A couple of local happenings

 

Here are a couple of local happenings that were not of interest to local news reporting, but were “news” to me, even if I was too tired to try to “fit” them into some “bigger picture” on our current sociopolitical reality.  Yesterday this guy here on the ledge by the downtown monorail tracks apparently was “excited” to ride the monorail for the first time, so much so that when the train arrived it was warned via walkie-talkie not to let him aboard. The man heard this and snatched the device away from someone and held court here, already for an hour by the time I passed by:

 

In this image we see there was some “interest” in his antics…

 

…but if he wanted the attention of TV news, he didn’t get it. The person right of center in the red jacket appeared and told him to stop acting like an “idiot.” She was approached by police, and she told them that she knew the man and that he was “educated,” but had just been released from “detox” and was not in “the right mind.” I didn’t hang around because I could see the man was careful to watch where his feet were and this wasn’t some suicide mission. But it could have been handled differently.

Here we see Kent police the previous Friday arresting some teenager with “suspiciously” brown skin:

 

Why were they arresting him? I’m not sure, except maybe they thought he was snooping around the garbage around the boarded-up "residence" on the other side there. When I passed by and saw the police with this kid in handcuffs sitting on a barrel I called out to the cops about how many city laws those white people who had been living there for years had broken and they had done nothing about it:

 

There were three junked vehicles there, one of them out of the frame on the right, in plain sight from the street. According to state law

One or more junk or inoperable vehicles, or parts thereof, which have been accumulated, dismantled, parked, placed, or stored on private property, except a vehicle or part thereof that is completely enclosed within a building in a lawful manner where it is not visible from the street or other public or private property when stored within a garage, constitute a public nuisance.

According to the Kent Police code enforcement page, it is illegal to have “Abandoned junk, and/or inoperable vehicles parked on private property.” Someone who works nearby told me that a fire had broken out inside the house, but when police and firefighters arrived, the residents were nowhere to be found; I mean, why would they hang around when Kent police might be finally forced to do code enforcement?

But then again, in Kent there are two different sets of laws: one for white people, and one for the “others.” Even the numerous white vagrants who have a habit of “finding” property that doesn’t belong to them (or stealing it from each other) are left alone. Kent used to be, like Bellevue, a place for people with right-wing beliefs to escape to from Seattle, which is why every election cycle you see campaign signs for Republican candidates and how to vote the right-wing way on initiatives. Not that everyone “listens,” because according to the Census, the city it is less than 38 percent white today.

Well, that’s it. Although the “standard” edition of Vinegar Syndrome’s Looking For Mr. Goodbar Blu-ray release will be available on Amazon at the end of January, the “deluxe” edition is (or was) available for pre-order and (eventual) delivery from Vinegar Syndrome’s website until Black Friday (it doesn’t appear on searches now). I’m going to review the Blu-ray next week. I have some “issues” with the transfer looking at it on my laptop screen, but maybe it will look “different” if I watch it on a large screen monitor.