We Will Overcome?

I woke up at 3, and shaved, shined my shoes, and gradually prepared to get out of here, which I did at a bit after 4.

First stop was the "blessing box" on 6th in Japantown where I dropped off that unusually large potato I'd scrounged and two sodas that were with the pipe tobacco, and a 1-oz baggie of pipe tobacco. Someone had taken the hook and eye right off of the door for some reason.

Then I went to Nijiya and got a Dotour canned coffee and a couple breaded fried fish, and sat and ate in front of the Ethiopian church there on 6th. After eating and drinking and picking my teeth and starting to chew some gum to get my mouth really clean as I rode downtown, I jumped down to 4th to another "blessing box" and put another 1-oz bag of pipe tobacco in that one.

Then I rode downtown, looking for people who might want some pipe tobacco. I gave some to a guy, camped out in dirty quilts with (I think) his girlfriend, and gave them two bags of pipe tobacco. The last one went to a tall black guy in St. James Park. I found out last night that if I take the "snack" size of zipper bags and stuff some tobacco in, they end up right around 1 oz. It's a nice size and it's easy to pack a half dozen or so before heading downtown.

I also had the foil shaver all packaged for return with me but when I went to the Amazon hub, it was closed today. So I'd just carry it with me. I rode around, up by Bike Express where it looks like they got their plywood panel put in OK behind the shattered glass, and down 1st. I felt like playing in front of the opera house but there was just no one around.

I rode down to Johnny Rockets and played a bit there, We Shall Overcome and We'll Meet Again and no one seemed to even notice. Then I heard a guy yelling about how great it was and thanks, and looked around. "Look up!" the guy said, and he was looking down from an open window in the apartment building there. So, someone noticed.

I then rode town to the MLK library, because what better place to play We Shall Overcome? There were protesters on the street there, and I set up in front of the library and played We Shall Overcome and no one seemed to even notice. Then the protesters all started moving East.

I surmised they were headed for City Hall, so I took a circuitous path over to there. There were a lot of people there. I wandered slowly, looking for what I thought was the best place to play, to make use of the acoustics of the structure there. I was going to play facing out from one of the circular walls, to project the sound. But suddenly the protestors started singing We Shall Overcome, and in the right key too. I quickly got the cornet out and started playing, and the crowd actually started coming my way like a big wave.

As I finished the 2nd verse, an old retired hippy type lady came up and gushed, "This is the spirit of the 60s!" and asked me to play again, so I did a third verse. And another older lady came up to say she'd like me to quiet down and I said, "Yeah, I know, there's going to be a speech and I don't want to interfere" because that's what the crowd was doing; it was gathering for speeches to be given in the curve of the wall there. So I put the horn away and the 2nd lady was glad I understood.

There's a sort of ramp you can climb that's built into the circular wall and I went up there so I had a bird's eye view of what was going on. Speeches were given, and it was all pretty peaceful until there were some pops because the police were shooting some rubber bullets or something (someone said it was because someone threw stuff at the cops). I put my safety glasses on and started to leave, but when the popping didn't keep going on, I stuck around a bit.

I saw a police trailer come in with some kind of large white ... things. And I saw some large zip ties ready to go, and I decided to buzz out of there.

I went over to Whole Foods and parked my bike in the rack but didn't bother to lock it. And I set up standing in the grass beside the sidewalk, and played for maybe 20 minutes. No one even gave any notice. I wanted to get people used to my playing there again, plus I wanted to see what the reaction would be. Would I get told not to play there? Would people toss crumpled bills my way? Would I get any thanks? I got just absolutely nothing. I still played my best. Then I packed up and as I was leaving, I said to the Whole Foods guy there who was ushering people in, that I hope my playing wasn't a bother. He said it was not at all, but that it was "beautiful".

I tootled over to Target and sure enough, it's closed and most of that mall is. L&L was open, but they no longer serve lau-lau so I have no use for them. Some tattooed skanky chick on a bike was in front of Target and we ended up talking, riding slowly along. I told her how it's funny, that I'd just "shopped the hell out of Target" a few days ago and here it is, closed. I told her about Walgreens that has a lot of stuff and a place called Medex on Santa Clara that's got tons of stuff, is run by Chinese people, and has classical music playing inside. She wanted to know how to buy things online without a credit card, and I told her about buying a pre-paid card or an Amazon gift card and using those. We went down as far as Petsmart and we parted.

I rode back through Little Italy (all one street of it, eh?) and looked at the menu at Paesano's. Ehhhh... too expensive for me. I went through San Pedro Square and up Santa Clara, and there was one of the other La Victoria's (I think there are three) and got a Super Taco again. This time I got a fork and a spoon, and they gave me corn tortillas I guess because I rolled the R when I said "carnitas".

I ate in The Ally. The Ally is this ally behind a row of stores, and at the other end is Splash, one of the area's surviving gay bars. Ron the Recorder Player used to hang out there all the time. "Hey, let's go to the ally!" he'd say. There was a nice place to sit, and in fact if there were a chair, I could have sat at a nice Cold War era desk that was sitting there. There's a row of dumpsters there I'll have to make a point of visiting, because it looks like Cool Stuff(tm) shows up there all the time. I remember Ron always being in arts and crafts materials because one of the stores the ally is behind was a Ross. This time, I saw two bused neon signs with possibly good power supplies that I didn't want to bother with, and a front wheel for a bike. It looks at least as good quality as the front I have on my bike now, with a hell of a lot less miles on it.  I actually left it sitting in the dumpster while I ate, but when a guy on a bike came by who looked like me might take it, I ran over and grabbed it and hung it on my bike handlebar.

I rode back over to the protest and those big white things the cops had trailered in were roadblocks, and the whole thing seemed pretty calm. They had an area blocked off to cars, but except for the line of cops within the cordon along Santa Clara, you could go in and out on the other three sides. There were some of those awful Bible-thumper types ranting away with a bullhorn, so I figured I'd out-noise them with a more positive message, and I parked right there and played We Shall Overcome, the Sesame St. theme, and Kum-Be-Ya. The Christians tried to co-opt what I was doing and make it look like I was with them, even when I was playing Kum-Ba-Ya and in the pauses, giving the guy next to me the finger, jabbing it in time. I even blew out my spit valve on him but he didn't seem to notice. So I packed up and went across the street to the far end of the demonstration to be far away from those nuts.

I actually had a couple of people thank me for my playing, say it was beautiful etc. The crowd was lined up on the City Hall side of Santa Clara and on the City Hall plaza, and the cops were lined up on the other side. What was happening was, periodically, some cops were kneeling with the protestors. I got in a talk with an intelligent guy with a grey ponytail, about how when I was a kid, we had a book called "America" by Alistair Cooke, and in it was a painting of George Washington, who was kneeling. There were great cheers and clapping when some of the cops took a knee.

There's a curfew at 8:30 and I was getting close to leaving. A guy came up and complimented my playing and said he hopes I'll do it some more. Just then, three gals walked by, kinda Asian-Hispanic looking, with one of them yelling and ranting all kinds of trumpish stuff. So when she want by me, I said she's crazy and then called out "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" and that enraged her. She turned and started to charge and one of her friends body-blocked her and got her turned around again and they walked away. Some of the demonstrators got mad at me, "That's not necessary! That's counterproductive!" and my only defense was, "She's a trumper!" and that settled them a bit. Then I got my horn out and played some more We Shall Overcome to round out the night. I probably should have said nothing, but in the end, all I did was imitate a cuckoo clock; it wasn't like I called her a bitch or anything. And once I was playing I think the people saw that I was adding something constructive.

I was now about 8 so I took off for home. The dumpster on 10th had these things that I think are Indian cucumbers. I took one out of curiosity. They turn out to be "Kerala" cucumbers and far past their prime. With much effort I could harvest the seeds and toast them, but that's about it.

I got back and took the cornet apart and put it in water with some Dawn. Time for a cleaning.

Then I cooked some dinner. Beef with eggplant. I had some scrounged eggplant on hand, and tried boiling it first before frying and that makes it soak up a lot less oil, but they get really mushy. Still delicious, because it's eggplant. And just a touch of Vegeta on the beef makes it really delicious.

Then it was time to cut up the almost 6 lbs of spare ribs I'd bought, so I put on an "entertaining" live feed of a Los Angeles TV station on YouTube, got out my little Chinese food scissors and got to work. The result was 14, 4-oz bags of beef all ready to go, at a cost of $2.50 a serving, making the beef effectively $10 a lb. The numbers all came out very neatly. And I've got 6 little bags of fat and bone for the birds.