It seems like after the virus, life has changed in many, many ways. My perspective is certainly very different. We went for a ride in the Paddy Wagon, as I call P's car to get the engine running a bit and figured it was a good time to stop for some McDonald's Double Cheeseburgers and fries, get a coffee. We were close to Red Hook, so we got out and had a little waterfront picnic. The next day would be my first back to work and a reentry into the social world. And that world was still trying to make sense of the tragic murder of George Floyd.
Ol' Mr Dave Scott got a bath in the sun later, something I've wanted to do for 3 years. He has new tires and is ready for action again after a 2 month hiatus.
All night I kept hearing embers of social unrest outside and couldn't sleep while texting with people and reading news about all the elevated situations erupting around the city. We'd been to the window several times already, as sirens and fire trucks were flooding our ears, random screams and other times banging that sounded like gunshots. We saw a woman come tearing down the street being chased down and finally captured by about 5 cops, handcuffed and hauled off while her friend shrieked like she was dying. Little off-shoots of protesters that had come away from the main group down our street. Around 1am, I went to the window after feeling some impending funk. It was fairly dark and I couldn't see clearly at first. Immediately fear flooded my head as I heard trash being thrown onto the street, glass smashing. At first thought was full chaos in the streets on closer look was a couple dozen young teenage boys on bikes. They were throwing things half heartedly towards the cops, not reaching them, even though they could have. They didn't break any store windows, only shattered bottles on the sidewalk. They lit a fire on the corner that we thought was a building but turned out to be a bunch of garbage. At that point I was calling this disruptive-lite. I wasn't sure how to see it. Felt best just to go to sleep and not try to have an opinion. This was a great example of one of hundreds of mere barnacles on the side of the real protests and one that was happening a block away at Fort Greene Park that night where police vans were ignited and thousands gathered. There were so many scenes to experience on these protest nights in New York City and others all across the U.S. Depending on what you watched, video footage, tweets, Instagram posts, news reports or if you protested yourself, you could come away with different viewpoints. A lot went down and I think it's important not to mingle all the hangers on with the actual protest movement. Still some of those, like these kids, to me, are part of the rage that has to go somewhere.
