A Friday night punk show on BART train? Awesome!!
Two local bands spread the word to their fans, and hauled their gear (even drums!) onto a train on a train at 16th and Mission Friday night and did an impromptu show as they rode to the East Bay. They managed to play several songs each before BART finally asked them to leave the train. I gotta say, it sounded like a blast.
It was not an under-the-radar event, once it started:
The train was packed several cars deep with showgoers in spiked leather jackets and fishnets. Windows, seats and video monitors that were spotless when I got on were now covered in stickers and graffiti. Even the car's ceiling became tattooed. As the doors opened at each stop, I hung my head outside and gulped down as much fresh air as I could.
So, yeah, people noticed.
The music and chaos went on for five more stops — about six songs per band, to the surprise of the band members, who thought they'd be handcuffed before the first set started. BART police entered the train at Fruitvale Station and ordered everybody off but didn't detain or fine either band.
And it was at this point that I kinda went from “that’s fun” to “that’s fucked”.
Not that I’m rooting for the band members to get arrested. (Although if I was just trying to get home from work Friday night and had to miss a train because of this I might feel differently. Or if I was part of the BART cleaning crew.)
No, it was because of where they got taken off the train — Fruitvale Station. You know, the BART station where Oscar Grant was killed. Unarmed, shot by a cop early on New Years Day 2009. There had a been a fight and police were called. By the time they arrived, the fight was over but they started going for people they decided had been involved. Grant was face-down on the platform with an officer’s knee on him when the officer shot him point-blank and murdered him.
Some years have passed, so there has probably been a lot of turnover in the local cops. Maybe they resolved to do better after that, and that’s why the response to this show was reasonable — stop disrupting things and get out, but nothing more.
Somehow though, I don’t think a car full of Black and Brown kids would have had such a lenient response. So if anyone asks you what you mean by “white privilege”, point them to this story.