On the way to the subway station to go to my first protest march I had to walk through a parade.

I deserve an award.

I am not social. Nature and Nurture are equally to blame. It is simply a fact.

Personal space is the most important thing to me. But I am also a masochist. That’s why I live in New York City. And that’s also at least part of the reason that I finally went to my first protest, the NO KINGS demonstration and march in Bryant Park and along 5th Avenue on July 14, 2025.

I do not believe in bumper stickers.

I want to argue with bumper stickers.

It is important to me that bumper stickers know that they are wrong.

But…

NO KINGS?

Welp.

Ya got me.

Hard to argue with that one. It really is a clever way to frame the current moment around probably the greatest thing about America: NO KINGS.

So if you really want to make America great again, Donald, you really have to work on yourself first.

Is he really a King? Is he really a fascist? Not quite. But he is an authoritarian in a china shop and we find ourselves quickly, all too quickly slipping down those slopes.

When the going gets weird, memes are your North Star.

SO FUCKED UP EVEN INTROVERTS ARE HERE

When I got to the protest someone offered me a a bottle of water from their backpack.

“Nice try!” I thought, “Not today, saboteur!”

But this wasn’t someone sent to take me out of the fight. It was just another first time protester, who in preparation had almost certainly read somewhere that you should bring more water than you think you need and give it to other people who need it and all of this nervous energy about this protest tip made them try to unload 10 bottles in the first 5 minutes to anyone and everyone on a cool, drizzling day as we waited in line for the protest.

I love that.

If only more people were so concerned…

And they were.

There seemed to be a lot of first timers which made me feel more comfortable. And it is a testament to the degree of concern, a concern that isn’t just the normal worry about the other guys being in charge but instead a particular and particularly untethered other guy being in charge, doing the worst thing, in the worst way, at the worst possible time… all the fucking time.

The organizers made a point of the protest being a peaceful, permitted stroll of numbers, but it was still powerful in its size and the unified message of what I assume were disparate minds, strange bedfellows where the times made the strangeness an afterthought.

Standing At 42nd St. and 5th Avenue it was impossible to hear the person on the microphone ramping up the crowd, but the wave of cheers from Bryant park eventually rolled into us and most people hollered not knowing what they were cheering.

Chances are it was something in line with the accepted message, but you never know. We could have been applauding someone saying:

“ACTUALLY DONALD TRUMP JUST GAVE US A LOT OF MONEY! TURNS OUT FASCISM IS PRETTY GREAT! RULE OF LAW AND DUE PROCESS ARE GAY! GET FUCKED! DEADLY NEUROTOXIN WILL BE RELEASED IN 3… 2…”

“YEAH!!!!!! WOOOOO!!!!!!”

I like to imagine… that it was actually a land acknowledgement apologizing for disrupting the tourists, the rightful owners of Midtown Manhattan.

THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE

Democracy also looks like an umbrella spoke in the eye.

Do not take an umbrella to a protest.

This may not be the most important protest survival tip…

…but maybe?

Just before an umbrella spoke caught her eye, I caught the eye of a woman engaged in passive aggressive combat with an untrained, unlicensed umbrella user. She finally said something, which caused the person to move the umbrella, simultaneously dumping water on her head and going on the offensive against me. In bullet time, I rolled underneath the attack and before moving on to a Deumbreallaized Zone I joked to the woman, “Probably the most dangerous thing at the protest, eh?” to which she responded, “This is why I tell people not to bring them!”

Solidarity.

BORN TO DILLY DALLY - FORCED TO FIGHT FASCISTS

As we dillydallied down 5th Avenue, I couldn’t help but imagine Tom Wolfe using a selfie stick.

I couldn’t help imagining a lot of things.

It was very peaceful.

And I came alone so I didn’t have to worry about the welfare or social entertainment of friends.

So… I didn’t worry.

And I didn’t chant. I wanted to be counted amongst those protesting, but chanting never makes it out of me.

But no one seemed to mind.

We were all doing what we we could.

And what I could do was look around and find charm in the humanity of the cause.

Someone was chanting, “NO FASCISTS! NO PEACE! NO FASCISTS! NO PEACE!” before realizing that they had misheard and that they were supposed to be chanting, “NO FASCISTS! NO KINGS!” - “Peace” still in good standing it seems.

Two people in front of me were holding up cardboard protest signs, but to me they were just advertisements for COSTCO - not a bad ally for the day actually. There's a part of me that still believes the fronts of those signs were also just the COSTCO logo.

Everyone at some point or another was entertained by a scantily clad, horned dancer. But they did not seem to notice the dancer literally teleporting all over the protest, *BAMFING* all along 5th Avenue.

And then I thought to ask, “Where are we all going to eat afterwards? And who’s paying?”

Eataly would have been a good choice. At the end of the march, Madison Square Park an art gallery of protest signs, across the street the tourist trap Italian marketplace would have been ironically appropriate – it’s still pretty good food.

And just outside, on the median, no irony was wasted as disassociated demonstrators protested in support of Luigi Mangione. There’s an Eataly spokesperson opportunity for him somewhere down the road, surely.

I went inside and tried to find a cheesemonger I know, but it must have been his day off.

ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE

The NO KINGS protests were co-organized by over 200 progressive groups projecting the unifying message of “FUCK DONALD TRUMP” which really has understandably united progressives with people of different political persuasions. It is importantly a broad focus, not booby-trapping themselves in the foot with other progressive causes.

This branding weaves the visceral worry of Donald Trump into something in the American fabric that most Americans still feel in some ethereal way. But that concern will almost certainly be lost when someone they like is set to succeed.

To some degree it will have to be lost. The next president elected in opposition to the current unabashed authoritarian bent will have to fix this administration’s abuses of power by — you guessed it — abusing power.

It will likely be some time before we see another such perfect storm of abuse as Donald Trump, but the throne of unchecked executive power will still be there, all too tempting to anyone lacking great responsibility.

I don’t know how we get that genie back in the bottle.

Do we just get someone to sign an executive order?

Democracy is the popular panacea, but a democracy is only as good as its restraints. Without them, democracy is often just a word for what you and your friends want. And depending on what you and your friends want and what you’re willing to do to get it, that democracy can end up looking a lot like a Mad King to someone else.

So I agree.

Fuck Donald Trump.

But for the long now… we should keep the spirit of NO KINGS in mind and in practice.

Town Hall in New York City will always be special to me because of the time I saw Norm MacDonald perform there and how I remember it.

I think we were late? And I feel like people were smoking in their seats? But even if that isn’t true, we were in a movie watching another movie. The silence between his words hung just shy of, or maybe beyond, trolling, but the pause was really out of respect for the moment, the pace, the timing…and our time together. The jokes hitting in these moments not with nervous laughter, but with reverence for the resonance of the second, third and further thoughts that it allowed. And for that special night, Town Hall will always mean so much to me.

And now it means even more as I was lucky enough to be in attendance as The Magnetic Fields performed their album 69 Love Songs over the course of two nights at Town Hall, another collection of moments turned into a movie that I’ll never quite remember correctly, but will always remember fondly and with wonder.

That said, Town Hall’s got issues. It’s old as hell, there’s not enough bathrooms and intermission is HELL. Here’s what you’re gonna wanna do. Are you going to get two drinks anyway? Order a double. It’s way too expensive. But you’re going to get it anyway and you’re not going to have time to get a refill at intermission because…there’s not enough bathrooms. There are two. A men’s room and A women’s room. Hold tight. You CAN get through it. It will look like you’ll never get back to your seats in time, but you will. As long as you don’t ALSO have to wait for the bar.

The Magnetic Fields are one of the best bands to listen to on a rainy night. And if you listen to them at any other time, all the best things about a rainy night will come back to you.

And 69 Love Songs may be their best example of that. As the album title says, 69 love songs: real, imagined, romantic, impressionistic, indulgent, ironic, humorous and… Well, you know the rest of the good adjectives, don’t you?

I came to the Magnetic Fields very late and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t come up with a good enough story of how I came to them, but they have been one of my favorite pillows to lay my head on whenever I want to imagine at least 69 affairs I have not and will never have.

And hearing 69 Love Songs performed live while sitting next to my love - to whom I am working on attributing a narrative of introducing me to the band in the first place - was truly a gift.

If you have not heard the Magnetic Fields before, don’t be afraid to hear them for the first time live. Both you and I will be jealous of that moment, whenever we remember it…however we remember it.

Maybe it was during our affair.

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I hope you enjoy the following gallery of photos I took during some of my favorite performances from the two nights.