Pix:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34566058@N03/sets/72157621387483884/video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eawkfgsbvqUGot down to Horton Park at 11:00 to find myself the only anon there. Plenty of bums, including one woman with a really nasty pit bull that kept snapping at passersby. It was warm, so I found a place in the shade, but it smelled of urine. About 15 minutes, some bum unleashed his hose in a little area 15 feet away, so I decided I'd had enough of this and walked back to my motorcycle. I cruised by one more time, to see Kombat waiting by himself, so I raced him to the org.
When the two of us arrived and masked up, the Scilons put their panels up against the front of the org, blocking the door. I'm sure the Fire Marshal would like that!
Soon, other anons started trickling in; at our peak there were seven. Some of the regulars had other stuff to do, and our Squids are out playing Navy on the ocean.
It was all good. Warm, sunny weather, org on the shady side of the street. (heh)
Ben Ghiora continued his new tradition of shuffling down the street after we'd arrived.
We saw some of the regular scilons, but the parking lot wasn't full. There are a number of vehicles that are always in the parking lot, so I'm not sure how significant parking lot stats are. We have a number of hardcore, dedicated Scilons who seem to practically live at the org.
There's this wacky black woman who works for the city and rolls around on a Segue. She usually stops to bother us, but this time, it got ridiculous. She kept bugging Obamanon about why we wasted time on this when we could be caring for the homeless, etc. Then she started getting disruptive by singing something about how we were silly or some damn thing. Obamanon told her, "You work for the city, gtfo and quit bothering me." Unfortunately I missed that, because Sakujo and I went down to snag a couple of free Slurpees at the 7-11. It was 7-11 day. July 11, geddit? They were giving away Slurpees!
We heard a couple interesting stories from passersby. One man met an ex-Scientologist via an internet dating service. She's no longer in, but was once married to someone high up in the organization. She was astonished to learn that he knew the Xenu/OTIII story. "That's a very difficult level to get to, where did you ever hear about it?"
"South Park," he replied.
After we moved down to Broadway, another guy stopped to tell us his tale of woe. He had a degree in marketing, he was broke and looking for a job. And the sign outside the org said they were looking for people with marketing experience, so he stopped in to inquire.
They told him it was a salaried position, so he took his last few bucks, and got his suit drycleaned and pressed. When he arrived for his interview, they basically told him, "Whatever you make, you get 20%." Lied to by a Scilon. Imagine that.
He said they asked some weird questions, like what his parents did for a living. And what their social security numbers were. Warning flags were raised, common sense kicked in. He told them he'd decided this job was not for him, and left.
We got lots of horn love and thumbs up, gave away lots of fliers. Our best shill was this homeless guy who'd been talking to us a bit and offered to help out. "YOU NEED ONE OF THESE," he'd say, rolling up on pedestrians in his wheelchair. Nobody turned him down.
It was a fairly uneventful picket, and we missed SDPD's traditional visit. I'm sure it wasn't because they weren't called, amirite?