Someone down near the Broadway Playfield, near what has previously been the staging area for participants in the annual Gay Pride Parade, has been setting off m-80s or cherry bombs or something. That, in conjunction with the flock of chittering helicopters plaguing the neighborhood this morning, have created a mild flashback to November 1999’s WTO experience. For us that week included about five days of twenty-four hour helicopter noise punctuated by explosions in the distance as various police units used flash-bang grenades and pepperball grenades to, among other things, harass me with their incessant noise.

Each time one of today’s bangs echoes down the street, Viv and I tense in anticipation of a change in the tone of the crowd noise or – worst thought of all – a great but brief silence broken only by car alarms and shattering window glass tinkling onto the pavement. In 1990, the FBI arrested a group of folks who had driven a van loaded with explosives into the neighborhood with the intent of bombing a popular gay nightclub.

The person lighting m-80s has no idea what an ass they are. I hope they continue in blissful ignorance.