San Diego, a local beach. San Diego Burning Man community gathering.
Last weekend’s San Diego beach burn — a local Burning Man community 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. 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?” Water. “Are you trying to conjure up evil spirits?” I am not making that up. But if we had been, I’d say we succeeded.
Neil got a ticket for a small oil lamp fire burning a few yards away. As he was putting it out, we overheard the main officer tell the others: “See that attitude? THAT’S why I gave him a ticket.” The only attitude any of us had shown was humble obedience. We had high-powered spotlights shined in our eyes until the cops got bored because they weren’t finding any violations. They did seem to enjoy teaching each other to do donuts on their shiny new quadrunners.
Afterwards, we stuck around, found some unpainted wood to burn, some more strangely dressed people showed up, and we played drums and watched fire twirling. Nobody got beaten up. Nobody spent the night in the slammer. A fashion show broke out. As beach burns go, it could have been worse.