We did the July 4th parade here earlier in the month and there were somewhere around 7000 people along the parade route. We went with one of our MRZRs with a M240 on the arm mount and had all of my guys dismounted tossing out candy to the kids, and handing out cards and our flyer to everyone as we went. We were trailing behind the HMMWV that was driven by the county Sheriff and Undersheriff and had the county commissioner's on the back of it tossing out candy. At one point one of them came over and asked if we were there to provide fire support.
Later that day there were people like Glen Beck at the local college stadium that I heard had something like 25,000 people attending prior to the fireworks show. It was an absolute madhouse and we basically got chased down by people asking about night vision, the vehicle or wanting a flyer because they didn't get one.
Fast forward to yesterday and about 3 miles over in a neighboring town. There was another parade as the 'local' religious group that inhibits Utah has a giant holiday over the weekend. It's basically their 4th of July, Independence Day and Columbus Day all at the same time. We had decided, based on the July 4th turnout, to attend this parade and the festivities afterwards as well and registered for the event roughly 10 days beforehand.
We started to get our overall plan together this week and waited for Saturday. On Thursday, I get a call from a local number that I do not answer and get a voicemail to return the call in regards to the parade. I call back and am told that we were selected to be cut from the parade because it was going to be so large this year that the local police and fire departments needed it to be smaller before they would sign off on it. I didn't think too much about it and figured we got cut as we weren't a purpose built parade float; oh well.
After teaching my guys all about mission planning and being able to pivot without as much as whining about Plan A not working out, we got to work. Mapping the day's activities, parade routes and the timelines of where any festivities would occur post parade, we put a plan together and were ready on Saturday.
This is where shit got really stupid.
We arrive at the location we picked at a city park where the parade would end. After the parade, this park would have 'activities' for the next few hours and was an obvious gathering point. It made perfect sense to post up there in the parking lot with one of the mil vehicles, candy, flyers and a promo to shoot some machine guns to get some traffic and let the locals know what was in their backyard. Set up was fast, and we even had a police car swing by and talk to us about how cool this was and told us good luck.
As the parade started, I noticed something was off. The parade route had like....1/10th the people the July 4th parade had and the actual parade consisted of shit like 3 guys on the back of a truck playing religious music to a group of weird looking millennials from the local high school theater class on foot doing I have no fucking idea what. This was some Children of the Corn level shit. The only way I could describe this 'parade' and the people along the route, when compared to the party atmosphere of the 4th, is 'Little Dick Energy'. That was around the time it made sense to all of us; we weren't cut because of parade size limits, we were targeted. We didn't know that we were right at the time, but that was confirmed earlier today from someone who contacted me to let me know that there was an actual discussion within the city to exclude us because of the fact that we would basically make their parade all about us and not about lame local religious things. Can't tithe to NV and machine guns, so we can't have that now can we!
So whatever, let's fucking do this. Tent is up. Tables look great. The crew is talking to people. My wife even came to give kids candy.
We're in the parking lot for all of 30 mins until the Karen of all Karen's with a clipboard appears. I could feel her Karen-ness before I even managed to catch her marching over towards us out of the corner of my eye.
In the middle of what seemed like a panic attack, she demands to know what we are doing because she is the park manager. I think the lack of anyone giving a shit just set her Karen level another 2 or 3 levels higher. We explain what we're doing and she goes on about how we weren't in the parade. I go over with her how we were, until Thursday because they had called us. She then denies that even happened. I then show her the missed call and VM on my phone and she confirms that is their number but they had probably called me because I wasn't registered for the parade. Wait...what? How did you call me if I wasn't registered?
You could see on Karen's face that she was caught in a lie. Everyone just stared at her and then she ran off in a huff.
A few minutes later, all I hear is the shriek of Karen as she is holding up her phone like it was Thanos' glove to proclaim that we needed to leave within 5 minutes or 'she was calling dispatch'. Not the police. Dispatch. LOL WTF. Even my wife laughed at her.
I again, ask about the parade and what had happened. She of coarse doesn't want to discuss that but wants me gone or she's calling dispatch. Multiple people, some who were guests at the park who we didn't know, begin to ask her what the problem was as well. She had lost any control she had of her park and an uprising was on the horizon. The absolute best was an older guy in a wheelchair who had wheeld up behind her. I look at her and ask if she was going to continue to stand on the sidewalk as he was trying to get by. She looks at him and nicely says that the wheelchair ramp was over there; he responds with telling her to GTFO of his way because he wanted a flyer.
Seeing that she was a few minutes away from being burned at the stake, she threatens us again with 'dispatch' and that 'they wont be nice when they come!!'. My response of letting her know that I have 5 deployments and that I don't give a single fuck about her, or dispatch, put her into limp mode for a good minute because apparently, no one (including her 11 cats) had ever talked to her like that before.
I tell the crew that we're going to go as Karen is just going to escalate this to the point that she's going to pepper spray herself or something. Technically it is city property, but there are no restrictions to this and we weren't in the park.
In hindsight I wish she would have had the cops come because I have a weird feeling it would have ended up with the cops rolling their eyes and then us talking about night vision and machine guns.
But....I got kicked out of a parade and a park yesterday.
Later that day there were people like Glen Beck at the local college stadium that I heard had something like 25,000 people attending prior to the fireworks show. It was an absolute madhouse and we basically got chased down by people asking about night vision, the vehicle or wanting a flyer because they didn't get one.
Fast forward to yesterday and about 3 miles over in a neighboring town. There was another parade as the 'local' religious group that inhibits Utah has a giant holiday over the weekend. It's basically their 4th of July, Independence Day and Columbus Day all at the same time. We had decided, based on the July 4th turnout, to attend this parade and the festivities afterwards as well and registered for the event roughly 10 days beforehand.
We started to get our overall plan together this week and waited for Saturday. On Thursday, I get a call from a local number that I do not answer and get a voicemail to return the call in regards to the parade. I call back and am told that we were selected to be cut from the parade because it was going to be so large this year that the local police and fire departments needed it to be smaller before they would sign off on it. I didn't think too much about it and figured we got cut as we weren't a purpose built parade float; oh well.
After teaching my guys all about mission planning and being able to pivot without as much as whining about Plan A not working out, we got to work. Mapping the day's activities, parade routes and the timelines of where any festivities would occur post parade, we put a plan together and were ready on Saturday.
This is where shit got really stupid.
We arrive at the location we picked at a city park where the parade would end. After the parade, this park would have 'activities' for the next few hours and was an obvious gathering point. It made perfect sense to post up there in the parking lot with one of the mil vehicles, candy, flyers and a promo to shoot some machine guns to get some traffic and let the locals know what was in their backyard. Set up was fast, and we even had a police car swing by and talk to us about how cool this was and told us good luck.
As the parade started, I noticed something was off. The parade route had like....1/10th the people the July 4th parade had and the actual parade consisted of shit like 3 guys on the back of a truck playing religious music to a group of weird looking millennials from the local high school theater class on foot doing I have no fucking idea what. This was some Children of the Corn level shit. The only way I could describe this 'parade' and the people along the route, when compared to the party atmosphere of the 4th, is 'Little Dick Energy'. That was around the time it made sense to all of us; we weren't cut because of parade size limits, we were targeted. We didn't know that we were right at the time, but that was confirmed earlier today from someone who contacted me to let me know that there was an actual discussion within the city to exclude us because of the fact that we would basically make their parade all about us and not about lame local religious things. Can't tithe to NV and machine guns, so we can't have that now can we!
So whatever, let's fucking do this. Tent is up. Tables look great. The crew is talking to people. My wife even came to give kids candy.
We're in the parking lot for all of 30 mins until the Karen of all Karen's with a clipboard appears. I could feel her Karen-ness before I even managed to catch her marching over towards us out of the corner of my eye.
In the middle of what seemed like a panic attack, she demands to know what we are doing because she is the park manager. I think the lack of anyone giving a shit just set her Karen level another 2 or 3 levels higher. We explain what we're doing and she goes on about how we weren't in the parade. I go over with her how we were, until Thursday because they had called us. She then denies that even happened. I then show her the missed call and VM on my phone and she confirms that is their number but they had probably called me because I wasn't registered for the parade. Wait...what? How did you call me if I wasn't registered?
You could see on Karen's face that she was caught in a lie. Everyone just stared at her and then she ran off in a huff.
A few minutes later, all I hear is the shriek of Karen as she is holding up her phone like it was Thanos' glove to proclaim that we needed to leave within 5 minutes or 'she was calling dispatch'. Not the police. Dispatch. LOL WTF. Even my wife laughed at her.
I again, ask about the parade and what had happened. She of coarse doesn't want to discuss that but wants me gone or she's calling dispatch. Multiple people, some who were guests at the park who we didn't know, begin to ask her what the problem was as well. She had lost any control she had of her park and an uprising was on the horizon. The absolute best was an older guy in a wheelchair who had wheeld up behind her. I look at her and ask if she was going to continue to stand on the sidewalk as he was trying to get by. She looks at him and nicely says that the wheelchair ramp was over there; he responds with telling her to GTFO of his way because he wanted a flyer.
Seeing that she was a few minutes away from being burned at the stake, she threatens us again with 'dispatch' and that 'they wont be nice when they come!!'. My response of letting her know that I have 5 deployments and that I don't give a single fuck about her, or dispatch, put her into limp mode for a good minute because apparently, no one (including her 11 cats) had ever talked to her like that before.
I tell the crew that we're going to go as Karen is just going to escalate this to the point that she's going to pepper spray herself or something. Technically it is city property, but there are no restrictions to this and we weren't in the park.
In hindsight I wish she would have had the cops come because I have a weird feeling it would have ended up with the cops rolling their eyes and then us talking about night vision and machine guns.
But....I got kicked out of a parade and a park yesterday.
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