Got up early and packed out of my safe house in SF. I adhere to what you might call a Yasser Arafat sttyle of life management: never sleeping in the same place for more than one night. Okay, sometimes two.
Wanted to catch this overpass in the morning light, but it turned out a little glare-y.
That was to replace this beauty (Times New Roman all caps — has a rather stately, almost austere quality, don’t you think?)
Sadly, this one was gone too. Mind you, such audacious postings so easily reached weren’t really expected to last three days — as poets, lovers, and freewaybloggers all know, true beauty is a fragile thing.
This sucker was still up though. Love this spot: little cul de sac 50 feet up from 100,000+ cars a day. I park and walk 10 feet to put it up, you drive for maddening serpentine miles to take it down. That, my friends, is the very heart and soul of freewayblogging.
Next stop: the Heart of Darkness, the Belly of the Beast… Twitter Headquarters.
“Hello!” I said to the woman behind the desk, “Are you Twitter?” She laughed and pointed me towards a different woman with an iPad and a blue vest.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m here about my twitter account.”
Disarmed by my directness, charm and irrepressible good looks, she said “Right this way sir!” and led me to another desk, deep within the heart of the building. The foyer was huge, but dimly lit and I immediately found myself surrounded by a multi-cultural smorgasbord of young, healthy and attractive people, chatting, laughing, nodding and smiling. In terms of heat there were two uniforms, and one likely plainclothes. One baton and probable mace — no guns visible.
I stood behind a woman - early 40s - slightly older and more formally dressed than the norm and surreptitiously memorized her email address as she signed in on an iPad… just in case. Unfortunately the suffix was fbi.gov, rendering her use as a cover unwise, if not downright felonious.
“Yes?”
“I’m here about my account. It was suspended erroneously. But I’m supposed to be here about some content-policing study...”
That last little bit was inspired by hearing twitter was enacting a two-year study on how to fight propaganda/disinformation. (Two years, presumably, so as not to interfere with foreign interference in the next election.) The trick to penetrating bureaucracy is to have some slight hook in your case, some tiny detail that separates you from the common herd, and if possible, paints you as important on some arcane, specialized level. And to this end, referring to the study was golden. Perhaps some of you caught it: “I’m supposed to be here...”
I dropped my aura of directness, calm and collection in favor of a more innocent and childlike ethos of “Please won’t you help me, I don’t know what to do...” while doing my best to maintain my previously mentioned charm and irrepressible good looks.
I got to wait for about twenty minutes and then the nice lady handed me a form where I summarized my assurance that my tweeted contention that Hillary Clinton had cut everybody’s arms and legs off was meant as satire of right-wing talking points and in no way meant to encourage the former First Lady and former Secretary of State to go on a nationwide killing spree. I made note of the years it’d taken me to develop 28,000 followers, the depth of their devotion and in many cases, emotional dependence upon being able to see my work. Remember Dear Readers, this isn’t about me… it’s about you.
And, fuck it. It’s about the goddam United States States of America. Now More Than Fucking Ever people need to be putting signs up on freeways and the loss of 28,000 twitter followers was a knife through the very heart of the freewayblogger revolution, possibly the most important and least successful free speech revolution ever!
Anyway, I filled out the form and handed it in. Not exactly “Roger and Me” but we’ll see what comes of it. Right now what’s important is putting paint on cardboard and cardboard on freeways, so let’s get back to it.
Laughed out loud when I saw this one, which sort of pops right out at you as you drive past on the 80. Something about the bluntness, size, proximity, and yet utter unreach-ability to traffic gave it an audacity bordering on obscenity. Put it up three days ago with three binder clips and some duct tape.
Oh come on people, would it’ve killed you to paint the cardboard white? You’re sticking something up in front of 100,000+ people: at least have the decency to make it readable.
Passed by these two (well, not exactly, YnohtnA’s sign was the same, but after 4 days my 4’ foot long copperplate “IMPEACH” was taken down so I replaced it with the 6’ one below. I love doing that.)
I’ve been traveling with the sign below for weeks. It’s the most important message I’ve got. I’ve put it up all over the goddam country and I ain’t putting it up no more, so I wanted this last one to have some longevity.
See that “Trump is a traitor” sign next to it? Sarah Snowflake painted it and put it on the University Ave. overpass and after a week I replaced it with one of my own and according to the Freewaybloggers’ Code of Honor put hers in an equal or better place. That was five goddam months ago. The bushes around it were about half the size and you know what? Trump is just as much a traitor now as he was five months ago. And that hand-painted piece of cardboard has been read millions and millions of times because that particular piece of fencing is eye-level to 12 lanes of the Bay Area’s busiest traffic: 300,000+ cars per day.
Think about that. An easily readable “Trump is a Traitor” sign is seen god-knows-how-many-times-every-day for months and not one goddam Republican can take the next exit, (½ mile,) double back, park and take a five minute walk up a hill to take it down. Why? Because nobody wants to take the initiative - every damn one of them drives by every single day thinking it’s somebody else’s job to take it down.
And that’s the punchline to this story - and Freewayblogging in general — and has been from Day One. “Somebody Else’s Job...” might as well be my epitaph. We’re being attacked by Russia, and you know perfectly well just because the President and the Republican Party are in on it doesn’t make it right. We’ve ALL got the right to put up signs about it and I feel like I’ve done more than my share of this particular one. Damn shame if this is really the last “Pick a side” sign this country ever produces, but if so, long may it wave.
There’s an old Kurdish proverb I just made up that goes like this: “When two men are yelling Traitor! the loudest is the patriot.” When all is said and done, that’s all this is or is ever going to be: a shouting match. And like I’ve been saying for tragically close to 20 years now, a well-placed sign is just about as loud as you can get.
Checked into a motel, turned on the TV and knew within the first minute that mine was a day well spent.
Here are some of the impeach signs you saw. Ending this now so I can paint some more and do it again tomorrow.