Snow Park, Oakland

Ink & colored pencil in small Moleskine notebook
Click here for larger view

I drew this sitting on a wall in front of the building where I work, waiting for a ride after I witnessed something disturbing and weird this evening that changed my plans for the evening. I left work and headed to BART to get home and meet Lea to go to the California Watercolor Association meeting where Jody Mattison was going to be demonstrating painting using a grisaille technique in black and white oil painting over an acrylic underpainting in burnt umber, and then glazing in color in oils (odd for CWA which is usually all about transparent watercolors, but serendipitous for me since I wanted to learn that technique).

I saw a boy in a small group of middle-school age skateboarders being attacked by a huge security guard half a block from my building. The security guard looked and acted just like Forrest Whitaker as Idi Amin in the Last King of Scottland. The boy couldn’t have weighed 100 pounds and the enormous guard must have been 6’4″ and 280 pounds. They were fighting like kids in a school yard shoving each other and yelling. The guard shoved the boy hard who threw his skateboard at the guard, who then pushed the kid down in a raised planting bed and began choking him. He finally let the kid up with a viscious crazy laugh and the two began yelling at each other again. People on both sides of the street and driving by in cars looked stunned. The guard kept roughing up the kid, pushing him down, strong-arming him and yelling madly. Two cars pulled over and tried to intervene but the guy ignored them, and I could see people calling 911 on their phones. Occasionally the guard would talk into a radio and then go back to acting crazy and aggressive with the kid.

I started to leave and then just couldn’t. I walked over to them and said, “Excuse me sir, do you work here? This is totally inappropriate and unprofessional behavior.” He said he worked for the security firm hired by the building. The kid was saying, “Did you see him attack me? He was harassing me…” and his buddy said “I have it all on my camera!” He showed me the film on his little digital camera and it clearly showed the guard’s aggressive behavior and the kid defending himself. I asked them if they would all follow me back to the building where I knew the building security guards who staffed the front desk would be more reasonable. Surprisingly they all agreed to follow me as did several witnesses. Inside the building the guard said the police had already been called and everyone agreed to wait for them or left their names and numbers for the police.

Meanwhile I realized I’d never get home in time to meet Lea so I phoned her. She offered to bring me dinner so that we could go directly from my office to the meeting. Finally the police came, interviewed everyone separately. From what I heard while waiting, apparently these kids regularly skateboard by the building because the boy who got attacked’s mom owns the Togos Deli in the building and the guard regularly harasses them about skateboarding, even though they stay on public property, not on the building’s grounds. And the guard claimed the kids harass him. I told him that he still had no business behaving that way and I told the boys that they were asking for trouble, knowing that this guy was wacked but still tempting him by skating nearby but that still didn’t give him the right to harm them.

Finally I left everyone in the building with the police and went out in front and did this drawing of the sunset view of the park across the street with the huge herd of geese (it’s too big to call it a flock) that hang out there, Lake Merritt in the back to the left, and a tall, glorious Art Deco apartment building behind the trees. Lea arrived with a wonderful dinner for me, and drove us to the meeting for the demonstration which was terrific!

Tomorrow when I go to work I’m going to talk to the building management to tell them that guy should NOT be working there.