Gave the guy an old folded one-dollar bill, took a Street Spirit from his stack; scanning as I walked I read that UC had sent bulldozers into Peoples Park and taken out the whole west end, the gardens, arbors, trees planted in the seventies; and did it without alerting the community liaison committee per contract. "To clean out the rats," they claim, lips moving. Where would Food Not Bombs go now, the writer asks?
Now I was mad. Murderous. Peoples Park is the only tangible trophy we - the whole larger Great American Long Hair We - took out of that shambling hieroglyphic fuckaroo they call The Sixties.
That information poisoned the rest of the morning; I kept probing around in myself to find someone over there to hurt, something to break, someone worth killing. The best I could come up with was keying the Beemers of all the regents in local residence, and even that was predicated on learning where they live and which cars were theirs. I was pissy to the sinless counter guy at Radio Shack on Shattuck after walking out of the one on University because I couldn't get the flash drive off the rack or figure out how it was locked. Tried to twist through the cardboard but the plastic coat was too tough.
After a while I calmed a little and decided to study real possibilities for a while. Sometimes I come up with workable strategies. Meanwhile, I'd ride over to the park to survey the damage.
Parked the bike on the sidewalk and ambled inland. First thing I see, the food platform is still there, guys sitting on it laughing. "Nice bike," one of them says. "I hear they bulldozed," I say back. "Yeah. Cleared out the rats," he says. On the green, the usual folk humped in sleeping bags, reading, spinning frisbees. Looking west, the same old arboreal pathways. I meander through.
I can't see anything different. I don't go there all that much, so I wouldn't pick up details, but it looks fine to me.
I mount up and ride off, thinking, hey. Good. I don't have to be mad anymore. And it's kind of a fine day.
What's the moral? Besides that you can't trust activists (in which there curls a post)?
Check your facts. And...
The friend of a friend said, "Never give up high ground." If he lived by that, his skeleton surrounds an empty canteen on the tallest peak he ever climbed. But he had a point. Every step you take down is a step you'll have to take back up; unless you want to live in the ooze at at the bottom.
