"God bless ‘Big Stinky’"
Jul. 23rd, 2003 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaI tried to deny my nature but I gave in at the end. I had to go see the dead whale at Ocean Beach.
People forget that San Francisco is really just a big beach town sometimes. Hundreds of people gathered on Monday while City Park officials dug a huge hole and buried a 45 foot dead whale with two tractors and a backhoe. Dude, you just don’t see stuff like that everyday.
It was actually one of the most diverse and kid-friendly events I’d ever been to in SF. All of San Francisco was represented along the yellow and billowing police lines and in the dunes. Even better was that it wasn’t an "event". Certainly it was free, but what I mean is that, despite an annoying (and thankfully ignored)* hippie website trying to promote a drum-circle funeral, people just showed up. There was no ceremony or planned gathering. Willie Brown didn’t keep people waiting as the tide rolled in so he could toss a few one-liners at the carcass before it was buried.** We didn’t have to hear about the dead whale as a metaphor for the environmental destruction of the planet. There were no "Goodbye Obie" t-shirts for sale. There were no forced tears or pious spirituality
No. Just everyone with kids who could skip work and get down to the beach, did. Kids like the beach. Kids like tractors. Kids like smelly old dead whales. How could this not be fun? The Great Highway had illegally parked cars stretching a quarter mile from Lawton Street in each direction. The stench of death seemed exaggerated, but then again, the whale was mostly buried by the time I got there. Close to the burial mound, the ocean breezes kept things manageable, but it did kind of hang in at the edge of the sand dunes.
People came for many reasons I’m sure, but I think mostly because a five-ton, dead whale on the beach is cool. You can only hope to see one every decade or two in a beach town like SF if you’re lucky. I can only imagine how the deprived Midwesters must feel. I just had to make it down to Ocean Beach. Not to pay my respects to the whale, but to appreciate San Francisco and all it has to offer. The cawing of gulls, the salty sea breeze, the crunchy non-native iceplant that those annoying park people are always trying to kill, the smell of rotting cetacean: it all just felt like home.
And proudly, some SF locals sent the whale off in their own way. They tagged it. Park officials were upset. When the graffiti was discovered, National Parks Service spokesman Mike Feinstein was even quoted as saying, "It was obviously somebody who has no respect for marine mammals." But really, we all know those kids were just saying, "Hey sure, we’re a beach town, but we’re an urban beach town!". And let’s not forget that the tags were done after "biologists" skinned large parts of the whale, stole its head and flippers, and were interviewed while "knee deep in whale".
All in all, a wonderful San Francisco event.
*This use of a parenthetical ellipses is dedicated to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spoonfeeding
**If The Mayor had been there I would have suggested, "Hey Whale, you smell worse than the Biotic Baking Brigade!"
People forget that San Francisco is really just a big beach town sometimes. Hundreds of people gathered on Monday while City Park officials dug a huge hole and buried a 45 foot dead whale with two tractors and a backhoe. Dude, you just don’t see stuff like that everyday.
It was actually one of the most diverse and kid-friendly events I’d ever been to in SF. All of San Francisco was represented along the yellow and billowing police lines and in the dunes. Even better was that it wasn’t an "event". Certainly it was free, but what I mean is that, despite an annoying (and thankfully ignored)* hippie website trying to promote a drum-circle funeral, people just showed up. There was no ceremony or planned gathering. Willie Brown didn’t keep people waiting as the tide rolled in so he could toss a few one-liners at the carcass before it was buried.** We didn’t have to hear about the dead whale as a metaphor for the environmental destruction of the planet. There were no "Goodbye Obie" t-shirts for sale. There were no forced tears or pious spirituality
No. Just everyone with kids who could skip work and get down to the beach, did. Kids like the beach. Kids like tractors. Kids like smelly old dead whales. How could this not be fun? The Great Highway had illegally parked cars stretching a quarter mile from Lawton Street in each direction. The stench of death seemed exaggerated, but then again, the whale was mostly buried by the time I got there. Close to the burial mound, the ocean breezes kept things manageable, but it did kind of hang in at the edge of the sand dunes.
People came for many reasons I’m sure, but I think mostly because a five-ton, dead whale on the beach is cool. You can only hope to see one every decade or two in a beach town like SF if you’re lucky. I can only imagine how the deprived Midwesters must feel. I just had to make it down to Ocean Beach. Not to pay my respects to the whale, but to appreciate San Francisco and all it has to offer. The cawing of gulls, the salty sea breeze, the crunchy non-native iceplant that those annoying park people are always trying to kill, the smell of rotting cetacean: it all just felt like home.
And proudly, some SF locals sent the whale off in their own way. They tagged it. Park officials were upset. When the graffiti was discovered, National Parks Service spokesman Mike Feinstein was even quoted as saying, "It was obviously somebody who has no respect for marine mammals." But really, we all know those kids were just saying, "Hey sure, we’re a beach town, but we’re an urban beach town!". And let’s not forget that the tags were done after "biologists" skinned large parts of the whale, stole its head and flippers, and were interviewed while "knee deep in whale".
All in all, a wonderful San Francisco event.
*This use of a parenthetical ellipses is dedicated to
spoonfeeding**If The Mayor had been there I would have suggested, "Hey Whale, you smell worse than the Biotic Baking Brigade!"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 06:45 am (UTC)Perhaps you could perform a hippie exorcism ceremony to banish all the leftover hippies...
"About the only semblance of ceremony Tuesday was provided by Steve Hawthorne, who showed up from Santa Cruz with a small drum he had borrowed from a friend. As the grave was being dug, he stood on top of a hill between the beach and the Great Highway, beating a sad dirge barely audible above the surf."
-SF Gate
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 08:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 09:30 am (UTC)Though to be honest, it's the neo-hippies, not the leftovers, that bug me.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 09:38 am (UTC)BTW, for more coverage of "your" mob
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 10:50 am (UTC)..The event was initiated by a 33-year-old Minneapolis man named Chris who wouldn't give his last name.
"I'm a corporate consultant," he said.
Oh for the love of god.*
That explains so much!
_____
* Who doesn't exist.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-25 11:40 am (UTC)ok, i'm confused, but that's more of a normative state for me these days.
no, not you
Date: 2003-07-25 12:35 pm (UTC)Re: no, not you
Date: 2003-07-25 12:43 pm (UTC)go me!
thank you for having the patience today to explain things as if you were talking to a 3-year old....as that is about where i'm at at the moment!
/wants her mommy
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 10:51 am (UTC)____
* Full disclosure: CLOSET HIPPIE! (I own a pair of knee-high moccassin boots and what can only be described as "purple harem pants." Although I haven't actually worn them in over a decade...) :0
Actually....
Date: 2003-07-24 01:47 pm (UTC)I took a drum class and we learned all kinds of rhythms and what there original meaning was. Cubans were the only slave allowed to keep their drums, and alot of those traditional cuban rhythms are in a way protests against oppression. Santoria uses certain rhythms to talk to spirits...drums were the first form of recording history...but I guess if you are already turned off to drum circles all this may just sound like a bunch of hippy crap to you.
Heh.
We have master djembe players from Senegal and all over Africa here in the Pacific NW...so while we get the usual crowd of whities with dreads trying to express their love of humanity through free form rhythm, we also have quite a contingent of well educated and amazingly skilled drummers who are able to lead the rhythms.
If you have a cohesive group that is well versed in dialectic drumming, it is a completely different feel than a bunch of neo hippies beating on some goatskins.
IMHO.
Re: Actually....
Date: 2003-07-24 10:34 pm (UTC)Oh totally
Date: 2003-07-25 12:46 am (UTC)Once, at a drum circle of this kind, my friend saw a white girl with dreads peel and chew a banana, then spit the banana back out into her hand and smear it all around in her hair.