Mill Avenue Nights Saturday, December 13th 2008

Little newbie Christine really needs to calm down a little bit. It is apparent that she’s a bit hyperactive and possibly mildly Aspergers—something that most geeks can probably relate to. She doesn’t seem to understand that assaulting other people is a very bad thing, after striking Osiris with an image she had drawn, throwing water in my face, and other things. She’s been stirring up a lot of animosity with the group through hyperactive behavior and assaults. I figure, though, that as long as enough people are firm about what behavior is bad she’ll eventually calm down.

The drum circle group is fairly mellow and do deal with people acting out rather well, however, the frat crowds and the drunken outsiders who visit are not. So it may become a problem if she gets too abrasive with one of them.

She’s a young blond girl, wearing a hoodie, constantly talking about her boyfriend and pretty much insinuating herself into every conversation.

Others that I found out there

Remi came by, drunk off his respective ass.

Jimmy also ran about offering hugs to all comers—I got about three.

Vince made an appearance but I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him. For the most part he stood around and discussed theology as per his regular status as Preacher Man.

I also got a chance to talk to Ogre (Paul) and his girlfriend. I haven’t seen him since last year. Apparently he and his kaywng have been together almost 13 months now, which is going strong and is good to hear. He’s been avoiding the Ave due to drama that permeates the place—but it’s still cheerful to have him back in the group.

Osiris also came out again, which is good because I like having him around.

Jim, our wheelchair bound friend

I had a chance to sit down an interview Jim for my first recorded interview with one of the people who comes out to Mill as an evangelical. He is not connected to the Way of the Master evangelicals, but he has been out there for years now and I haven’t gotten his story.

I am going to start making interviews shortly of street rats and evangelicals, and anyone else, to post on this blog about their experience on Mill Ave. This will also be added to my anthropological research.

Anyone who would like an interview and a biographical post, go ahead and contact me by commenting and we can get together.

Mill Ave street preachers

Of whom Jim is sort of included in a cursory fashion, they were out caroling, cavorting, and so on. I have more about them in my Mill Avenue Resistance observations blog.

Hanna is awesome

She is a petite blonde girl, ASU student who started out in CSE but moved instead to a Mathematics major, if I recall correctly, because CSE at ASU yet seems a bit too far behind the times and tended to put her to sleep. Her joining the Ave is definitely a good influence. As readers are about to see.

Near midnight a newcomer joined our little revelry and since she looked like someone who might like Vexations, I gave her a copy of Lost Sphinx Cat; the result of which became a trade—a trade for Pop-its! Little micro-explosives made of wads of paper, gunpowder, and flint (or some sort of rocks) that when struck against the ground, or any other hard surface, make a crack! sound.

This lead to a great deal of merriment.

Until several mounted officers came by, stood for a while, and then approached to tell Brian that we were littering. I’m not sure that I fully support this sort of “stop that because your littering,” because certainly they could have just asked us to stop because they felt like it was disruptive. Littering? The amount of paper litter produced by these tiny things isn’t even enough to make a single tract or flyer handed out by the other various groups. And we could have been asked instead to simply clean up some tracts/fliers or even the bits from the Pop-its.

Littering?

It is easy to disrespect people who use obviously stupid reasons to stop a behavior rather than plead for calm. As police officers they will always be facing a certain amount of animosity from the public because they’re being told what to do; but when the rule of law from their mouths is so transparently asinine it’s only going to feed into the notion that they’re not worth respecting.

Try keeping the peace with a little bit of actual respect for the citizens rather than using bad rhetoric; people really do not want to be part of a problem, leave it at that rather than insulting them.

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday, December 6th 2008

We arrived on the scene a bit late into the twilight gloaming, with dark gently descending over the marches of empty white tents. Streetlights illuminated the red bricks of the sidewalk and the asphalt streets, hiding the dust, scratches, and errant debris that remained strewn from the Art Festival during the day. Some random sculptures—a green plate-like molding, and a spiderwebbed red-and-black bristle of almost-coral—stood out between some of the tents.

A lively crowd gathered outside of hooters, eyes staring upwards at a TV. An announcer’s voice booming back down to the glittering pupils as they watched the distant screen. Pugilism and 20/20 vision. A fight had been progressing on the screen and the crowd found themselves in hushed gazes in the middle of the street.

Yes, that’s right: the middle of the street.

When the Art Festival is in town all of Mill Ave gets shut to vehicular traffic. We get to walk down the middle of the road without a care. An event that brings joy to my visitations as I get to walk, twirling, between the lonely tents and through the street without fear of being run down. Nor having to wait for the WALK signal to bear me safely through.

Our street rats certainly came out today, but by in large the drum circle wasn’t. We did have some drummers at the entrance to the area but they were playing bongos its sounded like and singing a strange variety of songs including Tool. Which…did not lend itself to the bongos so well.

Remi

Apparently I have been spelling Remi’s name wrong. A danger of linguistic homonyms as I thought it was spelled with a ‘y’ all this time. No problem. This can be fixed.

Other Mill Rats

There were quite a few of the old guard hanging around the bronze legs and I had a time to actually speak with them and handed out the remaining copies of Volume 9. Next week I will have Lost Sphinx Cat to hand out! By in large it received a fair amount of glowing cheer and hands reaching out for it.

Amidst the Mill rats were also a few new faces but I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to them as the evangelicals were far more interesting.

The Mill Ave Evangelicals

Kazz from the Resistance took a while to reach the Ave due to hold ups at his house, so when he arrived it was wearing into 9. The Way of the Master evangelicals tend to turn into pumpkins at 10pm, so there was going to be little dialogue between Kazz and them. Erin, Suzanne, her daughter, Al, Jim, Sean, Trevor, Lee, John, others…

I actually finally got to meet Vocab tonight. He’s a hiphop artist who also writes poetry and sometimes breaks out into raps directly on the street. Lee had a white amp speaker with him and let Vocab use it for a little while; but eventually when different members of his cadre were using the mike, Lee cut them off.

During his little rap, Vocab even said my name. He’s actually pretty good. I have received a CD from him of his work. I will try to review it at some point.

After some caroling most of the larger Way of the Master group did vanish from the Ave but remaining behind were still enough for some fun discussions between the Resistance and others.

Also to note, Richard came back today! He has been missing ever since I first came back from Michigan—and as much as I was happy to see him, he really didn’t spend a moment to talk much with me. Just enough time to say, “I had to go off and do my own thing,” when I asked him where he had been. I am just glad that he is alright.

More of this is written up on the Mill Avenue Resistance reports blog.

Mounted police and furlough

I was walking down the street from the evangelicals when a mounted policeman came charging past. I believe that Kyle or Cael had to leap out of the way or get run down—although I think that the horses are actually trained not to stomp on people. Cael came back and said that someone had broken into a tent and wrecked someone’s art.

And then got promptly run to ground by the horse.

General population wandering around

I got to meet some random people as well on the street. By in large people passing by were fun to talk to and many of them took booklets.

I also got a chance to talk to Nikki, a reporter from the New Times, who might do a story on Vexations so we’ll see where that goes.

Then there were the two guys dressed up in Star Trek shirts—right down to the silvery communicator symbol on their shirts. Neither one was a red shirt. I think one was blue and the other one was black. Brothers who say that they dress up every time that they go out, tonight just turned out to be Star Trek.