Curfews and Quarantines

The day started off so promising...

1: At the Beach

On the last day of May in this bizarro-world year of 2020, we gathered up the kids, some beach towels, and our walking masks, and headed down to the beach. This was our second foray to the seaside since they were reopened last week.

Last week I learned my daughter takes to the sun more like me than her mom or brother, and this week I joined Cass frolicking in the water.

After what seemed like hours, but was more like 80 minutes, we decided to wrap it up and head towards home. We'd heard that restaurants had been given the green light to reopen, depending on them following a strict social distancing/mask/glove-or-sanitizer regimen.

We decided to see if the taco shop we probably went to for our last sit-down restaurant meal back in March was one of the brave places that was attempting to open. In the two-and-a-half months since we'd been on Safer-at-Home directives we'd patronized them; we went with the family style meat-by-the-pound style of ordering.

2. So Weird Precisely Because it was "Normal"

We arrived at the Long Beach Taco Company and took seats in the shade outside. We ordered tacos, beer, ceviche, and a quesadilla for the Boy. As we ate, the lone group on the patio, something strange happened.

And it was strange because it was so normal of a past life. Corrie and I have noticed over the years of our being together, that we somehow arrive at restaurants as the first wave of the rush. I have no idea how or why this happens. And because we've been together for nearly twenty years (!) and have plenty of restaurant dining experience, I can say that this bizarre phenomenon occurs more than regularly.

We show up at a slow or quiet dining room, and when we leave, it will be busy and starting to back the kitchen up.

And this happened Sunday. Groups started to trickle into the patio, and eventually it was full, or as full as it could safely be in this moment. Going inside to ask for some foil and the check showed that they'd started seating people inside.

It was almost like a regular weekend day. Obviously you couldn't wear a mask while you stuff stewed meat wrapped in housemade tortilla into your gob, or chug beer, so for a brief few minutes, life resembled what it had before the invisible and indifferent menace swooped down into our lives.

But, across the street, another story was happening, a story of a weary town that'd seen much in its life and knew a storm was coming.

As we ate we watched a muralist across the street painting a pair of faces moments away from kissing, lips poised and eyes shut. Very stylized and enormous on the wood, he was using only black and white paint, and applying it with rollers once he detailed out the eyes.

Painting on wood? I thought...and realized that the gaggle of folks over there at the glass-fronted shops across the street weren't all watching him, rather they were affixing the 1-inch thick sheets of plywood to the fronts of the stores, shielding the inside of the businesses. 

Up and down the north side of 1st St the boutique denim shop, the coffee shop, the BYOC (bring your own container) store, the boutique sneaker store...all boarding up like a hurricane was coming.

I looked at Corrie and said, "Boards?"

She said that the George Floyd protest was later in the day. They were probably just preparing. She'd mentioned before we left for the beach that at 3 pm the protest and rally in downtown Long Beach was to muster and commence, and I'd thought about attending and bringing Cassius along. It would be a good learning experience for him. 

I've been a part of many protests and marches, and even parades, and the need to board up store fronts never materialized. Maybe as far as I knew, anyway.

We left a full and busy taco shop and headed home. Our route had us skipping the Broadway/Linden intersection, and the crowds were starting arrive, heading west along 1st St and Broadway, a block north. They had protest signs and masks, and the vibe was catharsis mixed with cautious pangs of hope.

We cheered them along as we headed north along Elm and they streamed west, as the muster point was Broadway and Long Beach Blvd, a diagonal block away from us.

3. The Peaceful Part, 

But Some Things are Very Weird

I had to carry Cass home the last stretch of the way, which showed just how exhausted and sunblasted he was. Me too, I thought, and add in the high-powered beers I drank at the taco shop, and I figured I would make a solo trip to the protest, and even then, it wouldn't be for long.

I didn't need more sun.

The crowd looked smallish and in good spirits, but people were still coming:

In the middle of the intersection of LB Blvd and Broadway a person with a bullhorn bellowed about institutional racism and then start a call-and-response chant. It went like that for a while as the crowd slowly grew.

After a while I felt like my extended time in the sun was coming to an end, and I decided to go get some beer for the house and head home. Walking down Broadway towards the beer shop I've been visiting during the pandemic, as well as towards Vons, I caught glimpse of a scene we'd only slightly felt before:

Shuttered for the storm...

We were only chanting...I mean, we marched nearly 30 k deep in downtown LA during the STRIKE, and I never saw any boarding...

Most either had Black Lives Matters papers stapled to them or were spray-painted with messages to the same effect.

When I got to Vons, I could tell something was very awry:

The grocery store needs barricading?

As I moved back towards home, it looked like the group was going to start marching east along Broadway, so basically following my trek to find alcohol. I joined the march near the front. It soon became apparent that the crowd had gotten the wrong message, and four-fifths of the people had started marching the opposite way, towards Pine and the heart of downtown Long Beach.

At the intersection of Pine and Broadway there were more chants, angrier this time and directed at the cops chilling and keeping an eye on things.

Once I learned that Beachwood Brewery was also closed, I figured it was a sign. A phalanx of new people, an influx of protesters came in from points east, and I rejoined the efforts:

Someone walked through the crowd, a crowd where nearly everyone wore masks except when they took them off to smoke joints or blunts, shouting new directions: "Pine to Ocean! Down Pine to Ocean..."

Off the mob walked, moving about like an amoeba, as marching crowds tend to do. I jumped ship again at Pine and 1st, a block north of Ocean, and headed home. Surely this had been enough sun for me, and my feet were chapped and still sandy.

I was home for a few minutes when my phone, and Corrie's phone, started blowing up with what we know as the Amber Alert message:

Curfew? This had been a mostly pleasant demonstration. Some of the chants I now fully adhere to, like "Abolish Police!" That one seems fit. The time is now to reimagine peace keeping as a combination of social work, drug dependence counseling, and major crime unit investigations (like sex trafficking and corporate money laundering). 

Turns out I'd left a little early.

4. The Chaotic Part

Helicopters had been a presence at all stages of the protest and march, and we're generally more used to hearing helicopters under regular circumstances in our neighborhood, so the constant drone in the background during our late afternoon dinner making time wasn't necessarily a surprise.

The sirens, though, were a little weird. Roaring all over the place, getting closer to the apartment, getting further away, getting closer...they were all around and loud. That was...unusual, but not totally insane.

I saw a neighbor of mine as I walked with Camille and Cass ran around before dinner, out on our front walkway area. This dude looked stressed the-f out. I called out to him. He was shaking his head, saying, "These looters, man...the shops downstairs...man...just, be careful..." and he took off down the stairwell.

Looters. I figured something like that had happened. At this point I was unaware of how things had unfolded.

Back inside I mentioned to Corrie that the neighbor had seemed stressed about looters, to which Corrie reassured me that with the sprinkler system intact, we'd most likely not burn to death. 

FIRE? Not something I'd been thinking about. Until then, of course.

A few minutes later as I got some things ready for dinner, it sounded like someone was about to be killed on the street outside. I went to the back balcony to have a look-see, but the trees blocked my view. Eventually they came into view: one dude with a rod or a pipe was mostly surrounded by folks trying to shove him along, to shoo him away.

That's when I realized what I was looking at: one person was ready to start bashing in windows on the businesses in one of the buildings across the street, ready to start a looting frenzy, but the neighborhood people weren't having any of it.

After dinner getting the kids ready for bed, the sirens and helicopters were now unbearable and made conversation difficult. Cass made it down, and Corrie went upstairs to check on the Simpsons rerun that would air n broadcast Fox 11 (we're old-fashioned), I went with a groggy Camille back into the bedroom. 

More chaos was coming in from the street. When Corrie showed up I handed Cam to her and went out to the balcony to have a serious look-see, where I could crane over the railing facing the dying sunlight.

Down below was a group of people I recognized: shopkeepers from the building's shops, and the neighbor from before; they were all lined up holding bats and rods and pipes. Briskly walking and jogging up the street towards them, towards us, away from downtown were dudes. Bad dudes, dudes that looked like they were up to no good. They also had pipes and bats.

They were met with a healthy dose of Move-the-Fuck-Along, and along they went, dissolving into the neighborhood.

Corrie came in to put the nearly asleep baby down in the crib and I headed upstairs to check on the Simpsons. On Fox 11 at that exact moment was a cop, an LBPD sergeant talking right in front of the former Big 5 store at 4th and the City Place shopping promenade, maybe a thousand feet from the apartment. My neighborhood was on TV at that instant.

 A reporter was asking the cop, "How come rounding the looters up has proven so difficult?" And he looked around and said, "Well, they just dissolve into the neighborhood..." I just said that, I thought to myself.

To the west, north, and east of the City Place shopping center is residential neighborhood. To the south is more commercial, and eventually the Pike, which is where the group I had been walking with had been heading when I peeled away and went home.

I had literally seen the looters am-scraying into the woodwork.

Seeing your neighborhood on the news, or television in general, is always surreal. I found an article online that had been pretty recently updated, and it filled in some of the gaps for me, with information on the Pike destruction. Two things about the article:

1. It was written (partially) by my boy Ruben! Go Rubes!
2. It made me realize that had we not gone to the beach, Cass and I would most certainly have stuck with the march all the way to the Pike, and eventually I would have had to have grabbed him and ran when the windows started getting smashed.

Talking to Corrie later, I looked up and saw another surreal sight: the business where I get my prophylactics was on my television screen:

The helicopters and sirens drowned out whatever we put on, but we were trying to process the realities and weren't going to be able to focus on anything with any serious concentration.

It was after 1 am when the helicopters and sirens finally stopped sounding, and when that came about, it was cemetery silent. No cars, no bikes, no homeless people talking or arguing, no drunks loudly professing their love for banal things---total silence.

5. The Next Day

Some stores are still boarded up, and the grocery store's pandemic-limited hours are even more limited, as on Monday it was done letting people in around 12:30. Yesterday, Tuesday, Cass and I went shopping at 9 am.

Monday morning, on the way to daycare, I saw lots of people in masks carrying brooms, dustpans, and trash-bags. They were out en masse looking for places to clean up. The volunteerism was very high, and it leaves you with a sense that there is hope for this broken and failed nation.

Perspectives

I'm not one to proffer blanket condemnation of looters. Ii think this society s a little too consumerist anyway, and property can be replaced and/or fixed.

The annoying thing for me about it in this moment, and something that reinforces the idea that bricks were strategically planted to encourage the few who felt like busting stuff up, is that the looting hijacks the narrative that we as a country need to have a tough conversation about race, and specifically about the two separate worlds that are being policed by the same people.

To even acknowledge that that type of conversation needs to be had, we have to gather by the tens-of-thousands across the nation shouting at the top of our lungs. But the story the next day is about people liberating resources looting from their own neighborhoods. On and on it goes.

And the White House resident threatens to send the military to the city to "deal" with protesters of social injustice. Maybe we should all just show up at the capital with machine guns. 

That guy seems to think that's fine, right?

Oh wait, how's that pesky pandemic doing? Oh yeah...over 100 k dead and over 40 million out of work.

Stopped worrying about that for a second, didn't we?

JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD! JUSTICE FOR BRIONNA TAYLOR! HOW FAR AWAY ARE THE FIRES OF REVOLUTION?