Ridiculous Protest by YellowBear, Bex., Loki, Lank, Scarlett, Sean Mahan, Malaysian Eddy, SNORLAX, Prudence, JTony Loves Brains, anna one, The Vixen, Blue, Ben Yamiin
October 30th, 2007 7:12 AM / Location: 37.779313,-122.4186Up with Hills/Down with Hills!
Bex:It started with two. Scarlett says to me "Lets protest something ridiculous! But what?"
And having spent part of the day driving, the memory of those signs that say "HILL" at the tops of very steep sf hills are fresh in my mind. "How 'bout hills?" I say.
With Scarlett's experience as a canvaser and my degree in feminism, we both knew we could find the proper jargon to fight a cause relating to leveling vertical stratification. We decided to form the Humanitarian Association for Topographical Equality. Our slogan would be "Down With Hills!"
Our other roomate, Borchid overheard this. She is 6'2 without the heels." "What do you have against height?" she demanded. The polemical nature of our cause was discovered.
This was confirmed later by the intoxicated participants of an sfØ bonfire. Upon explaining the issue, cries were immediately heard of "Equality Now!" "Up With Hills!" and "Down with Gravity!"
The moderates and flip-floppers waxed poetic about plateaus and "elevated flatness."
Realizing what a hot button issue this was, we knew we had to Take It To The Steps Of City Hall.
Come the day of, the minions were sent forth:
Bex to make a stencil and shirts.
Scarlett to write our mission statement and petition (a work of sheer brilliance, please read it).
YellowBear to round up materials and make signs.
Prudence to make solidarity ribbons.
Lank & anna one made more shirts and signs.
Lowteck to bring one of his megaphones.
When we finally arrived, there was a moment of hesitation. We mulled on the steps, holding our signs and trying to get into character as a few passersby gave us raised eyebrows and looked away.
Then Scarlett grabbed her clipboard and began.
"Excuse me sir, do you support equality in San Francisco?" She did linguistic acrobatics, spouting phrases like "equal footing" and "vertical stratification" and "the overclass." Our first signature. The Downocrats ended up filling our lists with 26 signatures by the end of the day!
As the day passed, the battle got more and more ferocious. Underhanded methods of gaining supporters, such as offering to make bedazzled "WhatWhat" pants for certain majestic supporters supporters, were attempted.
Uncalledfor comments were made about the Uplicans faction size of amidst Downocrats' cries of "Let's Get Horizontal!"
Toward the end, a Sheriff informed us we'd need to leave for an event that evening, asked us what we were doing, and stated with a good natured smile "You all need to get a life." She requested not to have her picture posted. Damn.
Though the Uppies were clearly beaten, we good natured Downocrats were not too lofty to have dinner and bonfire with them. In spite of our differences, peace reigned in the land: Everyone could agree on mustaches.
Loki:
Loki here, with a religious perspective. As some of you may remember, when the topic of hills was first brought up, I was undecided. On one hand, I really like hills. I grew up in rural, mountainous terrain and have always love hiking and walking through high places. I love the vistas that San Francisco's hills offer. I even like the step sidewalks that thread this beautiful city. On the other hand, Bex, Lank and their cohorts make a convincing ethical case against hills. I'm all for social justice, and I'm also naturally wary of any position that defends the status quo.
So, I decided to pray for guidance. To be clear, I opted to consult the most popular god. None of this wait for the festival day and then offer your wooden card to the department of mammal births run-around with minor officials for a topic this important; I went straight to the top. After several minutes of prayer and contemplation, I still had no answer.
God's silence was obviously a test to see whether I could successfully divine His wishes. Within moments, inspiration struck and I had the answer. Hills, I realized, bring great joy to millions and hurt no one. If there's one thing Christian broadcasting has taught me, it's that anything that's fun and causes no harm is almost certainly sinful. I immediately knew on which side righteousness stood.
A quick bible search confirmed my suspicions. There isn't much mention of Hills, but a few passages make God's policy clear. In Nahum 1, we're told that "God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. . . The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence. . ."
EDDY: All I did was show up with margaritas and yell a little....mainly for the what what pants bribery....
shenanigoat:
i brought a megaphone which turned out to be pretty useful. i also had materials with which to make a sign. a can of black spray paint, cardboard, tape and a piece of PVC leftover from a magnificent "failure". i yelled a lot and i very awkwardly solicited signatures from a couple bicyclists.
Lank:
This conflict hit very close to home for me, because anna one, who has been a close collaborator with me in the past, stood on the other side of this battle. Whereas I called for a leveling of the playing field and painted signs and shirts that declared said intent, she staunchly stood up for the hills of San Francisco. The bitterness that raged between our factions from either side of the Steps of City Hall was nigh heartbreaking. Only nigh because while on that street, we were each fueled by passion for our respective causes and the comraderie of our brothers in arms. Who knew that something as simple as a false moustache could allow us to set aside our differences and bring us together again? Oh and the booze helped, too.
"Let's get horizontal!"
JTony:All I know is I look HAYOOGE in that white t-shirt. Anyway, I just saw the event, knew I liked everyone, and figured it'd be fun. I chose the pro-hill side long before I knew what tension there would be between the sides. I just have too many fond memories of looking down on the rest of the world, plus, what with my height and all, I feel at home on hills. I helped most, I think, by making some signs, one that said "The Hills are Alive" and the other that said, "Honk if You Love Hills". The last one got us a lot of honks. I didn't think I'd be so loud, as usually I'm pretty quiet and unassuming (well, for someone over 260lbs) but lending my voice to the effort helped counteract the megaphone a bit and helped make our small group mighty.
Scarlett:
My, how I love an excuse to dress sharply, harrass strangers and act self-righteous! I don't have much to add to the descriptions above, except that for me the highlight was getting flashed by some girl in the back of a passing SUV. Down with hills, up with shirts!!
Damn, how I hate topographical inequality.
Prudence:I jes don like hills.
anna one: "Me and my trust fund are up with hills." Apparently, that was my response when orginally asked what my stance was on the whole 'hills issue' way back at that early bonfire. I am no waffler- no undecided moderate. I made my descision, and stuck by it- even fighting the good fight at home with the clearly misguided Lank. You see, I come from a long line of hill-dwellers, basking in the unobstructed sunshine of wealth and a priviliged view. Of course, hill dwellers are historically the rich and the powerful- from ancient Rome to modern Los Angeles- we sit atop our earthen thrones and lord it over the proletariat, gleefully sipping our wine while the rest of you go on mucking about in your squalid, overcrowded valleys. I prefer the clean fresh air up here at the top- which is why I live on a hill in San Francisco- I enjoy watching the air quality in the central valley go putrid with smog as we enjoy yet another slightly breezy clear day in the city. However, I understand that proliferating the ideals of the leisure class won't get me very far in the land of democracy and popular politics- which is why I took a stance of maintaining the status quo. For this unseemly protest, I produced petitions directed to the population of San Francisco to proudly stand firm in the face of these downocrats and hail the diversity of our geography- without the variations in elevation, our fair city would be forced to focus it's tourist-industry on such vulgar attractions and claims to fame as the founding of the U.N. or our questionably decorous clergy, or, heavens forbid, the politics of such figures as Nancy Pelosi! I found many supporters, that afternoon on the steps of city hall, from vacationing Australians and Syrians to locals from every walk of life- city politicos to street vendors. All in all, the elite numbers of our 'Up With Hills' campaign did us in- even our powerful force of six could not stand up to the constant undignified roar of our opponents. We capitulated on agreement that Eddy's margaritas would go very nicely with a selection of delicacies from a fine purveyor of Mexican eats, and nicer still beside a more noble roar- of a bonfire. |
The HATE Manifesto:We the undersigned endorse with our signature the commendable ideals of the Humanitarian Association for Topographical Equality, the nation’s longest-standing grass roots non-profit organization dedicated to the elimination of vertical stratification in San Francisco and in lands beyond.
The political and moral principles of the Association are as follows:
• In order for true equality to thrive, we must eliminate the great distance between Upper and Lower in our society.
• Men, women and children of all socioeconomic backgrounds have the right to exist on a Common Plane, and we should strive daily to foster togetherness and seeing eye-to-eye.
• Rather than clawing our way to the Top at the expense of others Below, we ought to Level the playing field.
• We desire to walk our paths through life on an even keel, not subject to the Ups and Downs of callous undulation.
• We recognize the inherent instability and precariousness of founding an egalitarian community on Uneven Ground.
• To liberate ourselves and our peers from systematic Subjugation, we must stop Social Climbing, we must cease to fight the Uphill Battle of perpetuating an unjust spatial hierarchy, we must refute the fallacy of the Slippery Slope!
By signing my name below I state here and now that I refuse to go on living precipitously. I seek to tower above my fellows, but rather a two bridge distances between individuals. I hereby announce complacently yielding to the status quo, and declare my dedication to living in a City on a Hill!
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shplank, bayarea, public, cityhall, downwithhills, collaboration, sign, protest, sanfrancisco, persuade, ridiculous, hills69 comment(s)
thats what i say.
some people want nice views and vistas, but its exactly that selfish attitude that leads to landslides.
Professor Plum: you flat-landers have no appreciation for the natural beauty of a landscape with variating elevation. I think it might be time for you to take a trip to California. Or Scotland, if California's too far.
UP WITH HILLS!!!
Hills are dangerous.
Would anyone die from climbing accidents if hills were nonexistant?
Would anyone freeze whilst climbing mountains if hills were mere imagination?
Would a baby in a pram roll down a hill into busy traffic, without the hill?
DOWN WITH HILLS!!!
People can die from running too hard. People can die from getting hit by cars. Babies can die from being neglected by their parents and rolling in their prams into open traffic just by the accidental push of the hand. People die. It's life.
HILLS KILL BABIES, UP WITH HILLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HILLS KILL BABIES, DOWN WITH HILLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So you Uppies support dying then?
Stop the dying! Down with hills!
Plains cause a mundaneness which leads to increased suicides! You are all crazy trying to put us back in the dark ages on a flat earth.
Christians believed in a flat earth... Christians lead the inquisition amongst other bloodsheads The Downies are for MURDER AND SUICIDE!!!
Hills cause a verticallity that just happens to be a popular method of SUICIDE!
Ok, that was really offensive. My bad. But you can't blame a mountain for instigating suicide. It's like blaming the ocean for causing a lifelong obsession with surfing. And then drowning. Don't blame nature for our inherently human (and stupid) fatal decisions. The hills can't help that they're awesome.
What happened during those 28 minutes to prompt your retraction? Berkeley?
They could help it, if they didn't exist!
Hills cause over 44%* of death in the world, thats more than world hunger and disease. Hills deserve to live as much as a social injustice.
SCREW HILLS!
LEWL: SHOW ME YOUR SOURCES!!!
Sean: I was driving home from class.
I'm willing to wager that Bikini Kill would in fact be DOWN WITH HILLS......
Hills = Hip
Yarmouth has 0 Hills and is very uncool
SF has the 2nd most hills out of any city and is super cool.
Hillessness = mundanity.
If you don't like hills pack up and move to the midwest.
F That....San Francisco would still be just as amazing if it were shy a few hills....besides, less hills would encourage those who would normally be too pussy to ride a bike and would help our environment!! HILLS DESTROY THE ENVIRONMENT!!!
England= Hill-less
California=Mountainous, Valley-nous, ocean-nous, desert-nous, forest-nous, awesomeness.
Come to California and we'll change your mind.
Down with hills crew: open your eyes and change your mind. Nature is good for the soul.
Eddy: I thought you supported hills???
Eddy...
Those downers aren't for less hills they are for NO hills.
Topographical Equality = Mundanity for all
Nope, it was never just the bribery that made me support the down with hills movement!!!
Spar...I stand by my statement. You cannot sway me. And Fine...San Fran would still be as amazing if not more amazing with Ø hills.
Chicagø has no hills. Up with hills.
if i ever see samwell, i'm going to kick him.
I would actually be afraid to talk to him...too much of a diva for my taste.
Go for it Get rid of your hills, it's your choice... I will sit on my high mountain top and laugh at you all as you are drowned by rising sea levels. Sea Yeah!
Without hills there would be no place to drive up and park with your lady and make the sweet sweet lovin while looking down at the beautiful city view below.
Well I think that being bi-partisan, we could agree to leave one or two hills for sweet love makin, the lone bag piper, and amazing picnics. also the hill can be used in case of floods and/or apocalypse
Dude, then EVERYONE would be on the lone hill making sweet love. It would be a huge orgy fest. Or just extremely awkward...
OK, let's look at this logically. I keep seeing these spurious claims about how hills do this, and hills do that, and oh how bad the hills are. Pfft. That's what I have to say. Pfft.
I'll use 2 examples plodded forth above. First, the idea that hills kill babies. Totally 100% wrong. You push a pram over the side of the road, it rolls downhill. No harm at all. In fact, for the baby, and potentially for those viewing, it is even fun!. Hell, push me down a hill in a pram (it'd have to be a big one, and no way in hell will I suck on a binky and wear a diaper, don't even dream about it), it could be a brand new sport.
But wait a minute. What's that ahead? The end of the hill? And we have flat ground? We are coming at that flat ground awfullly fast!!!!!! SPLAT.
It isn't the hill that kills. It is the end of the hill that kills, or the flat ground attached to the hill at the end. If the hill never ended, the baby would not die! Hills save babies from being crushed by flat ground, actually. If there were no hill, and it was just a cliff between 2 flat planes, all there would be is SPLAT, no fun in between.
Which brings me to the whole suicide thing. Jump off a high point, it is not the high point that kills, but the low point that intervenes at the end. Again, Hills don't kill. Flats kill. Hills just make you roll for a bit. Hooray for Hills!
I'm not for sweet love. I'm for bitter love.
i just can't support the 'up with hills' baby murder platform.
Like I said in way too many words above (and accidently 3 times)...
It is the absense, or lack of hills...
that kills.
You uppies are all too high to get down.
Its called the horizontal mambo for a reason. Try gettin' it on at 45 degree angle. I dare you. Just don't submit your injuries for this afterward.
Barry White could write a song called "Let's Get Horizontal." It would be hot.
Up with Barry White! Down with Hills!
Alls I can say is:
If it is always horizontal,
yer doin' it wrong.
Bex, I really hate to call you tame here, but JTony is correct.
Maybe you need to try it on a hill sometime.
Besides without hills things like this would be impossible.
What are your hills compensating for, gentleman?
And besides, Herøes don't need hills to fly.
Lao Tsu is down:
"Be the valley of the universe!"
Eschew extremities.
Especially lude topographical ones whose vulgar swells are blocking my view of non-stop feminine valley as far as the eye can see!
I dunno, I see some pretty nice feminine swells both up, down, and even around, and I don't care what they're blocking.
Lao Tsu is down:
"Be the valley of the universe!"
Without hills there'd be no valleys.
Up with hills!
“On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its 'great intellects.''”
That's a rather damning note about flats from none other than Karl Marx (who most might consider the king of the "levelers"
Up with Hills!
EARTHQUAKES SUCK!!!!!
(CNN) -- An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 struck Northern California Tuesday night, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Damn those tectonic plates. The only good they do is produce hills... :)
UPtight. UPset. UPchuck. Tight, set, and chuck would be fine without the UP!
Down with Hills!
You would be for bitter love wouldn't you???
sorry..I haven't been near a computer...this comment is WAY out of sequence. Spar is the Valley King...Mr. Ojai himself. It's no wonder that he's up with hills. And true, a huge orgy on one lone hill could be either awkward or extremely hot depending on who the people were making with the orgy time! I like to think that it'll be the later in a perfect lone hill world.
Yeah, we all know what kind of love בן ימין likes.
Instead of coming down with hills, why not up with everything thats not a hill. Then everything would be high, and equal.
UP WITH VALLEYS!
Because valleys don't grow in vacuums.
What do vacuums have to do with anything. This is getting waaaay abstract. Let's carve pumpkins.
Valleys only don't grow in vacuums because of the hills. If not for the damn hills interrupting their lowness, the valleys could just keep on going forever.
But... there wouldn't be valleys without the hills. I'm so discombobulated right now.
Don't fall for Bex's fancy word talkin'. She's just trying to discombobulate you with her educated speechifyin'.
UP WITH HILLS!
UP WITH VALLEYS!
(because you can't have one without the other)
I laughed out loud at this:
V: "Oh come on! We're Berkeley brethren, we ALWAYS support the preservation of the environment!" Old Lady: "Environment, my ass! It took me two frickin' days to walk up those damn hills to get me some herb from that bastard of a brother..."
...and one-legged man.
:)
Up with hills!
An elevated flatness peace treaty may be in the works already
I think I may have begun this in my Low Score Task completion
sorry buddy, but this was in the works long before then...
A wise man once said:
"Instead of running to the hills, I ran to California! The beach totally beats the hills. They usually have bikinis and there's a huge snack bar!!"
-Kelso That 70's Show
"With 50-plus hills, it's no wonder that San Francisco is considered the second hilliest city in the world, next to La Paz, Bolivia"SF GATE
Careful there, that's a rabbit hole if I ever saw one...
Ack!!! I can feel my molecules neutralizing just looking at that picture. Eeeek!!
They make you use more effort walking up them!