Downtown

With the weather being delightful today, I decided to take a walk during my lunch break.  I headed down toward Westlake Center, on the way passing a band of greasy hippies on 4th Ave protesting something.  I don't know what and I don't care.  They were standing in front of the Borders Books waving signs that said something about stopping mining.  I'm fairly certain that Borders isn't involved in any mining operations, but the real point of this is that I got to thinking - is there any less effective way of gaining support for a cause than waving signs and irritating people with chants?  Has anyone ever walked past a group of people who don't appear to have bathed in a week yelling poorly rhymed nonsense and said, "you know what, I don't think Borders should be doing any mining."  Or has anyone ever walked by a table with some creepy people holding signs with President Obama with a Hitler moustache drawn on him and decided, "well that changed my mind, I'm voting for Lyndon Larouche in the next election."  No, of course not, so why do people still do it?  Obviously they are misguided, but there's got to be more to the psychosis. 

Anyway, moving on from there I grabbed some food and continued my stroll.  As it turns out, the route back to my office was a little adventurous.  A few blocks were shut down by police and there was a helecoptor hovering overhead.  I snapped a few photos across the street from the Washington Mutual Tower, or I guess now the Chase Tower although I haven't heard that it has officially been renamed.  Naturally there were a lot of people standing around watching the proceedings and after stopping to ask what was going on, I found out that there had been a shooting on a bus a couple blocks from my office.  Word on the street was that a woman had been hit by a ricocheting bullet, although news reports I found after the fact say that medical response teams found no evidence that she had been hit.  So despite some fear, no one was injured and the police caught and arrested the two perpetrators shortly after. 

All in all, a pretty eventful lunchtime stroll.  It kind of makes me miss the more rural areas where your biggest concern is that the guy down the street gets busted with a meth lab in his garage.  I'd really like to find a job on the East side again where shootings and violence are rare and my commute would be much shorter.