Last week, a little bird told me that several of the groups that are planning anarchist anarkid actions planned to hold a meeting over the weekend.

Most of the meeting was to be held (naturally) in Minneapolis, at the “Jack Pine Community Center”, which seems to serve the same purpose as the “Walker Church” and the “Backroom Anarchist Center” used to serve back in the eighties for the local fringe left, as gathering places and flophouses.

But, the email (taken from one of the anarkid websites) also said that there was going to be an expedition during mid-afternoon to Saint Paul, presumably to size up the city (or, given how many anarkids are from Minneapolis and the more posh suburbs, show them how to find Saint Paul.  “Dude.  It’s like totally waaaay east of Lyndale, dude.  Like, dude”) from 1:30 until three-ish. 

And I figured that’d have to be fun.

I was among a couple of center-right bloggers that went downtown to view the hilarity.

Or try to, anyway.

It was a dreary day; it would have been perfect for bagpiping, actually, with a steely overcast and a steady chilly drizzle.  At 1:30, I was at the Capitol. 

There were ten people up at the top of the steps – all of them waiting to get inside for capitol tours.  There were two twenty-somethings down by the Duelling Socialists statues (below the driveway, above the Mall) – one with a professional photography rig and a camera on a tripod, another in a wheelchair holding a crudely-scrawled sign that he kept pointing lapward except when the photographer was shooting.  I kept walking.

As I went down Wabasha, of course, I saw some likely prospects – but in that neighborhood, you always do.  There are one or two high-rise apartments that are wholly filled with the mentally/emotionally handicapped; some of them looked dishevelled enough to be anarkids, but they were too old, and they didn’t have the carefully-cultivated air of misfortune that anarkids affect.

Likewise, as I got close to the Xcel Center, I saw some scraggly types – but most of them were on their way to or from the Dorothy Day Center, the big homeless shelter kitty-corner from the X.  Also, unlike every “anarchist” I’ve ever met, some weren’t white.

I did see two people with the impeccably-ripped and grafitti’d clothing and precisely-scraggly hair of the full-time anarkid, climbing out of a Toyota SUV in a parking lot at Fifth and Wabasha.  I saw them wandering around for a bit as I walked toward the X. 

Other than them, and one guy on a bike who was either an anarkid or a victim of heroin-chic fashion? 

Bupkes.

If it rains during the Republican Convention, the streets will be devoid of anything but Republicans.