The fence and sign proved no match for the hippies.

Last Tuesday, San Diego city councilperson Jennifer Campbell said that “we have to get tough” on participants in a weekly Wednesday night drum at Veteran’s Park in Ocean Beach. “They have to stop it. They’ve got to behave in a responsible, adult, mature manner. This is a worldwide emergency. Every single person has to take part in ending it.” But in a surprise turn of events, the drum circle took place as planned the following evening, in spite of the warning from this duly elected government official.

“I don’t understand it,” said Pearl Clutch, a contracts attorney who moved to Ocean Beach in November of last year. “The City put up an orange fence around the space where the filthy hippies did their drum circle-rub shoulders thing without masks. They even put up a sign reminding people that gatherings were not permitted because we are in the midst of a pandemic, and must put aside our own personal desires for the sake of the common good in the manner of responsible citizens everywhere. And then these rebellious miscreants — with their soiled feet, their unkempt clothing, and their matted hair — just took the fence down and held their drum circle anyway! And to make matters worse, they filled the surrounding public trash receptacles to overflowing! Don’t these people have respect for authority, for property, for social norms? Who are these people? What’s this country coming to?”

One possibility: a place of greater unity between people of different political backgrounds. Greg Angry, a Trump supporter and covid skeptic from Arizona who recently appeared in a viral Twitter video in a confrontation with Sprouts employees over his refusal to wear a mask, stopped the drum circle’s Instagram page to comment, “You people are disgusting, perverted animals, but at least we agree on SOMETHING. #covidmyth #nomask”