Mill Avenue Nights: Friday, September 2nd 2011

Where Mill Avenue gets a visit from The Door and I speak to one of their parishioners

Upon arriving on the Ave, Arienne and I noticed a group out in front of the Post Office singing and carrying about signs. The signs contained mostly Christian propaganda messages that included references to “Jesus” and “blood” and other common metaphorical elements of the Christian doctrine. They had amplification and seemed to have an almost-band set up. I didn’t recognize them, so I wanted to go over and check them out.

It took us about ten minutes to make it from our parking spot back to the Ave.

After reaching them, I broke out my voice recorder and my anthropology journal and started taking notes, positioning myself on the other side of the newspaper kiosk wall.

A woman approached Arienne to offer her some literature and speak with her. The woman immediately after handing over a few tracts started speaking about the Christian religion and asking if we (mostly Arienne, as I was engrossed in my notes) knew about Jesus Christ and his activities—insert the usual Christian religious doctrinal spiel here. What I didn’t know at the time was that the woman had handed Arienne a tract identifying her as being part of The Door.

The Door is a cultish Christian group with a community church not far from Mill Ave who have been indicted in numerous bad behaviors on the Ave. They have in the past created violent outbursts during Halloween, interfered with the Mill Avenue Resistance’s amplification equipment (pulling Kazz’s microphone cord and holding it), and lied to the police about their activity after calling them on the Resistance after ostensively committing simple assault.

As a result, Arienne turtled and didn’t speak to the woman except to nod her head and smile; absorbed in my work, I didn’t realize she didn’t speak to the woman at all and the woman probably felt somewhat ignored. I probably should have had a talk with her instead, but I needed to get my notes down. Of the literature I received, one is a glossy, two-sided color advertisement for The Door Christian Fellowship Church on Broadway; the other two are Chick tracts: “HI THERE!” and “THIS WAS YOUR LIFE!”

Questioning Arienne about the events and why she didn’t speak to anyone, she confided that she didn’t want to speak to anyone from The Door because of their reputation of bringing violence and tension to the Ave. She also expressed that even though she’s a Christian, she belongs to an enemy faction to The Door and didn’t want to accidentally give that information away (once again noting fear of their bad reputation.)

A gender switch and a different parishioner decides to come talk to us

After the woman left, she was quickly replaced by a male, who immediately asked me about why I was taking notes.

(I believe he introduced himself as Tim, but I didn’t catch his name; neither did Arienne.)

I told him that I take notes about Mill and that preachers feature in the notes because they appear on Mill. He asked, “What’s wrong with that?” referring the preaching. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the preaching per se. I explained that I study Mill Avenue as an anthropologist and I write fiction—I gave him a card for Mill Avenue Vexations—and forgot that I’m even wearing my Mill Ave T-shirt.

At first he asked questions about my religious experience and attitudes and I attempted to explain Celtic paganism to him. He elaborated that he, “Teaches other people about other religions and it helps if he understands them so that he can explain them.” Tim must be a terrible teacher because instead of listening to what other people have to say, he projects his own biases onto them and constructs entire scarecrow populations of strawmen in reply.

He asked about afterlife beliefs, I tried to explain the Otherworld.

He asked about morality and code of conduct and I explained the social construct of moral codes, harm, entitlement, and social contracts. He eventually went on to ask me about what pagans felt about “killing children…and other sins and immorality like abortion, homosexuality, sex before marriage…” I don’t know why he started out by asking about where pagans stand on “killing children” it made absolutely no sense and he quickly distanced himself from it.

We had a very brief exchange that sin is meaningless to people outside of his culture who don’t accept the concept of a divine command or divine law. Since “sex outside of marriage” came up last in his list I noted that pagans don’t care. Marriage is not a social construct that most pagans believe has any necessity with sexuality; furthermore, sexuality is something that we as a culture have developed numerous technologies to make safe and good for everyone and it’s proper that we educated ourselves and used that technology.

Tim tried to point out that nobody listens and I noted that’s because proponents of the “abstinence only” and “no sex before marriage” are deliberately miseducating and not educating people. I likened it to gun-control proponents giving out guns then deliberately not educating anyone or miseducating them; and then pointing out how dangerous guns are in the hands of neophytes as a reason to ban them (actual advocates don’t want people miseducated.) Since I don’t find “divine command” to be more important than actual harm I pointed out that his assertions would have to be backed up with more than just an argument from irresponsibility.

Noting that I kept dismissing anything that happened to be a divine command and asked for evidence of harm, Tim decided to switch to a witnessing propaganda tactic where he started to talk about how he used to be very much like a pagan: “I used to be shooting up all the time and engaging in carnality of the flesh.”

I’d repeatedly had to tell him that I didn’t say anything about pagans encouraging debauchery and unsafe behavior, which he kept intimating I meant by saying that pagans couldn’t care less that YHVH commanded people to get married first. This had already been an ongoing problem in his replies. Every time I mentioned that pagans didn’t accept some restriction placed by his deity and/or culture, he would immediately reply as if I had said there were no limits altogether. I pointed out that he didn’t care what Zeus or Odin had to say on the subject either because he’s not Ancient Greek or Asatru; but that didn’t mean that simply because he didn’t accept one of their restrictions he was reckless on all matters.

Finally, he started to make bald statements about how he had the absolute truth and that I would have to submit to my creator. To which I replied, “My creator would be a female goddess; not your male YHVH like you keep claiming.”

He kept trying to tell me, “I’m just telling you what I believe, like you told me what you believe.” Except that he wasn’t telling me what he believed; he had skipped directly to telling me what I should believe. And he did so by advocating this divine authority that he kept attempting to place on me. This isn’t an exchange of beliefs. There wasn’t any “I believe” in his statements it had all become: “You will” and “you must.”

I explained to him that his propaganda isn’t convincing and that he had started using a technique called the mere messenger stratagem. This is where the propagandist claims to be a mere messenger for a greater authority to which the recipient has no way of corroborating or access to.

He went on that he didn’t intend to convince me.

I tried to explain that when a person starts telling me what I should believe that in fact they are trying to convince me, so why was he doing that if he didn’t want to convince me.

He followed that up with some statement that Jesus told them to “compel” people…

At which point I think he lost the plot, since compelling people is by its nature by force and good luck forcing anyone to believe anything. Belief doesn’t work that way unless it involve traumatic brain injury. Here I thought he’d just wanted to fall back on, “I’m just having a conversation, an exchange of beliefs,” but no, he either misunderstands the word “compel” or he’s actually out there to attempt to force people to convert.

At this point, Tim noticed that the parishioner group of The Door had vacated the Post Office about ten minutes earlier.

He hastily excused himself.

The Door and their bad reputation

The Door’s well-deserved bad reputation for their intimidating and brutish behavior on Mill Ave has really made an impact on some of the people who visit. The fact that another Christian, Arienne, finds to cause grave concern deeply worries me. While I would like her to be able to speak to anyone who comes to Mill, I am not sure I am not about to press people into interacting with them.

She has rightfully pointed out that she doesn’t want to encourage them. They have, after all, made themselves a dangerous influence on the Ave and if they should wonder why people are treating them like wild animals don’t need to go far to discover that they’ve done it to themselves.

Mill Avenue Nights: Saturday, November 13th 2010

Mill Avenue had a strange visit today from a belligerent set of street preachers led by Ruben Israel.

Amid his group, Israel brought five extremely well-girthed men, five large plastic signs, and one bullhorn. They stopped in front of the popular Mill Ave bar the Mill Cue Club—a place where other preachers have done a similar thing—the major exception, however, is that Israel’s crew are actively abrasive. The men with Israel used a particular tactic of insulting first and then asking questions later, they would pick elements on a persons clothing, their attitude, or racial features and throw epithets and slurs to gain attention.

Marcus Mattingly, one of the proper Mill Ave Christian street preachers, describes Ruben Israel as a heretic and people shouldn’t listen to him anyway. The presence of the new preachers and their signs did not affect the major Mill Ave preachers at all. The crowds did start to clutter around the Mill Cue Club, but it didn’t draw attention from the street preachers nor did it cause them any frustration. Other than a few shrugged shoulders and rolled eyes, thus was the entirety of Israel’s impact.

The Mill Avenue Resistance, in the persons of Gadfly and Kazz, quit their usual position protesting the usual street preachers and moved next to Israel and his crew in front of the Mill Cue Club.

Instead of putting up any sort of rational discussion or civil conversation, Israel and his posse only spat back insults and vituperations. Responses consisted primarily of non sequitur nonsense, abuse, racial slurs, and political insults. Gadfly brought the brunt of the attacks with her femininity being called into question and other hyper-misogynistic speech. Kazz was met with name-calling about his appearance every time he spoke, being called a hippy and branded as effeminate. These men obviously have massive problems with women—it certainly explains why there wasn’t a single woman among them.

“Please don’t put that girl on again,” whined one of the preachers over his bullhorn. “She’s annoying.”

Passersby also absorbed some abuse from them as they tried to shout over the noise from within the bar.

Mostly they would stop random people and call them “gay” as if that were actually an insult.

When I attempted to stop Rube Israel himself to ask him who he was with and what they were doing he chose to insult me ineffectually. At one point he called me out for not being able to read his sign even though I wear spectacles (wouldn’t that be why I’m wearing spectacles?) The address of his web page, whilst visible on the signs, was printed over the point where the pole inserts into the sign itself and thus made it difficult to make out. He also casually claimed that I was a Satanist. Not that I am, nor is that really much of an insult either, but he used it with the same role as their attention grabbing insults.

There wasn’t much of any substance to Ruben Israel’s circus act.

Mill Avenue Nights: Saturday, October 23rd 2010

This one is probably going to only be photographs and not that many. My camera’s batteries died during the night. Didn’t have that much of a showing on the Ave, for reasons unknown, but I did take a few pictures for everyone to see.

FREE CLOTHES. The Resistance protests the presence of the street preachers on the corner with the Post Office with charitable operations.

In the very center of the photo is Crystal, she spent some time posing – but due to the battery on my camera dying, I was only able to get one photo of her and it’s not that great.

I really need to get myself a stabilizer/tripod or something similar to go with this camera for night shots. It doesn’t deal with motion so well because of the increased aperture and exposure for dealing with the dim light.

Mill Avenue Nights: Saturday, October 9th 2010

I spent much of the night discussing the finer points of Mill Ave ecology with my friend, Vice, who situated himself in front of Urban Outfitters. He’s started up a website for his spray paint artwork business along with Bruce Cormier (who has been spray painting scenes on Mill Ave for quite some years now.)

Spaced Out Studios

(Giant Flash applet and sound warning.)

He spoke of rumblings in the general population that the police might start cracking down on Mill Ave vendors. Especially those, he expects, who simply go to local 99¢ stores, set up blankets of those products, place a tin with the word “DONATION” on it and then attempt to sell them to passersby for an asking price of around $2-$3. Rumor has it, the local vendors have been complaining about them taking sales away from them. Vince believes that it will take a route similar to the gentrification and eventual regulation of the vendors at the Roosevelt Row First Friday Art Walk.

The Mill Avenue Resistance and Clothing Give Away

I’ve finally had a chance to witness the Mill Avenue Resistance free-clothing drive apparatus. With a rolled out blanket covered in folded shirts and a single rack of dresses and some pants, they served the entirety of the Ave from pretty much 9pm until 1am. Gadfly primarily manned the station with a beaming grin and friendly greeting for anyone who stopped to peer over the offering of free garb.

Although I don’t know that many people took any piece of clothing, many did avail themselves of toothbrushes and other sundries.

Mill Avenue Resistance and the Street Preachers

The usual Tom and Al show appeared along with a cadre of various others. They took turns on the microphone through the night with Kazz and Rocco intermittently manning their own megaphone to respond—according to the Resistance, the large mounted speaker failed to operate due to possible battery burnout. Another street preacher named Walter, dressed in jeans and a cowboy hat, also stood up to speak his piece.

As usual they handed out money for trivia questions and engaged people with The Good Person Test (a grossly immoral propaganda tool).

Some people stopped to cheer on the preachers, others passed by, plucked tracts of various design from the Resistance, or dallied to check out the free clothing.

Willow, a well known member of the immune response to this on ASU campus, also came out. She waved a sign for the passing crowds, “FREE HUGS FROM A TATTOOED LESBIAN” and got quite a few takers and come-ons in the process.

Mill Ave Blog Mentions

Looking around the Internet today, I found a mention of Mill Ave and the Resistance—and he also appears to have noticed our hug-bearing tattooed lesbian as well. He mentions Willow, her sign, the Resistance, and the street preachers over in a blog at Homebrewed Theology, “Street Preachers and Tattooed Lesbians”.

It probably took me a good 15 minutes to comprehend what I was seeing…. it truly was that surreal.

Prior to engaging the dueling bullhorns, I got my free hug, told her I was a straight ally, and then went over to talk with the atheists handing out clothes and stuff. I told them that of all the people on that corner, they had it right. They were there simply serving their fellow man expecting nothing in return. They were very gracious and said, “even though we’re atheists, I know where you’re coming from and we really appreciate it”.

Next up were Rocco, the atheist shouting back through his own bullhorn, and Walter, the street preacher. It was readily apparent that they were talking past each other, both standing firm on their own literalist interpretation of scripture, resulting in a conversation that was going absolutely nowhere. Honestly, it made me a little angry.

So, in a move I honestly never thought I’d pull off myself, I raised both my hands and shouted “Enough!”

I missed this exchange myself, but no doubt Rocco had a great time with someone else to actually engage in conversation. A common complaint that I receive from the Resistance about the preachers that they protest is about their enculted and recalcitrant behavior—they rarely change, they have little to say beyond their own inexpert myopic misunderstanding of their topics, and use a deck of disingenuous scripts.

Someone with some actual sense, or even something thoughtful to say, would probably give them great cheer.

The article I cite from continues on for quite a bit of culture centered discussion between Christians, so I’m not going to go into that. However, I will have to interview Rocco about his encounter with Mr. Homebrew.

Bringing something lively and interesting to the Ave.

Photographs

A photograph of the Mill Avenue Resistance clothing rack, the tiny pieces of paper visible on the sides read: “FREE CLOTHING.”

 

Group shot: Center has some members of the Resistance, Willow and her sign, Barbara, Gadfly, a few others semi-visible; on the right happens to be Al, with Kevin peeking out.

Center: Rocco; Right: Kevin. Not exactly the best candid shot, but I was running my camera in burst mode in order to get some pictures of crowds. In front of the Post Office hanging out and chatting.

This is Marcus standing in front of Al’s crucifix—I really need to interview them at some point about this new phenomena. Marcrus’s crucifix is visible on the left, flashlight strapped to the top. He had it set to “emergency signal” mode so it generated a sort of blinking-rave-light effect.

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 Addendum: February 20-21, 2009

The fracas on Saturday got me a little bit amused. I posted about the evangelical quality of this on Better Than Faith, but I’m wondering aloud now about the coming together of community and the perception of crowds.

For those who aren’t aware of what happened on Saturday. An evangelical street preacher named Jonathan decided to set up his amplification on the corner of 6^th and Mill next to where the Hippie Gypsy and Bun Devils are situated. This is because the corner that houses Urban Outfitters had been taken over by Bruce, a spray-paint artist. After Jonathan set up, people began to crowd around in a manner similar to what generally happens around these forming debates.

James, the owner of Bun Devils, did not take this well—he and one of his workers saw the brimming crowd as a direct threat to his business. Together they presented a heated harassment to both Jonathan and people who came to crowd and argue back against the evangelicals and their amps. The result was a little interesting with Jonathan telling people to go buy hotdogs—but the worker from the hotdog stand, flustered, demanded that he wanted Jonathan to buy a hotdog (but Jonathan didn’t have any money.)

Tension ran a little high with James and he felt like attempting to chase them away by setting off his car alarm. For thirteen minutes. A blaring noise event that was annoying but not at all dissuading to the crowd near the evangelicals amp—it didn’t even manage to register as more than an irritation as it didn’t drown out speech, or provide anything more than, “Oh someone’s car alarm is still going off.” That ended when a trio of bike police rode up.

It took Jonathan and his crew almost an hour before they finally moved across the street to Coffee Plantation.

There is a great deal of contention about the use of public spaces between vendors, evangelicals, and the general passersby. The United States prides itself in enabling people to make their own social contracts to live by in public spaces, especially when it comes to speech and presentation. James and his workers may have felt marginalized by having a crowd on their corner, but they were incorrect in asserting that the evangelical and the crowd didn’t have a “right” to be on the corner. If the crowd didn’t have a right to be there…then neither would any customers who may have decided to buy hotdogs.

This also came up on Friday with the True Vine Baptist Church visitors. About whom I have discussed the concept of a forum in the past. Years ago when Pastor Ed was out on our Ave, he faced an angry black man selling hiphop CDs who shouted loudly at people who got in his way in order to preach at him. He managed to tie the TVB evangelicals up for several hours by shouting over them. The concept of the forum came up again, Friday, when Kazz—the leader of the Mill Ave Resistance—mentioned that the TVB are particularly hostile to anyone else setting up near them to present alternate viewpoints.

The TVB, of course, does not control the public corner—they manage to do so only because they have numbers (ten to twelve people) and hopefully unlike The Door, they would not be outright violent if people who disagreed with them chose to use the corner as the forum it is and to respond to them. With equal amplification if necessary, as the Resistance does. Kazz fears that in order to actually create a debate, or at least a reply, he will have to act against the wishes of the TVB to totally control a given corner.

A great deal of people like to pipe up and use the freedom of speech as a cudgel to beat down critics, as if invoking freedom of speech only acts in their favor. Freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism—in fact, exercising thy freedom of speech invites criticism. It is a real, necessary, and sufficient practice in response to speech is to add, develop, and produce contrary opinion.

Right now the TVB present only a saccharine claim to being reasonable, “leave us alone, please be polite, you can get your turn,” but really this is a flimsy respect. They have chosen to speak out to the street using the same rights that the street would speak back out to them and when that happens I expect that they will do the right thing and respect the law.

We’ve seen the evangelical preachers on Mill Ave repeatedly attempt to use the very law that protects them in order to censor or stifle contrary opinions. Such as David from the Way of the Master evangelicals stopping the police to ask them if they could do anything about the nay-sayers who brought out amplification just like the evangelicals did; the group also got restraining orders against other evangelicals who were handing out tracts and information “too close to them”; Jeff and John from earlier attempting to talk to the police about separating the groups by forcing one to go to another corner; The Door committing assault, calling the police, and then demanding that the police remove their detractors.

I have studied numerous groups on Mill Ave and the evangelical preachers insofar are the only groups who have chosen to wield such heavy-handed tactics to stifle organized retort—and, equally so, sometimes people who oppose them (local businesses mostly) attempt the same.

As an outgrowth the actions and reactions on the parts of the police have been positive—with the gross exception of the violent intimidation by The Door, who are dangerous and malignant—and they have hopefully repeatedly educated the public and business owners that the law is blind to the polite. That if the evangelical preachers are permitted to use amplification so too are their opposition; that if a group is permitted to stand on a street corner, so too are their opposition. That all debate, talk, discussion, however animated, falls within the ability of all parties to make their own social contracts until the point the law is broken.

The evolution of these various groups has been interesting.

And perhaps not unhealthy for Mill Ave.

I and the rest of the Mill rambling public look forward to when their growing pains begin to settle and the various sides manage to find some truce, however uneasy, about their use of everyone’s public corners.

Mill Avenue Nights, Friday, Halloween (October 31st) 2008

Friday again, and we’re out on the Ave. Since I get a ride down there with the ASU Secular Free Thought Society I am getting a lot more of a view of their activity on Mill and less of other areas that have been hotspots. Of course, Halloween isn’t exactly the hype of local culture—but it is a good place to find various clashes.

Tonight’s episode involves a local extremely vocal group who come from The Door—a highly insular Christian outcrop who appear to use cultish and brute behavior to silence and bully critics and detractors who are attracted to their extremely prominent and disruptive demonstrations. I will be documenting some of their bad behavior here while attempting to reflect the activity that they brought to Mill Avenue tonight.

Is it just me or is this starting to feel a lot like Discovery Channel’s Meercat Manor?

Preachers: The Door

Around 7pm there wasn’t much in the way of crowds to see. Just the odd scattering of costumes amidst the normal Mill Ave bounce-about types. A band whose music wasn’t half bad set up in front of Urban Outfitters and would play for the rest of the night. They come up obliquely because the Door demonstrators set up in front of Coffee Plantation—a location normally off-limits to noisy and disruptive people—which is directly kitty-corner from Urban Outfitters. We discovered them as they had laid down wooden crosses in front of Coffee Plant early on to stake out their territory.

The SFTS decided that they would set up in front of the Post Office. The purpose of which I would later learn was to direct their efforts to provide a counterpoint to the Door’s operations that night. Apparently anticipating the antics of that group ahead of time. When everyone arrived there a trumpeter already had a small boosted set up and was playing there. He eventually turned out to be a preacher from the Door who’s purpose was to act as a forward scout. The Door apparently also anticipated the intersession of the SFTS and have modified their tactics accordingly.

I received a pamphlet from them espousing some Christian mythology. For the most part it was a mundane recital of their less-interesting elemental prose from their mythos book; most of these pamphlets are creative and clever in their presentation but generally unimaginative in their delivery or choice of how to frame their lore. However, an odd linguistic quirk in the text did catch my eye.

Buried in the prose there was the ubiquitous mention of people being sent to Hell (part of the Christian mythos afterworld) except that it didn’t have a capital “H.” A mistake by a copy editor? Over the years Hell has lost its capital “h” when written in ordinary text, but generally only when it is used as an explicative or injective, like “The hell if I know!” or “The hell with it!” But I think that if Hell is being used to refer to a place it is therefore a proper noun, and there are no proper nouns that we don’t capitalize the first letter. It’s weirdly telling that this word so breaks English conventions for these people.

At around 8:50pm we had a visitation by an obvious demonstration from the Door. Along came an effigy of Jesus, dragging a cross, and two apparently Roman Centurions with whips. The costume was pretty grotesque, which is a good thing for Halloween, and the multiple actors did make the demonstration pretty interesting. I wonder if we can get other individuals to put together performance art pieces like the Door does; but to more educational end. There were at least three effigies wandering down Mill, the Centurions had whips—and even assaulted Rocco from the SFTS with a whip, but I have not substantiated the when/how/why.

Around 9:45pm an altercation happened at the Door demonstration site that summoned the police. I had been warned by members of the SFTS that the Door demonstrators had a tendency to physically assault people and then call the police—so I came with the expectation of seeing something. The Halloween crowds were likely to have at least one drunken individual who would fall for this sort of bait.

A man with really blue hair and a nicely done retro-affect decided to shout and yell along with their demonstration. The tactics used to control him mostly involved standing in his face, getting in his way, pressing up against behind him to corral him. One more than one occasion elbows were used to strike him in the sides or stomach—a behavior which he shouted out as he would charge them with assault for. Several extremely barrel chested individuals would deliberately block the view of video cameras while others harassed the blue-haired man.

Eventually the police were summoned by the Door after they shoved the blue-haired man and then manhandled him around their demonstration. It was really hard to tell who was inciting whom in the mess, but watching the behavior of the people from the Door it is very difficult to give them any doubt to benefit from; for the most part they’d riled their blood to the point that they were culpable in what happened. Deliberately blocking video cameras filming also puts a black mark on them—these are not the acts of civil people.

According to Jordan from the SFTS allegations were made, and then proven to be outright lies by film evidence from three different sources that were variously blocked and unblocked during times of the scuffle. After the police arrived and spoke with them man he went on his merry way—but it certainly didn’t raise my opinion of the Door demonstrators that they made false statements to the police about the blue-haired man, attempted to cover up their own bad acts by occluding cameras, and general bellicosity.

This sort of behavior is dangerous to the health of the Ave.

They had quite a show involving reciting elements of various stories from the Bible. Three crosses with three people who hung on them, the Jesus effigy wept and shouted quotes. The Centurions called out asking what to do with him… Standard fare. Hecklers were inserted in the crowds readily enough from the some forty people present.

In closing, I didn’t get a chance to talk to many of the Door individuals from the demonstration; when they behave in this manner they rile themselves up and aren’t interested in actual dialogue. For the most part, I discovered them belligerent, presenting themselves with a spume of disrespectful questions and then when they didn’t get answers they liked from me attempted to batter me with religious rhetoric from their mythology. Those whom I asked questions of to determine the affiliation or why they were on Mill (my standard fare) quickly gave up under interview or refused to answer me after I tried to honestly answer their questions.

One individual in particular (who after attempting to ask me a series of personal questions) then went on to refuse a copy of my newest Mill Avenue Vexations story because he “Didn’t want to have to read it.” It strikes me as grossly disrespectful of other people to approach them with pretences of shouting them down, asking them questions, and then offering nothing in return—for the most part this individual behaved was entitled to abuse my time but not respect me for it.

The words he used reminded me of another individual from Extremely Prophetic who said the exact same thing when I tried to give him one of my books! Surely, people are welcome to refuse my offerings, I have no problem with them; but this is a very odd response.

Preachers Halloween

A great deal of the time I find them out making anti-Halloween messages. This time: Nothing. Only the Centurions abusing the effigies and that’s about it.

Costumes

The crowds disoriented me a lot more than I expected but there were quite a few out. The vast majority of popular costume happened to be, as expected, The Joker from the new Batman movies. I spotted at least three Benders, from the cartoon Futurama. The rest were a scattering of more standard archetypes from zombies, dark hooded, and various applications of profession uniforms.

One highlight, which amused me, was at least two Doctor Horrible costumes. And at least one person had a girl with him dressed as Penny.

Fin

Pfew. Okay that’s enough for now. I have many more notes from last night, but this is the limit of my energy at the moment. If anyone else has thoughts on what happened please feel free to speak up.

And I’m sorry that the Door stuff dominates this discussion, it actually received very little time in my notes; but it was an event that really needs to be handed to the public because, really, this sort of behavior is uncivil and unhealthy.

Have a good night everyone. Anthropologist out.

Mill Avenue Nights – Saturday October 25, 2008

It starts on Friday.

On the feathers of a bird—or more like an Airbus A320—I returned to the Phoenix genus loci with a wing and a prayer. Doped up on numerous painkillers to handle my myriad pains from the flight I rested a while with Omnicynic and waited for the day to unfurl around us. The sights and smells of my old home city kept me company while rubber muttered sweet nothings to asphalt and Omni laid out the events of the summer that I had missed.

There are no deep secrets to Phoenix. She’s a creature of geometries of glass and steel, blacktop and desert; just barely a juvenile as it comes to cities, leaning, gawky and tall in her teenager rawboned, all elbows and knees—clumsy on her feet, flirting with everyone and never quite going home. That’s her skyline, filled with jagged blue and hopeful horizons; clothed in the forgetting perfume of mesquite, dust, and the halitosis of exhaust fumes.

In spite of myself I feel almost as if I’m home, but everywhere is my home.

“If home is where your heart is then your real home is in your chest!” Captain Hammer.

Omni and I hit the Ave briefly to see the various sights and possible people, but there wasn’t much to it so early in the day. Just the trickling remnants of the crowd filtering from ASU classes and preparing for the nightlife after their day’s work. But, it is the Ave, and I enjoy all of her states—even her quiet slumber.

Saturday rolled around to deliver unto me my first experience of Mill for the winter.

Drum Circle

Like a ragged army we still descent around the dusty feet of our bronze lord, the statue of Mitchell that cuts a flat figure over the drum circle and her inhabitants. I saw a few familiar faces scattered in the crowd, but few that I speak to on a regular basis. It may take me some time to find the usuals teeming up between the newcomers, like sentimental ghosts visiting their old haunts.

After exile (the exodus that happens at midnight from the drum circle’s proper spot to out in front of the post office) I discovered a few people to speak with who remember me from the old days of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I smiled in amazement as an old timer regaled me with his memories of how the Ave’s drum circle Saturday

Cindy and Corky

She is an extremely lovely elderly lady with a proud carriage and narrow-eyed comportment. For the most part I liked her hat and her conversation—which I quickly learned she was a mathematician who works at ASU. Reminds me with some interest of my friend Rapunzel’s mother to whom I ascribe mathematical genius as well. I think I like the fact that we have such an erudite woman keeping up on the Ave.

Kazz tells me that she and her partner, Corky, are regulars with the preacher’s now. I will have to find a way to split some extra time away to accompany them in conversation and interviews sometime.

Talking to Cindy led me into some thoughts about how I could use Vex’s voice at Mill Avenue Vexations to provide some constructive observations to the growth and changes that are happening on the Ave. We have too many people in the city and the merchants guilds going in obviously bad directions. For the most part it’s easy to tell that they’re vastly ignorant of how the street works on a demographic and social level; but as much as I want to blame them, if I don’t offer the tools of understanding I doubt they will harvest them themselves.

See the first segment of Mill Avenue the Beautiful here.

Corky appears to be a writer and ad editor. I am not sure what he’s written yet, but he wears a bearded and bespectacled professor-face and also looks like an excellent element to the culture of the Ave.

The Preachers

With the advent of the ASU Secular Society stepping up their immune response to the preachers on Mill Avenue, so has increased the presence of the preachers. I haven’t studied fully their changes in tactics but here’s a run down of my observations.

There were at least twenty-five people in total making up the full group of the Way of the Master crew. This doesn’t count children under the age of 13, of whom I believe there were at least three—I did have a brief chance to meet one of them, but we didn’t really speak. Being on too many opiates makes me a bad conversation partner.

They have broken themselves into independent groups across three different corners. The more traditional spot in front of Urban Outfitter is still defended as proper, but they also put a microphone and speaker immediately across the street (manned by Al) and they’re also persistent in front of Borders now (where the larger crowd of them gathered.)

The ASU Secular Society appear to have fielded about eight people between Kazz, Sam, Jordan, Brian, Rocco, and several others. They have brought with them further signs, petitions, handouts, and even their own speaker on a tripod from which rebuttals are spoken directly to the emanations of the preachers on their own microphone. Static bursts of sharp cadence to break up the rhythm of the preachers as they try to get going, only to have their rails kicked out from under them.

In front of Urban Outfitters I listened briefly to a woman trying to do the Good Person Test (a dishonest bait-and-switch heartstrings used-car-salesman pitch to religion) but it didn’t last and eventually she dissolved into arguing with the rampant drunks who decided to surround and confront her speech. Drunk people are certainly a hazard of the Ave, but I definitely do not wish them on anyone. She finished up her spiel with some commentary on the Titanic, but nothing that I really caught onto. Shortly after I came to listen they packed up and moved elsewhere.

To Borders.

At Borders the time had reached about 10pm—it was only at about 9pm that I’d arrived on the Ave, having come down late—and they spoke for less than ten minutes and said nothing of much import or affect. A soon as the ASU Secular Society had their speaker and microphone set up it seemed like the preachers were once again breaking down to leave.

I did have a chance to see some of the preachers that I knew as well while I took my notes. Edwin I stopped and cheered on about his usual way, wishing him luck—he doesn’t believe in luck, only the Lord, I’d forgotten his wit.

However, Saturday was interesting for those that I didn’t see: neither Richard, nor David, nor Jeremiah seemed present. Their absence did spur me into inquiring as to their health, and perhaps I shall see them the upcoming weekend. Hallowse’en is going to certainly bring out as many people who want to speak about it as shall come.

In spite of being a wholly commercialized holiday people still like to hearken back to its pagan origins and paint it with all of its strange plumage however misunderstood. It should be fun with my hopeful words and smile telling people that it’s my people’s holiday and we’d like it back.