As I walked into a local poetry reading the other night,  a poet called Chris "the poetry man" Vannoy acknowledged  my presence in the audience from the stage. As I haven't  done any performances in several months few in that audience  knew or cared who I was. So I started thinking about my  performance career and thought maybe I should share some of  these exploits with my fellow pirates. Maybe next month I'll  tell you about the time I read naked at The Rita Dean Gallery  or slaughtered Twinkies with my performance troupe  Do-oi-oi-oi-oing at the Casbah club. --- jazz

The Adam's Avenue Street Faire Riot

The riot started only about a week before the street faire. The Ruse, a non-profit theater Downtown, informed me that I was performing on their stage. “Okay I said,” but thinking, “Are you sure?” On the Thursday before the street faire a friend called to tell me that she saw my name in the Night & Day section of the Tribune. The  genres of the performers on the stage were listed next to their names. Next to the Taco Shop Poets it read, “Poetry.” Next to my name it read, “Shock Poet.” Jimmy Jazz, Shock Poet.

That lead me to believe that both The Ruse and the Adams Avenue Business Association knew what they were getting into. On Saturday, I went down to the faire with my family to check out the camel dung incense and sunglasses and to support the poets on the Ruse Stage. On seeing the stage I was immediately dismayed. I dubbed it the “Lame Duck Stage.” Some pathetic little sensitive poets were pouring their feelings out and nobody was listening. It’s hard to read poetry outside. I go to a lot of poetry readings in town, and so I’m qualified to say that poetry readings generally suck. It’s not so much the content that is banal, it’s the delivery. Writers don’t spend enough time thinking how to present their work in a way that isn’t boring. When the Taco Shop Poets took the stage a crowd of about ten people formed and listened to poems about the Chula Vista Swap Meet and Charles Mingus. The most effective part of their performance took place before they got on the stage. They started chanting out on the fairway, next to the wind chime booth. It was the one attempt to involve the fair-goers in the experience. This is the strength of the Taco Shop Poets. They got their name by reading for the people down at La Posta and other taco shops after all. Still the audience reaction was ineffectual. “How does one overcome this particular brand of apathy?” I mused.

Just then I met some guys from KCR (SDSU’s college radio) who have an improvisational group called The Free*stars. “Can you bring the Free*stars down here at 4:00 tomorrow?”

The stage proprietors think that I’m going to show up and read “Poetry” and suffer like a lame duck, but something inside me will not allow that to happen. So  go home and break into the box of tricks? trash can full of gimmicks and props that I use to make my rantings visual and accessible to the masses (read dangerous.) It starts with a hundred feet of yellow CAUTION tape. And some burned out light bulbs. And the Parking Insurrection Guard shirt photographer Patrick Haley bought at the thrift store and the jump rope and the large picture of the pig, and a two foot phallus made from an old red sock. A devil costume pitchfork and horns left over from Halloween. I also brought a dozen Trader Joe’s coffee can empties filled with black-eyed peas and I went to Pic ‘n’ Sav in North Park and bought a couple bags of water balloons.

That night I ran a few of my “poems” together into a ranting diatribe about the culture’s obsession with pork products. Street Faire, hot dogs, get it? My poem “The Pig Ritual” (about the way my neighbors shaved a three hundred pound dead pig for cooking,) a bit of “Tell the Revolutionary Court to Hang the Meterpigs First” and select lines from “Poem to a Mormon Father.”

The only other things you need to start a riot are a group of christian fundamentalist capitalists with no sense of humor, a dozen renta-pigs and the SDPD. I showed up early to the street faire determined to push the envelope of free speech and to entertain thousands of fair-goers. It started with a pint at a bar called Rosie O’Gradys and spreading the word around the faire to come to the Ruse stage.

The Free*stars arrived on time and we began the stage setup. I’m wearing all red, devil horns and toting the pitch fork. Mary Leary is reading a poem on stage and I start the setup. We raise the flag of human flesh over the stage. It’s a pirate flag, its the flag of the inquisition: it’s an effigy of a parking meterman replete with Marlboro baseball cap. He’s swinging from the noose knot of a jump rope. Mary is still reading. The band is setting up. Gary Ghirardi, Ruse CEO, helps me set up the caution tape around the front of the stage. I declare this a “Free Speech Area” and “The realm of satan.” As the band starts to jam I begin to walk around the street faire blowing an Oscar Meyer Weenie whistle and shaking my pitch fork. “Follow Satan, toot!” I proclaim, beckoning the fair-goers toward the stage. The band is in a solid groove by the time I get back. I distribute the water balloons to the crowd making sure to give one to the Coke™ pusher whose booth is in the line of fire (water.) I keep half the balloons for myself up on the stage. The chant begins, "The Pig Ritual, the pig ritual." I pass out the coffee can instruments to some punk kids in the crowd and usher them on stage.

One of them is wearing a Mailyn Manson T-shirt. A rock ‘n’ roll dream is lived out. I recruit other audience members asking them to put their inhibitions on hold and join the band. Publishing magnate Shuge Hustlit takes the stage and starts chiming on a symbol. A small crowd has gathered. No one will step inside the caution tape. I chant and speak the “poem” and the light bulbs crash and the water balloons splash. "The pig ritual, the pig ritual." I hold up the phallus and say, “This is the cock I put inside you daughter,” which is part of a “poem” about how I got my girlfriend pregnant and how the fruit from our union does not carry on her grandparents’ Mormon belief system, and how that must be a painful pleasure. From the stage I could see a couple of forty-somethings jabbing their middle fingers at me shouting “Fuck You!” So I lobbed a water balloon at them. "The pig ritual, the pig ritual." I turned my attention to the swinging meterman effigy, “Kill the metermen // hang them from the streets // stuff tickets in their inflamed anuses and light them on fire.” I ripped it down and threw the P-I-G into the realm of satan and someone threw a water balloon at its remains. And another balloon hit the guy The Spacewurm who was playing drum machine and I jumped off stage and heaved balloons at the crowd and I stood in the center of the realm, my Pandemonium. And the crowd tossed balloons at me and I caught one and heaved it back. And we all had a great time, except for the fundamentalist merchants who were seething because I said “cock.”

I was ready to pass out from exhaustion and the band played on. A finger-pointing merchant stepped up to me in a huff, screaming “You have to admit that you SUCK!” He didn’t offer any details to back up his review of the show. Some other poet jumped on stage and tried to speak, but the thunder was gone. The audience was trying to sort out what happened. The walkie-talkie was buzzing, Ghirardi was already taking flak, as he had all weekend, for the uncensored language coming from his stage. The police were on the way. The security guards (who missed the show) were now looming around the aftermath: ketchup and relish, water and the newspaper stuffing from the effigy and the broken glass and people talking nervously about what had just happened on Adams Avenue.

And then arcing through the sky like a meteor was an near-empty can of Coke. It landed about ten feet away from a security guard who was stuffing his face with a slice of pizza. It was like someone said “Here’s a Coke for your pizza!” For some reason everyone saw the can flying through the air, but no one saw who threw it. It was like time stopped, everything went dark, and a spotlight illuminated the can. One of the other security guards freaked out. His grimace was satanic, seething! He was on the walkie-talkie calling for backup. Code blue! Within minutes every guard on the fairway was swarming around ready to bust some heads. The audience had dispersed. Within five minutes the SDPD was on the scene accosting The Free*stars as they broke down their equipment. “Who’s the leader of this band?” the cop snarled. They wanted someone to take to jail. “I’ve heard of free speech,” said the cop, “but this guy has gone too far.” I stood by watching hoping no one would rat me out.

   The security guards were looking for the can thrower. Fingers were pointing. Bystanders recounted the way the can arced. Within minutes more cops hit the scene. They had heard through the grape vine that a guy in a devil suit holding his penis threw a full beer can and knocked a security guard unconscious. We know how truth gets distorted. After the rumor was dispelled all that was left to complain about was the profanity. The cops pulled the plug on the stage. The rest of the acts for the day were canceled.

About this time the Taco Shop Poets showed up for their second set. I heard later that they were angry at me though they never brought their complaints to my face. The cops had to leave without a prisoner. Two things were clear: the envelope of free speech had been pushed and the Ruse would never again be allowed to sponsor a stage with “poets” at the Adams Avenue Street Faire.

*This essay originally appeared in Uptown magazine, and a chap book edition of DBS.

      Swab the Deck      Barry Graham