Riding the Hi (Minneapolis' Light Rail system) was very eventful today. I'll break observations into The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
The Good: At each station are several interactive audio/visual art kiosks, but the ones I find are usually either broken or play stories that are irrelevant to life in the Twin Cities (for example, a piece about fog rolling in to San Francisco). At the 38th St. station two of three kiosks were busted, but the third played a nice story about a promotion at a 1984 MN Twins baseball game: one could win a car by landing a paper airplane through the sunroof; after only a dozen or so planes from the thousands launched from the stands reached the field, the author jumped down, ran to the car, and slam-dunked his plane in.
The Bad: Two transit cops harrassed a young bearded guy who appeared to be of Middle Eastern ethnicity. Wait, make that three officers, as backup was called in. For twenty minutes they went through his bag, examined several types of ID, and asked a steady stream of questions before turning him over to a G-man in an unmarked car (who interrogated him for at least another 25 minutes; was ongoing when I split). His crime? Taking pictures as the train rolled out of downtown. Did the Po-Po take a White guy off who was doing the exact same thing?! Frell no. Gotta love the Patriot Act!
The Ugly: After turning the "terrorist suspect" over to the government official, the cops turned their attention to pre-9/11 usual suspects: pulled a Latino and a Brotha off the next train and frisked them both before issuing citations. Another great day in the U.S.A....
Just to mess with their minds, I should do what I was talking about: ride the entire train the entire day. I should also carry a metallic briefcase with me, filled with documents of course, but they'll think it's a "Suitcase-Nuke" or something ;(
Posted by: at April 19, 2005 03:43 PMAlso, if they pulled any shit like that against me, I would so sue their asses in a heartbeat.
Posted by: Jason at April 19, 2005 03:42 PMI had a relative who was arrested by Airport Security because he took a picture of a plane from inside the terminal. My relative is from the third-world hellhole of Bangladesh, and had never seen many big jumbojets before, which is why he took the picture.
Seeing as how I myself was not harassed during the Anti-Somnambulism project, I was thinking of just chilling and riding it back and forth constantly all day long next semester when I have like 4 hours between classes. I have basically a Free Ride all-day pass known as the "U Pass." However, I may now reconsider it. A person like me, riding a train all day long back and forth could possibly be construed as a "test run" or something, or they'd think I was "scoping" the train out for a future attack or some shit like that.
Posted by: Jason at April 19, 2005 03:41 PM