Mill Avenue Nights: Saturday, October 2nd 2010

I didn’t feel well for most of the night due to an illness brought on my travel, but things got better with a bit of better living through chemistry. At least enough to gather up some of my friends from Mill Ave and parade them around my domain. I got to see Rocco, Steve, Kazz, and Gadfly from the Mill Avenue Resistance. I also got a chance to see some of the street preachers in the form of Al and Tom, and also Marcus (and his new two-planks wooden crucifix—an addition I should interview him about sometime.)

The Mill Avenue Resistance

A no show for most counts.

They appear to have started doing some sort of clothing giveaway involving used clothing and a rack. I haven’t seen the clothing rack yet as it didn’t arrive tonight. They’ve been doing this for a few months now. Mostly attempting to alleviate the needs of the itinerant folk on Mill Ave—an act that I appreciate greatly as the itinerant community of Mill does need a bit of help.

Drum Circle

Gone.

Not a single person appeared during my entire time on Mill. I floated in and out of the area where we usually find that gathering, yet it remained deserted. Perhaps we’ll have to wait a while for the seeds of community to sprout and flourish again. I am still investigating its disappearance.

Interesting events

While Marcus preached from the site in front of the Post Office, I listened to passersby and I noticed that we have a small, but noticeable, contingent of Muslims now—or at least one outspoken Muslim.

“Allāhu Akbar! Allāhu Akbar!” he shouted as he walked past. Cupping his hands to his lips but never turning his head towards Marcus. The well-known exclamation from Muslim culture is known as the Takbīr and translates literally to “God is the greatest!” It is a common Islamic Arabic expression and considered a formal declaration of faith. Extremely similar to the Christian English expression, “Jesus is lord.”

Marcus didn’t appear to notice as he continued on with his usual preaching through his loudspeaker.

The device seemed to have some issues through the night. When I questioned him about that he explained that it had been stepped on drunkenly in a previous outing and now had become temperamental.

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday, January 24th 2009

Envy and Cole

Envy is far enough along in her pregnancy (end of the first trimester I suspect) that she’s showing. I found her in very good spirits and we sat and spoke a while at the drum circle. Numerous people came by looking for Cole—to our amusement, every time someone asked, they were standing literally right behind him.

“Seen Cole?” came the question.

“Turn around,” our thrice reply.

She tells me that they have a house in the works and will therefore have a place to stay, hopefully for a while, especially with the baby on the way. She also said that Cole’s mother learned about the child and was overjoyed—banishing Envy’s fear that Cole’s mother would have instead been furious.

Which is good news.

And now for the bad news (or strange news.)

Kristina

Kristina is a young (eighteen-year-old) street rat with blonde hair and a hyperactive demeanor. She’s been on the nerves of a great deal of people because she has a sort of in-your-face approach extreme extrovert attitude going on. When I first met her she had been causing Osiris some annoyance because she was physically striking him with a rolled up bit of paper and had to be sternly backed off. At the time I feared for her safety if she behaved like that with some of the more high strung street rats.

Of course, that isn’t the extent of her bad behavior. Further events have transpired to put her into an even more precarious position of her own making.

It is not uncommon for various members of the community to posture. By this, I refer to threatening to “beat someone’s ass” for disrespecting them, for being annoying, for doing this, or doing that—but often this just comes to loud discussions or arguments, and rarely fisticuffs. Kristina’s case may differ, however, in that it takes both parties avoiding the fight to actually avoid punches being thrown.

Recently, Kristina has broken up with her boyfriend, Shadow. Up until now he had been the major stabilizing force in her connection with the rest of the community; by and large because he happens to be well known, and stood between her and those who might have taken their frustration out of her hide. He no longer shelters her under his wing, and has gone out of his way to explain to others that they have a “green light” to take Kristina’s harassment at face value.

So, that’s one barrier down that was originally preventing her from whatever street justice she might have found by acting like such an obnoxious brat. I had hoped a few months of running into the more stern by calm street rats might cause her to chill or back off—but tonight I learned more troubling elements of her excitable personality.

Envy sat and told me about a few events that happened between her and Kristina before the girl visited the Ave for the first time and met me. It would appear that Kristina took a shine to Cole, and fully aware that Envy is pregnant with Cole’s child, she Kristina decided to call Cole and ask him to a sexual dalliance because he happened to be a sadist. This did not go over well with Envy.

To top all this off, Kristina has a violent streak: she hurled a metal chair at Little Nub’s head during a disagreement. This story has been corroborated by a few of the street rats, so it’s likely not entirely an exaggeration. But, if Kristina is going to get violent with people—they will get violent with her.

Didn’t see her out tonight; I doubt she would be showing up after some of this news.

Jeff Rose and Vincent Piater, newly visiting street preachers

I got some chances to observe members of a group that had come out with Shawn Holes last weekend preaching in front of Urban Outfitters and the Post Office later in the night. The full breadth of the observations about them can be found on the Better Than Faith Mill Avenue Resistance Reports article for tonight.

To the mixture that is Mill Ave they certainly added to the general noise and mayhem. Jeff Rose with particularly loud preaching (not quite as loud as Shawn gets, but still up there) and managed to gather crowds that turned on and off unruly. This is going to be an issue with any groups drunken possibly on either machismo and alcohol in equal proportions.

The Resistance set up with him and, when they moved so that Papa Soul could play in front of Urban Outfitters—and he does play even louder than even Shawn or Jeff can breach—they asked the Resistance to move with them to the Post Office.

There were a couple violent and near-violent incidents directly related to Jeff’s preaching including an apparent street rat whose name I don’t know pulling his speaker cable. After a few successful attempts he was assaulted by one of the males with the group (Vincient Piater) and used that as instigation to posture and threaten. Fortunately, that situation was diffused without any bruises.

After that had calmed down, I witnessed something that I’m quite amused by. A sociologist that I was speaking to did something that I rather liked. While he was talking to the street kid, he shook his hand, and did not let go until he explained that yanking the cable and nearly getting into a tussle is not acceptable.

I did not have a chance to speak to the street rat to learn his name or more about why he was acting the way he did. He was a black American young man, wearing a ratty t-shirt, and a clean safari-style felt hat. After that incident he vanished entirely from the Ave; I didn’t even see him at the drum circle.

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday December 27th 2008

The drum circle had two drums today, they placed themselves off away from our stilt-bronze-man statue and next to the fountain. The region between the Valley Art Theater and My Big Fat Greet Restaurant has a couple strangely-placed stone blocks that just jut out of the walk, all of them good for sitting on, and they’re clustered around a waterfall/fountain—this is up against the side of Valley Art. With the echo chamber of the closely set buildings (probably about 4 meters apart) that area in particular worked really well for resonating the sound of the drums.

And a guitar.

I don’t want to forget that one of the newbies on the Ave had a guitar and was strumming along with the drums. I keep wondering about bringing my violin out and rocking out with everyone else. Not on a night as cold as this one, though, since my fingers would absolutely fail me.

Vince joked about how people had started to call it the “square drum circle” instead of the drum circle because of the presence of the bronze-stilt-man and the dais that it’s built on. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s obvious in part that the installation of this particular form of urban art was directed pretty much at disrupting the drum circle. A lot of the other acts have been as well. Expectedly, the drum circle formed around it anyway.

While I was waiting I met a young man named Raccoon—he chuckled over my makeup when he noticed it wasn’t a pair of sunglasses; Josh often jokes that I look like a raccoon myself. He had a scruffy beard and mustache, spoke a lot about Sedona, and used a mystic tone in his speech. His hair, at odds with his scruffy face, happened to be shiny and well conditioned, almost like a shampoo commercial. He happened to have a set of drums also. I hope that Raccoon comes out more often.

I also had a chance to meet a strange newcomer to Saturdays, a tall young man wearing all black, medium length hair, and an intense speech. He wanted to tell everyone about the equations that make up the universe, which he contents use imaginary numbers and division-by-zero to elaborate on philosophical principals in a theory-of-everything sort of way.

The major criticism that he received was from Omar Call’s friend, Jim—a well-dressed, straight talking presenter—who didn’t like how Weird-Math-Guy happened to be basically dismissing his wife and child (a newborn) in order to present his strange math and attempt to instruct people on Mill Ave. She didn’t look happy herself, lurking inside the doors of Urban Outfitters to keep the child out of the cold whilst her husband plied his thoughts.

I let him borrow my notepad in order to illustrate his equations.

The biggest problem that I had with them—aside from everything being zero or infinity—is that they didn’t really explain anything. Certainly he had some interesting ideas on how the imaginary numbers interacted with the universe, but each of his states could compressing into two possible states: zero (not null) or imaginary infinity. Certainly complex numbers (i.e. imaginary numbers) are used in quantum physics, but they’re used to define particular states of quanta that are orthogonal. It’s not special nor that surprising. In fact, for particular quantum mechanics orthagonality using imaginary numbers is good for describing interactions that “turn” quanta in different phase directions.

When using highly philosophical math it becomes extremely silly to set up giant, complex equations and then either multiple them by zero or divide them out of zero. The most grand equation that will always equate to zero is a lesson in frippery. I am not talking about multivariable calculus or differential equations here where multiple variables interact to becomes zero. I mean: no matter what variables it will always be zero.

(x * y) * 0 = 0

That’s a totally useless equation. It tells us nothing. Where x and y can be anything. It’s literally informationless—there is no difference in this equation that makes any difference—this is the problem with half of the equations he wanted to use.

He had some other neat stuff going on, however, in that he really wanted to explain his position. The problem became, though, that he had gigantic jargon issues. He couldn’t properly talk to a lay person because he was using too much math jargon which makes no sense to non math people (and possibly just suits to put normal people into dummy mode.) He also didn’t like that people didn’t care for his math, or had specific critical observations about how he was presenting it. And didn’t care that he wanted to say, “And don’t tell me you can’t divide by zero.” It’s not that you can’t it’s that the answer is an undefined number. To this end it’s not really a useful answer.

Even philosophically, “undefined” or indefinite is just another way of saying that we don’t know—in math a lot of these answers are distinguished as “no solution” among other interpretations of division-by-zero and it’s various paradoxes. His algebra was just a bad allegory for his attempt to collapse the universe into the philosophy.

I gave away his diagram so I will have to get it again if I want to show everyone.

Street philosophy is certainly a good place to learn and amaze.

Good night and good dreams—especially to every null to infinity out there.

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday, December 20th 2008

The bracing chill of wintry weather brings foggy breath from pursed lips; huddled crowds, conversing over cold fingers, white exhalations like smoking lungs speaking warm words into substance. For most of the night, everyone gathered out in front of Borders; but eventually the crowds lingered also around the drum circle and we had drums.

The drum circle finally found itself, shook off its sleepy cloak, and started up around 10pm. The street rats there shifted in a tide between nineteen and twenty six people, one third of the population female. Pretty much also all huddled into talkative groups against the cold.

I got to see Mark and Cairo—a young man I’ve seen on Mill for quite some time, who carries a bokuto like I used to (although sheathed, and now I carry my steel-fiberglass cane instead of my bokuto.) He introduced himself as Cairo Seijuro. Mark, for those who don’t know, is one of the biggest fan of Vexations as there ever was. As a result, I made sure that he got a copy of Lost Sphinx Cat.

I did get quite a few booklets passed out tonight.

Monkey sent to the hospital

Our friend, Monkey aka Mikey, ended up being taken out of Borders bookstore and trundled off by the paramedics. No news on what happened to him but it did not appear life threatening. Speculation is wild, but the facts are thus: he was strapped to the gurney, which is not uncommon; and he had no apparent IV, there were no debris from injections or ampoules, drop bags were not open, and they did not have vital telemetry set up. This tells me that he was at least stable.

I suspect we’ll see him back on the Ave soon and we’ll all know then what happened.

Nathan

I met him, bouncing his skateboard on his foot standing, waiting, watching the evangelicals. A young man with a mohawk growing out, short brown hair on the sides of his head and the mohawk itself blonde. He says that he’s just out of San Francisco, wondering at the rusty-razor chill wind.

Diana and Danielle

I am not sure exactly where to put this one. I’m certain the BetterThanFaith people want my observations on them, but since I have some base anthropological thoughts on the subject I will just double up my observations. You can read this entire section also on my Mill Avenue Resistance observations blog.

A few of the Resistance had already appeared by the time that Kazz showed up with his speaker and microphone. When he started up, Jim was on the mic for the evangelicals (this is Valerie’s Jim) and he stepped down an instant later. To which there was a quip from Kazz, “Yeah, he’s afraid of me.”

Almost instantly a woman with straight, lank dark hair stepped up and started talking to Kazz. Her name, I would learn during my later interview of her, is Diana. I missed a lot of the conversation between her and Kazz, but I think that they discussed some of the ordinary first-day evangelical sound bite memes. (More of this on the Resistance observations blog.)

I spoke with Diana and Danielle, sisters. I could be wrong about Diana’s name, she could be Diane—but I recall thinking of the Italic goddess Diana, Greek Artemis’s likeness as the goddess of the hunt. Danielle wore this lovely little matching woolen sweater and cap, topping off round spectacles and also watched quietly like I normally do.

They haven’t yet visited Mill before, so I welcomed them. And I learned that they are basically a nomadic family who go from place to place evangelizing. Sold all of their worldly possessions and now they live out of an RV. I hope that they had a good time. I gave Diana a copy of my book as well just because.

As usual I spent some time steering the conversation, deflecting mirrorspeech when I could. This is because likely with the simple memes I’ve heard it all before and it’s just going to be a turn off to both of us. I understand they they’re out “working” to convert or evangelize people, but it’s hard to actually get to know anyone through their work when it is such a homogenizing and normative force. As a result I began to describe some of my thoughts on the civilizing influence of urbanization.

I have some thoughts about how city centers and cultural locus are extremely important to community. That Mill Ave serves this purpose for Tempe, especially with the proximity to Arizona State University. How cities have burned into a culture were everyone’s neighborhood actually persists at work and away from their residence. The modern work ethic has drawn people out of their local communities and made a tribe out of their workplace to the extent that most people know their co-workers much better than they do their neighbors.

In some ways this is good because it diversifies the set of resources that people have to draw upon; but it also has some collapse problems in that people therefore are disconnected from the communities that they must rely on for social interaction in times of crisis. It disconnects them from the proximity of culture.

Town centers like Mill Ave can help to bridge that.

Mill Avenue Nights Saturday November 29th 2008

Expanding my interviews

I have finished up most of my interviews of new and old street rats and have decided that it’s about time that I expanded my interview process of other visitors. This is going to include the more long-time evangelicals as they’ve become part of my observation mandate.

So, I asked Jim if he’d be interested in an interview. I will try to do that next week.

APS Fantasy of Lights

The parade crashed through the Ave and sprinkled electrical dust on everything. Well, not exactly, but it did cause the city to turn on the trees—and by this I mean, they turned on the Xmas lights that wrap around them. The usual white trappings are now across the Ave with some additional changes: colors.

On University and Mill Ave there are trees with green-lit trunks and strange bunches of red and blue “fruit” glowing in them; further down Mill Ave we can find trees that have red trunks, and blue, green, and white “fruit.” These differing trees always occur at intersections. They seem to be the new variety offered by the city to interest people.

The parade culminated in a giant firework show launched from Sun Devil Stadium at about 8:30pm (that was the finale moment.)

They cut off the Ave from normal traffic and let people run about through the street willy-nilly—I love it when they do that. As much as I know it disrupts the normal operations of the city, I have long wondered about if there could be more pedestrian centers. We do have a beautiful bazaar.

People were walking around with cheap light saber toys that filtered strange blue, green, and red lights—some which twisted and twirled through kaleidoscopic merriment as they swirled them in joviality. Welcome to the Ave. Enjoy and be free.

The parade and the crowds that crushed behind it also brought with them a mountain of trash. Discarded wrappers, cups smashed underfoot, tied wrappings of lit-toys that exploded under car tires like backfires.

New Evangelicals

I noticed a fellow who claimed to be a street rat on Mill Ave when he was sixteen; I don’t know how old he is now so I couldn’t say if he was during or before my observations—he seemed to recognize me when I walked past; but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. I didn’t even get to know what the name of his troupe is (troupe of one…)

He had an honest to gods piano.

I believe it was a KAWAI (I know, that’s Nipponese for “cute” but it’s a real brand) a large, black affair run through with electronics; probably to connect up to his two large speakers on staves. He broke down and ran away before I had a chance to really talk to him. He spent part of his time playing and part of his time proselytizing. I’m sure the Resistance were interested.

I also got to talk to John, who had come out with Lee.

And amidst the groups was Trevor again, although we didn't really get much of a talk in. He got some time on the microphone while I was listening in front of the Post Office before I went to see the people who run the Thirsty Dog.

And then there was also a new young man named Brant who, if he wants to be part of Mill Ave culture, should really learn to be conversant outside of his mirrorspeech or he's going to have a very hard time assimilating into the local color.

The rest of my notes on encounters with evangelicals tonight and the operations of the Resistance will be on the Mill Avenue Resistance observations column. Please direct questions and criticisms of observations there as I can use them to enhance my notes.

The Drum Circle

There weren’t any drums tonight.

Our hangout is pretty much doing well with some wonderful people to stop and talk to. But our drums are lacking.

I saw Vince out tonight, as well as Nikki, and a few others, but largely it was just a social gathering for us to stand and get some attention. I hung around for a while to get news and information on how everyone was doing. By in large people are still being people—plus there was this rumor about Osiris, see below—but really it was another night.

There were about thirty people to be visited with tonight. I don’t have any specific notes on them, pretty much milling around and cajoling with the best of them.

Drum circle / streetrat children

And by this I mean the kids of street rats I used to know. I met Barbie tonight. Her mother was actually before my time, but she's old enough to recall when the RHPS goths were the norm (my particular intra-tribe in the Tempe subculture.) After I offered her one of the books she sat down next to me and regaled me of some street rats that I've known for some time.

She was seven when she was out there with her mother and recalls people from long past, some who haven’t been back to the Ave in years. It was amazing and wonderful to get a chance to chat with her about the nostalgia of the Ave—so much of it has changed since then.

However, being a living, breathing organism and shaped by everyone (all of us) who visit; she is yet another beating heart in the great, glory and breath of life that is our community.

Osiris being hit by a car

Yes. He was hit by a car.

Yes. He is fine.

Thank Gaea that he’s made of some mysterious skymetal that regenerates and protects him from serious harm. What the hell can I say, I am so overjoyed that he wasn’t minced. I just learned tonight that he’d been ploughed over and through and gone to the hospital by another street rat.

It is so good to hear that he’s alright.