*Why, the full majesty of the law must descend
on this miscreants with a rigorous exercise
of zero tolerance for such affronts
East Bay Express
2005-05-18
Till Arrests Do Us Part
The Passenger Liberation Front wants to deliver you from
boredom.
By Joseph Plaster
Inside a BART train screaming through the Transbay Tube, a
flutist and accordionist stumble through a rendition of
"Here Comes the Bride." A young man in a gray suit invites
the unassuming Sunday transit riders to join a colorfully
dressed wedding party and gather in "rebellious, renegade
matrimony."
The unshaven groom, "Otto Matik," swings from the railings
in a suit, sporting dark shades. His cherub-faced bride,
"Naan Shawlance," picks at her ruffled wedding dress as
flowers are thrown in front of her. The wedding party
quickly drapes a gaudy faux-garland over the car's door and
attaches artificial white flowers and plastic wedding rings
to hand railings. "Take each other's hands, and hold on to
the rail," the fake minister says.
Commuters jockey for a better view of the ceremony, standing
and kneeling on the plush seats with wide grins on their
faces, or craning their heads and looking askance through
dark sunglasses.
"I hope if I marry here, BART will always be adventurous for
me," Naan says melodramatically as part of her mock vows.
The couple met on BART, she says, an event that "completely
changed our experience of public transportation." Then the
minister gets right to the point. "Do you take Naan
Shawlance to be your bride?"
The groom pauses a little too long to think it over.
"Do it! Do it!" the crowd chants.
"Come on, Otto baby, you know I love you," Naan pleads, a
tiny braid falling over her forehead, tied with a large
white ribbon matching her dress.
Finally, Otto says, "Sure, why not?"
Naan Shawlance lives up to her name in response to the same
question: "I guess."
The wedding is the latest in a chain of BART interventions
thrown by a loosely organized group of East Bay artists and
activists united under the tongue-in-cheek moniker of the
Passenger Liberation Front. The happenings belong to the
same art-as-activism family as Reclaim the Streets, which
stops traffic for street parties, or the Situationists, a
group of 1960s artists and activists who sought to alter
people's perceptions of the modern city. The NYC Club Kids,
who held dance parties in subways and fast-food chains in
the late 1980s, may also have inspired a prior Passenger
Liberation Front event, an '80s dance party held in March.
BART police, who made an arrest and confiscated boom boxes,
stopped that event short. But the transit takeovers are
generally playful, and today's mock marriage could hardly be
considered rowdy.
That is, until the flutist objects to the union. In a
classic Jerry Springer moment, the groom throws off his
jacket and wrestles the nattily dressed musician to the
floor, amid shrieks and laughter from the others. Another
objects and is brought down, his black wig and gray suit
disheveled in the process. "You were supposed to be my best
man!" Otto yells.
"This is so California," says Maris Maraga, a clean-cut
tourist from St. Louis. "It's totally fun and crazy." Her
mother, Sue, agrees: "It definitely brought joy onto the
train. I was telling my husband the other day that I broke
the rules on BART and spoke to the woman beside me." Maris
adds: "This definitely breaks BART etiquette."
This is just what the organizers were hoping for, says the
accordionist "Zephyr," a young woman with green-highlighted
hair who lives in an Oakland cooperative house along with
many of the other core participants. "BART is a public
space, but people don't really interact with each other,"
she explains. "So we're trying to create a space where
things can be creative, using BART as a form of art that can
engage people."
Elizabeth, 27, a painter and dancer who lives in North
Oakland, agrees. "We have the potential to interact in a
more creative way with each other," she says. "Doing unusual
things in public places raises people's awareness of the
potential for fun, creative interaction, and play. We are
amazing, creative people, but we don't interact."
One of the first Passenger Liberation Front events was an
art gallery opening. "Everyone's always getting on the BART
and they always look so bored, and the environment is so
office-cubically," says Vanessa Gravenstine, 24, also of the
Oakland collective. "So we were trying to reclaim that and
put art out there and liven up their commute." Held on a
weeknight BART train a few months ago, artists "dressed up
really fancy," served hors d'oeuvres, and hung their
paintings and photographs. One artist posed as an oracle and
gave free advice to passengers.
About fifty people arrived for the next BART event, an '80s
dance party held on St. Patrick's Day. Some people from the
St. Pat's parade "just loved it, and treated it as a
continuation of the festivities," Gravenstine says. "They'd
come in and start dancing on the train with us, and if they
didn't like it they'd go to a different car."
Jesse Sanford, a 27-year-old anthropology graduate student
at UC Berkeley, remembers the BART car being transformed.
Modified boom boxes appeared "from nowhere," he says, "with
extra-loud amplification and batteries attached to them."
Streamers were hung from the railings by costumed revelers.
But this isn't just a way to blow off steam, Sanford claims;
it's a political act. The BART happenings, he says, "bring
people together through solidarities that are deeper than
the solidarities of disgruntled, sleepy commuters."
BART spokesman Linton Johnson doesn't quite see it that way.
"We are in the business of moving people safely, securely,
and efficiently from point A to point B," he says. "We have
zero tolerance for anybody violating BART law." Using a
"sound device" is one such violation.
After a 10:00 p.m. complaint from the SFO station, Johnson
says, three BART police officers boarded at the 16th Street
Mission station and found fifty people "screaming and
yelling." When police proceeded to confiscate their boom
boxes, one of the partiers allegedly kicked the radio away
from them. Jan Chmelik, 31, was arrested and charged with
battery on an officer and resisting arrest, both
misdemeanors, after he allegedly "body slammed" a BART
police officer at the Montgomery station, Johnson says.
Gravenstine disagrees. "If anything, the police were
assaulting him." She remembers the cops' attempts to
confiscate the boom boxes. "Then the next thing I knew,
there were about three cops holding him down." She theorizes
that they may have targeted Chmelik because of his
boisterousness. "I think maybe the cops were intimidated by
the fact that we were fifty people who were so well organized."
In video footage of the arrest taken by one of the
participants, partiers chant: "Please don't beat us; we
don't have any fajitas." Chmelik, in a sailor's costume,
sprawled on the floor with several BART police over him,
holds out his hand to the camera, saying: "Look at this –
it's red. Do you see how red it is? I didn't do anything."
Chmelik faces up to a year in county jail, his attorney John
Viola says. Viola declined to describe the arrest, but
maintains that his client did nothing, and that charges
should be dropped. A pretrial conference will be held on June 9.
Johnson clearly hopes there won't be any more parties. "The
message is out there that there's zero tolerance," he says.
"As long as you respect the rules, you're free to ride BART."
But Chmelik's arrest has not deterred the wedding party, and
BART police do not make an appearance. Instead, heads turn
and smiles appear as the group works its way through the
cars, laughing and humming "Here Comes the Bride" along the
way. "Welcome to our wedding! Thanks for coming!" one
excited participant yells. They stop a few cars down from
the first wedding, somewhere past the Powell station, where
the flute and accordion start another duet and decorations
are hastily attached to rails. An identical wedding begins,
this time with Vanessa Gravenstine playing the bride, and
"Locust" in the role of groom.
"Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
the minister intones. Vanessa thinks it over. "I feel like,
we can sleep in the same bed and stuff," she says. They
kiss, fall to the floor, and then suddenly the party is
rushing out to the platform and hopping another train. Then
they're off again at 16th Street, the wedding procession
continuing up the elevator. A large plastic bag full of
cookies appears at the street-level plaza, and curious
pedestrians come closer to partake.
Malinda Williams, 36, a surgical technician living in
Oakland, is visiting her friend Edward, a BART station
agent. Most men are "dogs," she says, but this gives her
hope. "It's cute to get married where you met," she says of
Otto and Naan's professed meeting. Gritting her teeth and
directing her comment toward Edward, she adds, "That's the
way it should sometimes be."
With a laugh, he shoots back, "But I would never get married
in my high school."
