Day 209

May 31, 2020

Today has been a really strange day. I thought that living through an actual pandemic was the most incredible collective experience that could happen in my lifetime. Well I was wrong. This week there have been protests in various cities in the US because yet another Black person was killed while in police custody. Today, the protests are in downtown Santa Monica. There have been helicopters circling most of the day. I honestly didn’t think anything of it as I figured the news were covering the protests and I’m not so far from the area. I opted not to attend because, as previously mentioned, we are in the middle of a pandemic. So helicopters circling, eventually you stop hearing them.

But at around four in the afternoon, when the curfew began in Santa Monica, the tweets started becoming a bit more harried. Looters were destroying downtown Santa Monica. The texts started coming in, asking if I was OK. So I finally put on the news. I never watch the news. This was shocking to see. People were ransacking the Vans store on the corner of 4th and Broadway. There were shoes and shoe boxes everywhere. People running in and out of the store and dropping their piles off into waiting cars. Everywhere you looked people were breaking windows, walking away with multiple Macs, piles of clothes, and everything they could get their hands on. One local network had a split screen showing the protesters on one side and the looters on the other side. And the thing is, the police concentrated on keeping the protesters on Ocean Avenue and did nothing about the massive destruction going on two blocks away. It was the most surreal thing.

After about an hour of that they did a split screen of Santa Monica and Long Beach. The police in Long Beach literally watched as people looted the Urban Outfitters. They just let them do it. I couldn’t wrap my head around what I was seeing. Eventually the looters left Santa Monica. Maybe? But not before setting a sushi restaurant on fire on Fourth and Santa Monica. The REI across the street was hit really hard as well. There was a car on fire in the parking lot of, I think, City Hall or the Civic Auditorium, couldn’t really tell. It was insanity. Then the coverage switched to just the police corralling the protesters and firing who knows what to disperse them. They broke them up into a couple of different groups. Eventually they were just herding them through the city. They were mostly just walking and randomly sitting down and blocking streets. In the meantime, and this was not televised on this particular local channel, looters were running up the main streets breaking windows and taking what they could. The 7-11 on Wilshire and 7th had all it’s windows broken and it was ransacked. Same with the Vons on Lincoln and Broadway. They were all over the place.

I took this photo during my quick run to the corner store to get some things I needed before curfew. I heard the Walgreens on 20th and Wilshire was hit as well. That’s just up the street… After several hours of watching this unfold I had to tune out. The helicopters are still circling and it’s about 11 PM. I’m not sure what the state of things will be in the morning. Sleep will not come easily tonight.