How Seattle superhero Phoenix Jones defeated ’30 crack dealers’

How does Phoenix Jones spend his nights? There have been more than one account, but few have produced as many giggles as a story about the local superhero defeating 30 crack dealers.

In an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, writer Jon Ronson (Men Who Stare At Goats) recounted spending a night with Seattle’s most famous superhero.

“I wasn’t an excellent sidekick, I’ll tell you that.”

Ronson said that a slow night on the crime fighting beat was quickly interrupted by a woman’s scream. Jones sprang into action, but was interrupted on the way to the scene by someone who wanted to take a photo with the YouTube star. By the time the photo-op wrapped up, the screaming woman had disappeared into the night.

Ronson wasn’t exactly on board with Jones’ next few suggestions. Along with two other superheroes, Jones wanted to get a hotel room and call up some prostitutes.

“Then when they arrived, he wanted to ask them if they needed help escaping the web of prostitution.”

Ronson, who said he loves getting to know people like Jones because he feels he relates to them on a level of neuroses, told Jones he thought it was a bad idea.

“A. It’s going to be an hour out of their (the prostitute’s) night and B. They’re going to get here and see three men in masks. They’re not going to be thinking ‘Superheroes.'”

Annoyed with the lack of crime, Jones decided to take Ronson to “break up a gang of 30 armed crack dealers.”

When they arrived, the crack dealers threatened Jones, saying that if he didn’t head home, they were going to kill him.

“I was ostentatiously nodding my head in agreement with everything the crack dealers were saying in the hope that if the shooting started, they would considerately shoot around me,” Ronson told Stewart.

Seattle’s most famous masked man said that despite the crack dealers’ threats, he wasn’t going anywhere. The crack dealers took off.

Phoenix won. “So he really is a superhero.”

Ronson, who was merely wearing a cardigan compared to Jones’ bullet proof supersuit, didn’t hold up so well. Returning to his hotel that night he told Stewart his knees buckled and he had to hold himself up on a chair while contemplating his near-death escape.

Ronson’s night with Phoenix Jones will be available in the paperback version of “Lost At Sea.” You can pick up his (hardcover) book of investigative satire sans the Seattle superhero now.