Last weekend’s San Diego beach burn — a local Burning Man gathering — was stormed by government-sponsored terrorists. Specifically, the Police beach patrol.
At around 9:30, about ten of us were sitting around enjoying the fire, when we noticed on the nearby ridge about half a dozen cops on quadrunners, and a police Explorer truck. They lined up there like the cavalry, revved their engines, then raced up, surrounding us.
We had no alcohol, no glass bottles, no drugs, no fireworks, no box-cutter knives; we were polite and cooperative. One or two of us were dressed strangely. They wanted to know “What kind of a gathering is this — what are you all doing here?” (we told them we were a group of artists.) “WHAT WAS IN THAT RED CUP?” (um, water.) “Are you trying to conjure up evil spirits?” (I shit you not; but if we had been, I’d say we succeeded.)
Neil got a ticket for a tiny oil lamp fire that was burning a few yards from where we were gathered. As Neil was putting out the fire and we were gathering the wood, we overheard the main officer tell the others, “See that attitude? THAT’S why I gave him a ticket.” The only attitude coming from any of us was humble obedience. We had to take back all our wood and have high-powered spotlights shined in our eyes until the cops got bored because they weren’t finding any other violations. They did seem to be enjoying teaching each other to do donuts on their shiny new quadrunners, though.
What bothers me the most is that I didn’t step up to complain because I was AFRAID OF THE POLICE. I don’t want to get beaten up or go to jail on some made-up charge for mouthing off. I’d really like to start staging these beach burns as civil disobedience: bring a dozen video cameras; lots and lots of red cups; plastic liquor bottles filled with fruit punch; bags of oregano; aspirin and ibuprofen in unmarked baggies. Find out in advance what our specific rights are when interrogated by the police.
Anyhow, we stuck around, found some unpainted wood to burn; some more strangely dressed people showed up and we played drums and watched fire twirling and had a fashion show and had a good mellow time. No one got beaten up, or even stepped on any dog poop, and no one spent the night in the slammer.