A couple of days ago, just after our “President” started hawking Chinese phones in return for a $500 million loan, I put up this sign along with this flag. Looks good, doesn’t it?
The locks were off the normally well-sealed overpass, so CalTrans was pretty quick, 15 — 20 minutes to take it down, alas. Caught this as I was snapping pix and, like an idiot, then rushed to get a drive-by before they took it down. I should’ve just kept taking pix, because it turned out to be a crime-in-progress.
During the drive-by I saw they did the one thing they weren’t supposed to do: take down the sign and leave the flag. While I don’t expect every CalTrans worker to be a Constitutional Law specialist, a lot of time and effort went into hammering this out in the courts and I thought CalTrans would’ve at least put out a memo.
I let it be overnight, maybe give them some time to rectify their error and either put the sign back up or take the flag down. But the next morning, when I saw that neither of those two things had happened, I did the logical thing…
A reporter from the FOX News affiliate in LA had been asking me to do an interview for months now and I’ve been stalling for a couple of reasons: mostly wanting to keep a low profile and not be too in-your-face to CalTrans, who overall have been pretty good about letting my signs stay up.
Their contention was that Using the Public Commons for the Posting of Free Political Speech As Permitted Nay, DEMANDED by the Founding Fathers was hazardous in some inexplicable way that Selling Shit on Goddam Jumbotron Screens next to the Freeway was not, and so in order to maintain this fairy tale constitutionally everything would have to go, flags included.
But if they’re going back to picking and choosing what stays and goes… if they don’t want to be a Department of Transportation anymore but they wanna be my goddam editor instead, then we’re going to have some problems. (Note to editor, next time you need to streamline my work, take the flag and leave the sign. For editors y’all have a lot to learn about authorial intention.)
So I decided to do the interview, along with this sign, which predictably stayed up all day, and may well still be there now.
Although none of the flag discussion made it in, it was a great interview. However, if you’re like me, you don’t pay a great deal of attention to your appearance — generally eschewing mirrors in favor of just walking around thinking you look more or less just like you did 20 or 30 years ago — so it was a bit shocking to experience what I actually look and sound like on film. But when age gives you lemons, you make what lemonade you can, so I’m currently working on a one man show of stories and song called “David Crosby: The Later Years.”
I did a couple more signs downtown and returned a few hours later to check the FBI sign, and then put this one up a quarter mile or so further:
There’s a bit of a science in determining critical intent in the semiotics of automobile horn honking, but it’s one of the very few sciences where I consider myself something of an expert. To summarize, approving honks are usually long and sustained, while those less approving are staccato, generally tripartite and punctuated with shouts of "Fuck You!," "Faggot!," and "Fuck You, Faggot!" Those of you as interested in the hypersexualization of partisan politics in 21st Century America as I am should note that with the rare exception of “Fuck You Hippie!,” “Fuck You!,” “Faggot!,” and “Fuck You, Faggot!” are the only catcalls considered appropriate to political sign hangers with which you happen to disagree.
I’m proud to say “Trump is a Traitor” got one long, sustained chorus of righteously approving honks from at least a dozen horns, and it sounded like a symphony.