Sorry, it went over my head a bit, you read about his arrest while he was being arrested?

Just as an additional datapoint, since I’m confused by fellow commenters’ confusion—I thought your narrative was clear, colorful, and entertaining, and I hope you’ll keep things so literary and engaging in your future contributions too :)

As with so many matters of crime, punishment, and high dudgeon, the physical reality of the situation always feels so banal. Dread Pirate Roberts’ lawless dark kingdom, where he commissions trans-national assassinations… looks a lot like a nerdy dude’s laptop on a municipal library table.

Regarding your edit. The first paragraph kind of lines up with you reading about it. But the second one is kind of confusing, and I think it's because "then" can mean two different things here. You meant "at the time of his arrest". If you casually read it without cross referencing the first paragraphs context, you might think it means "as I was sitting there".

And there's nothing in the following sentences that corrects this garden path assumption.

>Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me

Would not confuse as many if you wrote

>At the time of his arrest Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me

Or even clearer

>At the time of his arrest Ulbricht had walked into the public library and sat down at the table which was now directly in front of me

I used to live in Glen Park at that time and I vividly remember seeing Ross working as a cashier at the Canyon Market, helping me bag my groceries. It was probably around the time he was starting the Silk Road. The place where he was arrested was also my favorite table at the Public Library, where I used to go work. It is incredible to be that close to history.

> When the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought

You mean "when I read the part where the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought"?

This part makes your comment super confusing. Where you there then or later?

I liked the way you wrote it, I could picture you sitting in the library, picturing the arrest yourself :-).

The reactions remind me of a philosophy class I had, where the professor went for a thought experiment in order to explain an idea. "Imagine a world where ...". There was a physicist in the class who kept interrupting the professor, saying "well that's not possible because of how physics works". I would have asked him what he thought about Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings; could he enjoy them at all? But he ruined the class for me so I didn't :-).

I had a similar experience watching Mr. Robot. There’s a scene where it shifts to first person PoV and the voiceover says something like “am I seeing this? Is this real?” … and it was EXACTLY the PoV I had every day walking out of my office on 36th st back then.

I understood exactly what you meant and that is an awesome experience

Maybe the single most confusing comment ever

My kids used to go to that library! We lived in the neighborhood (Glen Park- one of the "gems" of San Francisco) and the downtown is almost like a little village (except with California levels of traffic and trash). It was a bit weird to think that my kids were probably reading books while this guys was, uh, transacting his business nearby.

This is why I love SF. It’s so small.

You can walk anywhere, and there’s a good chance something big happened nearby.

I assume you mean "I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in" figuratively?

for the record, I appreciated your creative prose and enjoyed the trippy narrative

This is unrelated but you just did a wonderful job of explaining why I love history so much. There’s something so exciting (to me) about deeply researching an event, going to where it happened and seeing the land (or library) come alive with images of the past.

Good writing!

You did a Boondock Saints!

Give it up for Glen Park.

It would be morbidly neat if that article is printed out and put on the wall over there.

I read this article when it was first published years ago, and it is written so well I still "see the movie" in my head when I think about it. Your experience must have been next-level.

I'll share my experience, too: I live near Glen Park and was in Bello that day, taking up one of those coveted seats, as all this was happening. I recall being aware of a lot of police cars outside, and perhaps seeing the phalanx around Ross as they walked past the window. Clearly something big was going on, but I stepped outside and the street was already back to normal. Shrug, perhaps I'll hear about it on the evening news. Not a peep. :-)

It was only some months & years later that I heard about Glen Park, the library, and Bello being part of the drama, and other local landmarks. To this day I keep hearing about other local details. (I learned a few months ago that his group house was on Monterey Blvd, not far from the conservatory).

Looking back, I had noticed a number of 'out-of-town' business people in Bello around that time. Glen Park is a busy local scene, but gets very few visitors, so they stuck out. Clean cut, business casual, but not FiDi types. They were cheerful but not interested in chatting. Who would go to a cafe and not want to socialize, I wondered? I thought perhaps realestate people.

I went to Bello frequently then, and must have seen Ross there a few times too, but I only vaguely recall once or twice. Something drew my attention to his laptop, maybe it had an EFF sticker on it? But he likewise didn't seem interested in conversation. I do recall once he was talking with an older man, in his 50's or early 60's, about libertarianism.

Literacy and nuance is hard with written words — especially when a large chunk of your audience is either a non-native English speaker or and Adderall addict. I feel like this community is heavily laden with both, and surely there must be some significant overlap between those groups.

In other words, it was too well written

i had a similar experience working in copenhagen. read an article about copenhagen sub orbital rockets, looked up and out my window and my eye landed on the rocket i was just reading about. weird.

Before I got to the edit I was convinced you were in The Neverending Story

I had a similar experience years ago when I read about the same thing in an Airbnb less than a kilometer from the library.

It was almost you not you!

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Wait, you were reading about his arrest while he was being arrested? That article was written after his conviction?

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The responses to this comment show that people's ability to read and comprehend text has decreased dramatically in the last few years. Frightening...

You may be interested in looking at your experience though this lens: https://youtu.be/y61vpQ9cZ8s?si=jMXF35v6-2t5w0cj