Observations in the Park

Riding into Sylvester Park, I notice a group of people playing hackeysack, most epitomizing grunge. A smaller group sits at a bench admiring their low rider bicycles. I stop at the gazebo central to Sylvester and park my bike with a kick of the kickstand. The top level of steps makes for a comfortably solid seat.

Hey, I know that guy, I think to myself, looking at the young man standing in the hackeysack circle with long thin hair and brown slacks I'd expect to find in my grandfather's closet. Sven, who I met after discovering we had a mutual interest in computer and telecommunications fraud, introduced him to me last year. His name is John Henry, like the American legend, and besides being a good source of LSD, he used to be Psycho John, the ANSI artist. I knew Psycho John back in the day from computer bulletin boards. He spent every waking second drawing ANSI, computer art made from large colored blocks that doesn't look that great, but is a staple of bulletin boards due to slow transfer rates. Sven told me the story of John quitting the ANSI scene and nearly committing suicide.

Apparently, one night after taking some drugs and being generally bored and depressed, John and a female friend decided to drive to California and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Neither had a car or license, but that didn't matter. They took a sheet of acid on the trip, which I'm pretty sure you can be charged with manslaughter for possessing. The cops pulled the two over twenty miles from the bridge after noticing the borrowed car which had since been reported as stolen. After a short stint in juvenile hall and some counseling, John was better--but he never drew another ANSI again.

A tall skinny young man with short hair and mutton chops wearing a black baseball cap, black leather jacket, black shirt, black jeans, and black Doc Martins, carrying a black book bag sits on the edge of the gazebo ten feet to my left. That's quite a bit of black for a sunny day.

"Hey?" he asks.

I turn to my left. "Yeah?"

"Do you have a pen or pencil I could borrow?"

Unsure about my cache of writing utensils, I lean over and reach in the small front pouch on my backpack. Why do I have so much junk in my bag? I pull out a plastic bag containing a stamp and inkpad, a calculator, a copy of "ZINE WORLD," a stack of Washington Hemp Education Network stickers, a five dollar bill, a bike lock, a one dollar bill, an Olympia Film Society card, a set of keys, my folded up graduation speaker speech that didn't quite wow people enough, an ID card, two different library cards, some spare change and scraps of garbage.

"Nope, sorry," I say, making sure he notices the mess. If I don't show him, he may think I'm lying as most people do when you ask them to borrow something.

"I'll trade you a lighter for the pen you're using."

My only pen. "No thanks," I tell him.

He gets up and walks toward a group of people sitting in the grass behind me, leaving his coat and bag.

I hear a soft crash as a bike drops on the grass. I know that sound, I heard it last week after falling over my handlebars trying to navigate the short, garden-like tier into my yard. The bike crashes again. I turn to my left and see a red bike lying in the grass. A short, stalky, middle-aged woman with long hair, glasses, a white shirt, light blue shorts, and a baseball cap stands beside it. Perhaps she's having kickstand trouble. Wait, the bike has no kickstand. She picks the bike up, and pushes it forward, sending it crashing to the grass. I stare confused. She walks around the bike, picks it up and throws it down again. I look at the guy who tried to buy my pen, now sitting writing, and we exchange bewildered laughs. Bike woman picks the bike up and walks toward a bench. That was interesting. I turn back to my notebook. Crash! Now that's the sound of a bike hitting pavement, I think. The bike makes a few more bouncing crashes as bike woman sits on the bench, apparently content with the job she's done. She pulls out a cigarette.

"I wanna kill myself," I hear.

A scroungy looking man with long straggly hair and a tanktop is conversing with the writer to my left. He's got a knife strapped onto his belt.

"But first I'm gonna kill this bastard who fucked me over," the writer tells the man.

"You don't want to do that. Tell me the guys name, and I'll go take care of him for you," knifeman assures the writer.

This is very interesting. These two men are discussing the murder of another person, and they're doing it in the park beside me.

"No, I want the satisfaction of killing that fucker."

Homicidal interest fades away and I turn back to my notebook.

Two pretty young girls of fifteen or so enter the park, one with short hair who I've never seen before and the other a girl I recognize from school. She has straight long hair, a young face, a tight shirt that bears her stomach, worn bellbottoms and worn lowtops. A worn army bookbag hangs from her right shoulder, crossing her chest, with the bag resting on her left hip. She seems to want everyone to notice her breasts. Carrying a skateboard adds much style to her wardrobe. Something about skater chicks screams chic.

"What did I tell you about wearing that knife downtown?"

I turn and see two bike cops with Trek helmets and dark glasses talking with knifeman as if they'd met before. They stand beside their parked bikes. They must have been here for a while.

"Didn't I tell you not to wear that downtown?"

"Yes sir, you did. I'm very sorry," knife man apologizes. He knows he's got the lower hand in the situation. "Are you gonna arrest me?"

"I don't know, I haven't decided yet," the cop replies, grabbing a pad of tickets from the pack on his bike.

The second cop, who sports a mustache takes the knife from knifeman. "Here, let me hold this for you." He puts it in his bike pack. "How's it going, Nate?" he asks the writer.

Nate says something unintelligible.

"What's that?" asks the mustache cop.

"Well the city that you all put so much trust in screwed me over again."

Mustache cop doesn't delve into Nate's municipal problems.

"Whoa!" Nate laughs. "You guys are being watched."

I look straight ahead. Behind a line of bushes stands a woman with a large video camera pointed at the gazebo. I let out a laugh. Nate laughs uncontrollably.

"That's alright. It happens all the time," mustache cop replies.

"Ya, but you'd better not fuck up," Nate warns, still laughing.

The officer shakes his head slowly, indicating that he never fucks up. The arresting officer puts the pad of paper away and rides away, to where I don't know. His partner stays with knife man.

After a couple minutes, knife man, and mustache cop are getting along great. "Did you ever play football?" asks knife man.

"No, I was a gymnast."

I snicker for some reason.

"Really? I was too! I did the pommel horse," knife man enthusiastically states.

I laugh even louder. What are the odds? A harmonica sounds in the distance. Who is playing that? Forty feet away, framed by the pair of gymnasts, an old bearded man sits low to the ground in a folding beach chair playing a stringed triangular instrument with a bow. It's unlike anything I've ever seen.

The officer and knife man laugh in unison. They're having a great time discussing rollerblading, Bread and Roses, crime, skateboarding, and politics.

"Yes, I'm gonna arrest you." The arresting officer is back, this time with a blond haired colleague.

"Don't you have to read me my rights?"

"I don't have to read you nothin," he replies, sounding more like and officer on the television show COPS. "I only have to read you Miranda if I'm asking you questions." A few minutes later, he reads knife man his Miranda rights. They take him away to one of the two awaiting patrol cars.

"Is this your stuff?" mustache cop asks Nate.

"Yes," Nate replies belligerently.

"Okay, just making sure." Mustache cop rides away on his bike.

" I fucking hate cops," Nate tells me. "This whole time I've been drawing shit like this." He shows me his pad of paper with unartistic scribblings of phrases like "COPS SUCK" and "KILL THE PIG." I'm not amazed with either his artistic talent or his "fight the power" mentality.

"I thought Olympia cops didn't have jurisdiction in this park," a man sitting on the other side of the gazebo asks.

"That's right," Nate says, conjuring up a plan. "I should go ask them, just to make 'em sweat." He gets up and walks towards the armada of cops. A minute later, he comes back. "I guess they passed a law a while back giving joint jurisdiction. Jesus fucking Christ, you think they'd state it in the fucking Miranda or something."

That is probably the stupidest statement I've heard all day. Nate's intelligence is on the decline. I don't mind profanity. In fact, I think it adds quite a bit to the spoken word, but only if it fits. Nate's law of indiscriminate profanity doesn't add to the humor or emotion of a phrase as it should, it makes profanity the unavoidable content and true content the filler.

A woman taps a box of cigarettes repeatedly. It becomes annoying fast. Finally, she stops. The man with the strange instrument is teaching a friend to play.

Bike woman has moved over to the hackeysack group. She stands outside the circle, staring blankly in my direction. Suddenly, she slams her left arm into the back side of her elbow, giving me the arm equivalent of the middle finger. Is she flipping me off? Maybe it's someone behind me or just the world in general. I look down at the notebook.

Instrument man and his student both have one of the strange instruments. This must be a formal lesson. The teacher has wings protruding from his hat as if he were a fan of the comic book hero Thor. The music is beautiful, but "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is getting annoying.

A man walks by with a filled garbage bag over his shoulder. Oh crap! Bike woman is staring at me again. Don't look at her. Nate has joined the hackeysack circle. He plays very well for someone with suicidal tendencies.

A low rider shouts. They're enjoying themselves. Why does he have three balloons tied to his bike? They actually detract from the beauty of the machine.

The teacher and student have thirty foot shadows and they sit a foot off the ground. I hate "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

CRASH! I hear light bulbs shatter. Turning around, I see a camper failing to clear the clearance sign on the Ramada Inn. The woman driving has demolished a whole section of their attractive lighting. Wait, she is coming out of the Ramada, how the hell did she get in? The camper pulls forward with more crashing, breaking and shattering. People in the park start to shout and cheer. The destruction mobile makes it past the clearance sign and a long piece of wood covered in half shattered light bulbs crashes to the street. This is one eventful day. I usually don't see this much in a week. The woman parks next to the curb in front of the Ramada. She exits the vehicle and starts to move large chunks of debris from the driveway. A hotel employee comes out and they briefly survey the wreckage before heading inside. What a big ordeal this must be to those involved. I turn back around.

Four young men, one with a skateboard and another extremely obese, have suddenly appeared in front of me. They discuss their plans and a short haired girl comes over to talk with them. "This sucks," is all I can make out of their dialogue.

The student is playing "DO RE ME" with the help of the teacher. It's about time he quit "Twinkle, Twinkle."

Bike woman's bike hits the grass once again before she walks it out of the park. Well, almost out. She reached the edge and turned around. I wonder if she ever rides that thing.

An asian woman with a sports bag walks by. She has no right eye. Actually, she might have a right eye, but the huge growth over the top right side of her face covers it. A couple walks by, one of them whistling "DO RE ME."

The obese young man stops a stranger in a t-shirt with a cannabis plant on the front and the words "Did you know" on the back followed by a list too small to read. He asks the man if they know each other. The man says "No," and they continue to talk. I think they have met before. Another stranger walks up to the pair and says "I need tools of destruction!" I pay no attention.

One of the hackeysackers from the now extinct circle rides on a cement path toward me. Someone throws a hackeysack at him and screams in victory when it hits the target. The biker turns sharply, dropping the bike as he reaches for the hack. The two begin to chat. I thought they would throw the hack at each other for a while, but I was wrong.

"In a minute!" a woman screams across the park. The young skaters have moved by the low riders and practice tricks.

Hey, I know that guy. A tall, pudgy young man with medium length dark hair and long sideburns walks by and starts talking with the hackeysack attackers. What's his name? Aaron or Eric or something. I was in H.M.S. Pinafore with him many years ago. Him, Tyler Thale, Eric Roberson, that Wohlers guy and I would go to a nearby quicky mart in full makeup and scare the workers. I've seen him at my neighbors house also. I think he was buying drugs.

A man skateboards by wildly from my right. "I can't find no stinkin' crack!" he screams. I'm amazed that he used not a single profane word. A low rider drives by the opposite way on the circle around the gazebo. A man in a group to my right asks him for a cigarette. The low rider raises his index and pinky finger and says "Ya, Satan!" He stops to chat with the group.

A skinny young man approaches a gothic looking couple sitting on the gazebo to my left. He's got an upside down cross glued to his forehead. A lot of anti-Christians are hanging out in the park tonight it would seem. Cross man and the goth couple engage in a drug deal, acid from the sound of it. Cross man is named Shawn, and the male goth is named Petri, like the dish or the pterodactyl from The Land Before Time. A young girl on a bench in the distance screams "Petri, I love you!" probably in hopes of getting a discount.

It's getting darker and the park is gaining more life, as if brought on by the setting sun. Holy shit! Bike woman is back, except this time she's missing the bike!

Two young girls of two or three chase each other and climb the steps in front of me. One is dressed in a pink dress and the other in generic white underclothes and a black baseball cap with a pot leaf and the word "CHRONIC" on the front. How cute.

I know that guy. The bearded man with a large white dog takes a seat near the John Rogers statue. He volunteers for the Olympia Film Society and he can't talk. He's dumb and it's really odd buying movie tickets from him.

A man runs into the park from under a tree, wallet chains jingling, followed by a woman in cutoff army pants and a short shirt. The man passes me and stops at a bench. He punches the bench and screams "Damn it!" The woman runs past him, out of the park and across Capital Boulevard. The man sits, punches the bench again and screams "Damn it! Damn it!" He gets up and follows the girl, this time walking. All I can guess is that they just failed in an attempted car robbery or heroin sale. Bad drug deals can really piss people off.

Bike woman walks by again! It's getting routine. A straggly, sandy blond haired man sits right next to me and lights a cigarette. Asshole, I think, inhaling his habit.

Ute, a girl from my German class who has averaged one and a half days of attendance a week for the past two months stops twenty feet away with a group of friends and sits on the grass.

"Hey, you got fifty cents for the bus?" the smoker asks.

I reach in my bag and grab three quarters. I drop two in his hand. "What time you got?" I ask, wanting to get something for my change.

He looks at his watch. "Nine fifteen."

"Thanks," I reply.

A stereo starts blasting Allanis Morissette. "Kill me now," I say softly.

A man yells "Who wants to play tackle football?" and a crowd starts to gather.

Somebody sitting below the John Rogers statue starts to play a harmonica. A friend joins in with an acoustic guitar. The sky is a dark blue.

A bunch of men scream like Rocky as their teammate scores a touchdown.

About sixty people litter the park. I've been sitting for over three hours. I can't understand most of what's taking place in each individual group. The football players have taken to shirts and skins. Shawn, the cross man, is a skin. I want to lay back and sleep but someone will probably steal my bike.

The air chills my skin and I bid farewell to the park and its inhabitants. Perhaps the park is proof that a diverse array of people can expel discrepancy, prejudice and strife in order to participate in societal activities, exerting not only equanimity and restraint, but genuine mutual respect. Then again, perhaps it's just a place for freaks to converge and sell drugs.