Temecula "No Kings" event

[From Craig]  On Saturday, Merikay and I went to the "No Kings" demonstration event in Temecula CA.  We took a lot of pictures and had a lot of fun.  When you're sure that just about everybody at an event is on your side of the political fence, it's great to just relax and enjoy the event.

Temecula locates political events at its beautiful Duck Pond at the intersection of Rancho California Road and Ynez Road. I don't understand the connection between politics and ducks, but there are more things every year that I don't understand.

The announced time was 11 AM to 1 PM, so we got there about 10:30.  We met lots of our Jojoba Hills friends as we walked to the pond.  I'm intending to keep politics to a minimum in this post, and hope you enjoy reading it.

Most of the people there had pre-made signs, which ranged from very stylish and professional to possible "my first sign" efforts.  But we found a helpful group that had brought blank poster board and wide marker pens, and we each made a quick sign.  Mine was of the "my first" type, but it was an old pun phrase that got me lots of approval.  "Politics to a minimum" prevents revealing what our signs and my shirt said!

Google AI suggests that more than a thousand people were there.  Which is way less than Los Angeles at "over 200K" and San Diego at "over 60K", but the Temecula event was just about the right size and duration for our age and temperament.

Rather than a mass march, our event consisted of people with signs on the curbs, holding them up and yelling enthusiastic chants to car drivers and passengers.  I have driven through Duck Pond events, but this was my first time as a participant. Everyone seemed to compliment each other on their signs and shirts.  Very friendly and fun!  I suspect that events in larger cities may have had opposing demonstrators, but not here!

The natural tendency to walk around and see as much of the event as possible, coupled with the density of the demonstrators, led to big surges of people crossing the intersection.  

 

 

 

I took all these pictures with my Samsung Galaxy S24+ phone.  I thought that shooting diagonally across the intersection would be a good way to show the size and look of the crowd, but these are both wide streets so the result was kind of disappointing:

 

My next creative photography idea was to watch for a break in traffic on one of the streets, walk out into the lanes and shoot down the several blocks of demonstrators:

Perhaps "shoot down" was not the right term: it sounds like something that might happen in LA or NYC.  But I hope you agree that this is a better way to capture the spirit of the event.

Shooting from closer to the curb was safer but less impressive in scope, while yielding a more personal picture:

 

 

The simplest and safest way was to just wander through the crowd until I saw what looked like an interesting image.  For some reason I really like these:

 

 

This one just caught me:

 

 

But taking pictures wasn't all I was there for.  I spent the second half of the event holding up my sign and relating with drivers and passengers.  I located myself on Ynez Road south of the intersection, far enough that mine was among the first signs that people saw. 

 

This was really fun.  The right lane, to turn east on Rancho California, moved very slowly so that we had time to build little relationships.  And I found out that in addition to people along the curb showing their signs to cars, at this event cars had signs too!

 

 

 

 

The next one puzzled me, until I went home and Googled it.  Palpatine was the pale, evil Galactic Emperor in the early Star Wars movies.  So "No Tangerine Palpatine" actually relates to Trump.  People are so clever!

My arms got really tired by the announced end time of 1 PM, so we walked back to where we had parked the car.  The shopping center lot had filled quite a bit, and it was like trying to leave an NFL game.  But with some patience and some cursing, we finally got back home.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this post.  A few points that some of you might ask:

• We still travel in our RV, but less each summer.  This year we're going to coastal Oregon for two month-long stays.
• Merikay is quite involved in the Jojoba Hills community.  Her latest art medium is colored pencils.  She has drawn images of many of the dogs and cats in the park, but does not accept payment, suggesting that customers contribute their gratitude to the park's Art Center for the benefit of all.
• I've reached the amazing age of 80, and spend a lot of time on online games including Find The Cat and Math Crossword.  
• Both of us seem pretty healthy at the moment: we hope you are too!