(no subject)
More adventure. The new years day show was amazing as usual; I missed it since I couldn't go last year. Even though this year it was smaller than ever those who were there understand how appreciative they should be of what Syracuse has. Turmoil, Most Precious Blood, Freya, Verse, Outbreak and Dead Hearts played. I still can't really get into Verse,but everyone else was amazing. Freya and MPB's new sounds are definatly a good thing and I think many others agree on that. Hung out a lot at the SARO table and felt good to be active again. I also found out supposedly Tundra is only closing for 6-8 weeks to get a new owner but nothing is confirmed. Billy told me about a new venue that would be interesting so I set up him and Danny to get that ball rolling. This leads into the next day when 10 of us when to Skaneatles Furs to protest, it went very well even though driving there we were worried people wouldn't be out to see us. A guy from Montreal named Fred came to that because he was still in town after the show the day before. I stood next to him and talked for awhile about how he wants to start an animal rights group in Montreal and wanted to know how SARO came about. He was obviously struggling with his English but I understood him for the most part. A cop was across the street taking pictures of us and an undercover cop was in another car watching as well. The cop actually followed us down the street when we walked on the other side so he wouldn't see our cars. We took pictures of him and were amused at him hiding behind a bush waiting for us. After that protest 7 of us had nothing else to do and were hyped up so we went over to Carosel for an impromptu protest. This was not a SARO activity, just a group of activists. We were going to go inside Lord and Taylor but not many people were in their fur section so we just spoke to the manager and took a comment card. While in there a number of women walked by with fur or faux fur on and I asked them if they wanted some literature we had and most of them took it. I think two ladies thought it was a coupon or something and at least one lady saw us later and said she was wearing faux fur so we thanked her. We then went over to Arden B, that store has a ton of fur all over the store and will probably be the next store PETA targets. We went in the store with signs and marched around a number of times chanting; it was a bit surreal because of the store set up we were marching around a group of awestruck people. The manager was actually cool with it and just didn't want us in her store but would have let us stay outside. However the mall security came over and told us no one could solicit without mall and store permission. One mall security dude was flipping out but the rest were very nice and lead us outside. The groups I work with and people in Syracuse tend to stay legal with their demonstrations so this was just a welcome jolt from the norm. I can't wait to see pictures.