Don't Buy Fiat

Something happened to me tonight that is too weird, funny and alarming not to write about.

I was walking back to a friends house from a concert at about 11:20pm, when the group of friends I was with turned north from Bloor St. onto Howland. We noticed a car projecting an ad for Fiat onto the side of a building. The car had a projector on the roof, powered by a small generator beside the car resting on the side walk. I think we all got the feeling this kind of thing was bullshit; not only because it was probably an illegal billboard display, but because it was just obnoxious. One friend decided to mimic something they had seen someone else do - turn off the generator to turn off the ad. No one was in or around the car, so it seemed innocent enough. Someone switched off the generator, and we all had a mischievous laugh. About 20 seconds later, a guy comes up to our group as we were walking north and tells us sternly:

 Guy: "That was very rude"
Me: (really sarcastic) "Yes, you're quite right, it was very rude".
Guy: "You just cost me ten thousand dollars."

 The guy then whacked me in the face with this aluminium piece of a tripod:

It was a decent hit, but I was too stunned to care about any damage. It was just weird. He hit me with it, then dropped the tripod, or else it broke off on my chin. It was strong enough that my chin was decently bruised and had a knick of blood on it, and my shoulder had a welt on it, but we're talking a *really* minor injury. Too minor to make a fuss or escalate the situation by either going back and talking to the guy, or calling the police. If he had hit me elsewhere in the face, though, it might have been a different story. We joked that if we really did cost him $10,000 for interrupting his advertising for 2 minutes, he was either extremely well off and probably shouldn't be beating guys up over a single night's inconvenience, or else should be insured against this kind of thing. I find it unlikely we were the first liquored hooligans to hit the off switch. My friend went and threatened to call the police on the guy, but he didn't seem to care; he moved the car about 30 minutes later.

 Realistically I felt bad for the guy. He's clearly doing a crummy job, and was pushed over the edge by some wags trying to disturb his business. I don't think I deserved a hit to the face with a blunt object, though. I'll tell you one thing, I'm not ever buying a Fiat.