Is the cop story true?

Sounds kind of, I don't know, fantastical.

The MPLS cops abducted a sax player and held him without charges for hours?

Why would they do that? Help us understand.

You were (presumably) there, you should have at least an IDEA of why they abducted the guy.

Or atleast he would say something when he got back. What did he say?

I know that for the past few years that we've gone to the Auto Show in Mpls, there has been a black guy sitting in the skyway that connects the convention center with the parking ramp playing cello. Every year, he plays the same melody: The first verse of "When you wish upon a star". Over and over and over and over and over and over. In the time that passes from when we can first hear him while coming up the escalator, until we get to the doors at the parking ramp, he goes thru 4-5 loops of it.

I also remember back in the 1990-1991 era when I went to the U of MN (and was politically naive enough that none of their liberal hogwash rubbed off on me), there would be some Hmong guy wearing old Nike plain white tennis shoes and a well worn winter jacket who would hang around the NE entrance to Coffman Union with a wooden recorder like we used to have in elementary school before they realized that plastic was more sanitary. He would play some random melody that consisted of only 2 notes about a minor 3rd apart. Just infinite variations of nothing recognizable at all. And he'd hop back and forth on his feet while doing it.

Those two had very easy gigs. The recorder dude takes no talent, and what the cello guy did could probably be picked up with a couple days practice from a reasonably coordinated, dextrous person, once they learned to properly bow in order to make pretty sound instead of horrid screeching.

There used to be a fellow on the Mall who suffered from what seemed to be a Stephen Hawking type disorder (excuse my medical ignorance) who would sing through a voice synthesizer; I wonder if he's still there.

I remember a guy back in the early '90's in Dinkytown who had a laryngectomy and, in order to breath, had a plastic tube coming out of his neck. He poked some holes in it with an ice pick and learned how to play the opening stanza from Greensleeves.

I, of course, refused to give him any money, until he learned how to keep 4/4 time by banging his club foot on the sidewalk.

JBDoubtless's childlike faith in the police makes him think Mitch is lying.

Maybe this helps explain things, JB: Busker = Hobo + Musical Instrument

AC: Heh. At that point in my life I pretty much fit the description.

JB: So you're all "Screw the inner city and the mindless socialists who run it", but I tell a story from 19-odd years ago and suddenly the MPD is above reproach?

I don't remember all the details. It was a long night a long time ago.

I don't think they are above reproach.

I just think the story was at the most generous apocryphal. You may have heard a story about this happening once, to someone, but I'm not buying that it happened to you.

If something that dramatic had actually happened, you would have more details at the ready and would have supplied them at the time you wrote the piece.

It's just plain puzzling why you think you need to make yourself out to be this world-traveled, salt-of-the-earth, Hemingwayesque blogger with these outrageous stories.

JB, you need to get out more. I recognize that your suburban Andys and Barneys treat all you homeowners with the utmost respect and deference, fetching cats down from trees and whatnot. But city cops are occasionally a little rougher in their treatment of people. Especially when those people are young and scruffy, maybe even - gasp! - black.

"I just think the story was at the most generous apocryphal."

I think your comment is, at the most generous, presumptuous to the point of asinine.

"You may have heard a story about this happening once, to someone, but I'm not buying that it happened to you."

Who cares what you buy? It happened. Summer of 1987, after I got whacked at KSTP. Corner of Lake and Hennepin. I was with my drummer, Sean Devitt, and his brother Nick.

"If something that dramatic had actually happened, you would have more details at the ready and would have supplied them at the time you wrote the piece."

Wow. You're clairvoyant, too?

It happened. Cops didn't tell me what was going on; I spent the evening cooling Sean down (friggin' Irish).

"It's just plain puzzling why you think you need to make yourself out to be this world-traveled, salt-of-the-earth, Hemingwayesque blogger with these outrageous stories."

My old boss called me "The Highlander" because I've been everywhere, done everything, and you can only kill me be cutting my head off.

JB, I don't give a rat's ass what you think; you've done nothing to earn the right to an opinion about it. It happened. I've done a hell of a lot of things in my life. I'm not done yet.

If you find that implausible, then guess what? It's yet another case of the world not forming itself into an orderly line before your iron-clad preconceptions! Get used to it!