give us money, but it doesn't? It just... doesn't. Why are those two...

Tony points to the couple by the Pac-Man machine in the corner of the other side of the bar.

Santos: Why are they so happy? What did they do to be slumped over a game of Pac-Man, ignoring the Ghosts, ignorant to the carnage they're putting their avatar through below them... what did they do to be so happy? Look around you...

At this point, Tony Santos was indeed looking around, pointing to the numerous individuals imbibing at the Legionnaire, albeit with a stumble, his weak left knee, weakened further following a fight with a homeless San Franciscan after a Tenderloin bar crawl. His left index finger, pointing crookedly to his targets, the result of two cracks from a street bum's baseball bat. He smiles, but the right side of his lip shakes, his right eye twitches, the result of head trauma, his battles for titles he'd soon lost leaving a lasting impression.

Tony Santos, a man with cracked, pale skin, a man with the original name of "Sullivan," a name he'd abandoned along with his lost, devil of a father, stands in The Legionnaire, observing his surroundings, attempting to philosophize to someone he had no ideas of a future except a quick, cheap lay. His short, black hair stands at different ends of the bar, uncleaned and unkempt. His front tooth, still gone, no matter how much he wishes it back.

Santos: You know, let's just... let's just forget about wasting our time...

Tony stumbles, his knee giving out, his head ringing. Tony drops to the floor with the drop of a bowling ball. He was immediately regretting removing his knee brace. It was his lifeline, his way of forgetting that he had only turned 28 years old today, but felt 50 in certain parts of his body. Sure, Tony Santos could always get it up like he'd been hit with a cannon of adrenaline, and that'd always been his saving grace, but Tony Santos was feeling the effects of a decade of wrestling, and, even longer, of a street life dependent on alcohol.

Tony Santos had fallen into a dark, dark pit, and he was trying to crawl out of it, but with crooked fingers grasping at a wall of quicksand. Tony Santos was...

...hurting.

FLASH

Tony hits the ground, the left side (his better side) hitting the wooden flooring. No one, not even Tony's unwilling attendant, pays attention. After his head bounces off the floor like a kickball, his eyes rolling back into his head multiple times, Tony comes to, a concussion averted. He twirls his abdomen around the floor, his plain, black hoodie rubbing against the earth, his tight, blue jeans pulsating with his leg muscles.

Tony slowly comes to, the main bartender of The Legionnaire, Roy, a bartender at this establishment for 10+ years and friend to many regulars, including Tony, lifts Tony up. Throwing an arm around his shoulders, he slides Tony to the bar, dropping him on a stiff, brown stool. The TV glares over Tony's black sheen of a head, the white of the Portland Trail Blazers' jerseys glowing over him, the audience around Tony Santos mesmerized. If you wanted to see how quickly Oakland had lost its compassion and care for the lesser, you could see it at the corner of The Legionnaire.

Roy walks over to Tony's stool, a hunched over Tony, familiar to others across the country (and across the Bay) was still somewhat new to him. Roy, 6'4", lanky, and with an Irish brogue that the ladies at the bar loved to tip on, nudged Tony with his right, also broken, thumb.

Roy: Santos, wake up! Santos! It's Monday night, but we can't be havin' ya gettin' us cited by the cops, son! Wake yaself up and get a drink, or get out!

Tony grumbles. His right arm stretching out to the bar, his head resting on it, Tony slowly grasps at the corner of the bar. He rolls his head into a puddle of beer glass condensation. A drop gets in his eye, and he wakes up...

Santos: Oh my fucking...! God dammit!

Tony shakes his head, his short, black hair shivering.

Roy: Wake up ya bum! Ya been layin' on my bahr for a solid twenty minutes!

Tony shakes his head to come to, his sole front tooth wiggling as he shakes his head like a dog. Roy looks at him, then over to concerned customers, some likely considering a bar teardown for letting a customer sleep right in front of them.

Tony lifts his head, looking around in a stupor. He smiles as he sees the wide array of patrons, all surrounding his ongoing drama. His front tooth dangles, his breaths roll out of his extended tongue and leap out of his mouth...

Santos: Roy, get me another beer. It's time to tear some fuckers down.

The scene fades to black.

September 2013 and May 2019 Star of the Month
1x Hart Champion
1x Television Champion
1x Xtreme Champion