Stun Gun, Moving On
Last night was another movie night, this time to Lower Queen Anne to the 5:30 showing of Mike Wallace Is Here at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown. I found it both entertaining and lacking in the depth it really should have.
I also did not have time to get home first before returning, so I rode my bike up there and just read my library book over at Seattle Center by the SIFF Film Forum theatre, which is only a couple of blocks away. There was quite the to-do at the intersection of 1st Avenue N and Republican. Without realizing it, I had actually gotten my first taste of it on my bike ride up there, as a cop car with sirens blaring had been careening down Western Ave just after I crossed it to turn up 2nd Ave W; I totally assumed the cop would bypass me going further up Western, and instead he turned and passed me right on 2nd.
And by the time I had locked my bike up in front of the Uptown Theatre on Queen Anne and then walked toward Seattle Center, that intersection at 1st Ave N and Republican was clogged with no fewer than three cop cars, and a third coming up 1st Ave N with its own siren blaring. I was trying to read my library book while walking, but was distracted by all this commotion and small gathering onlookers.
And then I saw what appeared to be a black man holding a knife -- I think? -- and I'm pretty sure one cop commanded that he drop it. Within moments, multiple cops closed in on him, and not with a regular gun but with what looked like some sort of stun gun, shot him in the back to incapacitate him. I wonder how painful that was.
I continued on as soon as the light changed, though, and I went to sit on a public bench at Seattle Center to read my library book about U.S. transit networks for about twenty minutes or so. When I got up to walk back to the theatre again, there was now a medical vehicle at that intersection, with the man presumably inside it. The rest of the police cars were still there and now a police lady was directing traffic to turn left or right because they could no longer drive straight through toward Mercer on 1st Avenue N.
Once the movie was done, I rode my bike home -- somewhat surprisingly, in the rain. The actual falling of rain was kind of off and on, but it was more than enough; it was also quite warm so I actually didn't even care that much that I did not have a jacket on. I still did not get nearly as wet as I have in the past (and, holy shit! that link is to a photo of me getting too wet riding my bike, exactly six years prior to yesterday to the date), but I did get a little wet.
Anyway, the forecast in the morning had not called for rain at all. And when I looked at the weather app again right as I left work, I was surprised to see 50% chance at 5:00 and at 6:00 but no later, and it did not rain at all until I got into the theatre for the movie at 5:30. But, the movie ended right around 7:00, and although it was not raining at the precise moment I left the building, it looked like it had finished raining minutes, maybe seconds, before: there was even a tiny pool of rain water I had to wipe off my bike seat.
Weather can be surprisingly varied in Seattle just between neighborhoods, so the variance of the precipitation on my route from Lower Queen Anne through downtown and up Capitol Hill was probably both the weather itself changing as well as my just moving around to different spots of the city. At least it only took about half an hour, and once I got home, I made myself a veggie chicken patty sandwich for dinner, fed the cats, and got on to writing the movie review.
It was not long after that I was in bed, and then I frustratingly kept waking up early this morning before it was time for me to get out of bed. I swear I woke up three times between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. alone. That was annoying.
Another movie night tonight: I'm meeting Laney at 6:00 in Cal Anderson Park for this year's single outdoor movie there, Kinky Boots. I have not seen that since it first came out, and yesterday I looked up my 2006 review of it. Wow, I did not like it. I may still like this experience of it better, though, as now I can't be disappointed by it, and I have no obligation to look at it with the same critical eye I did the first time. And the company will be fun.
[posted 12:44 pm]