Urban Park Experience

Drug Grounds, originally uploaded by dumbeast.

Snow Park in Oakland. Debris from what looks, to me, like commerce. Check the baggie, the blunt wrapper, lots of matches & cigarette ends. The ashes were not in a cigarette ash configuration. I saw an unbent wire that looked suspicious, too. No needles, though!

I moved on to another part of the park and just hung out, without recording anything. Sometimes there's stuff going on that, for one reason or another, is unphotographable. I was mostly watching a pair of tiger swallowtails flying about from tree to tree, sometimes interacting in an upward twining double helical maneuver, and then moving apart.

Also airborne, there were robins and pigeons, and a grackle couple that didn't see eye to eye on some issue.

Furthermore. There were a couple guys with metal detectors. Both of them wore bluejeans and unmarked black T-shirts. They had serious-looking metal detectors, with the big disk angled off the end of a long, handled stick, and the oversize headphones. But that's not all. No, they each had a trowel that they used to cut out a circle of turf whenever they heard a beep, I guess. Then they'd dig down maybe 10 inches, pile the sod and dirt on a mini-tarp and go over everything with a hand-held wand-shaped detector. They were conscientious about replacing their divots.

It looked like they were looking for something specific.

They were both wearing knee pads.

Back at the drug benches, some guy settled in there and began grunting/moaning rhythmically. Ostentatiously. In a kind of 'tard voice. He had on dark glasses, and every time I looked over at him, he was already looking at me. After a spell, I left.