13 Sep 2000

bwarr@pacbell.net

Twas the night before Street Scene, and outside my house, Lots of people were stirring with intent to get soused.

There was a lot of traffic Thursday night, many people came down to check out the Street Scene music fest being set up. Vehicular traffic was a nightmare, as many of the roads were blocked off to street traffic. The rogue canceller and I printed up a load of 'Cult in Your Neighborhood?' and 'Xenu' fliers at Kinko's, and started wandering around downtown. There seems to be a crowd dynamic at work, sometimes nobody seems interested in talking to us, other times, we can't even walk a block without speaking to several people at a time. This was one of those times; everybody seemed to want to discuss the cult!

Our usual pub had their patio screened off with chicken wire for Street Scene, it was like sitting in an RPF camp with beer. I was told by the bartender that this was due to last year's fest, in which passersby on the sidewalk were snatching beers from the patrons. We didn't give out a single flier on the patio, so after a beer we broke out of the cage and hit the streets again. One fellow saw our shirts and chatted with us a bit. A friend of his had some articles about Scientology published in Germany, and has been harassed by the cult ever since. He took a couple of our fliers, and seemed pretty knowlegeable about Scientology; I guess when you're friends with Frank Oliver, you can't help but pick this stuff up!

This was a pretty short stealth run, as shydavid had to get back and finish his preparations before leaving for Hawaii. We gave out 45 of our 50 fliers to the crowd.

Street Scene runs from Friday to Sunday. I didn't feel like going out on Saturday night, sick of noise and crowds. Sunday morning, I printed up 500 more fliers in the ayem, before the people started flooding into downtown, and went out around 5 pm. I encountered a group of buskers on a street corner outside the Street Scene gates; two pipers and drum. They were quite good, and drew a lot of attention. During their break, I spoke to them briefly, they were from the UK and knew of the cult, having seen their ads in the tube stations. Called them rude names, too! They all took fliers for later.

I just stood around in my Kills T-shirt, enjoying the music. Conversation is impossible when the pipes are blowing, so I held a sheaf of fliers and handed them to people. I got around to counting the remaining fliers yesterday. I gave out 300+! That's a lot for San Diego! And I didn't see one single Scientologist!

this is true,

--
barb

"Car salesmen are after your money, Christians are after your soul, but the Church of Scientology wants both." --Hartley Patterson

"Every week, every month, every year, every decade and now every century, Scientology does weird and stupid things to damage its own reputation." -Steve Zadarnowski

http://www.xenu.net
http://www.xenutv.com (see live Scientologists in their natural state!)