Mysterious Circle of People
Friday, 8th February 2008 by Alex Turnbull
Well it's been a while since we had a real Friday mystery!
So, who can tell us why this group of people seems to have randomly formed a circle in the middle of the road in downtown Las Vegas?
Thanks to Claude Warren.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
looks as though it’s the Commitments famous “turn to the left, give yourselves a pat on the back” The shadows seem to show each has an arm up to the next person. Why they are doing that in the middle of the street? Go figure Nevadans.
I may have a vivid imagination and it may be a bit morbid but could it be the site of a murder or something and this is a memorial service?
Protest to stop the development of that prime piece of dusty real-estate?
You put your right arm in, You put your right arm out, In, out, in, out, shake it all about. You do the Hokey Cokey And you turn around. That’s what it’s all about!
Obviously!
They’re hand by hand, shadows’ says, it can be a religous ritual? a public pray?
Our US friends will correct me, but I believe their picket lines have to keep on the move by law, to avoid being arrested for obstruction, so they walk in a circle one after the next to ensure the blockade is unbroken.
It’s an ugly business but that has all the hallmarks of an illegal flea-baiting fight.
maybe they’re dancing…
Talk Talk advert?
I’d look for an asult activity or sports / religious meeting type of thing. Don’t believe there are plackards or anything denoting a rally, or anything to picket about. Don’t believe it’s kids breakdancing – they all look aldult size. More like something like this:
http://picasaweb.google.com/southerninspired/Espana2007/photo#5109006260638782178
or a Greek Community? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:GreekFest07RingDance2.jpg
or misplaced Morris Men? http://www.ovmm.co.uk/cgi-bin/history/morrisring84.jpg
That car just to the north is gonna be really annoyed.
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=36.179732,-115.14817&z=20
How about a square of people?
View Placemark
I’m gonna go with protesting a development proposal for the vacant property.
Obviously, they’re trying to protect an uh.. ecologically important.. street from being cut down?
I think it’s just people who want to play on the nearby basket ball court or organize a pick nick or play with their children or something.
OK… No body move… I lost my contact
I suppose nobody of you has read “Cell” by Stephen King? These people are phonies!
If there was a way to date the image we could then search the LV papers on that date. With the number of people there Im sure there has to be a reporter or two.
My research tells me that the park adjacent is a favourite spot for the homeless. Is this perhaps some sort of soup kitchen/ prayer meeting type set up where the God Squad trade a bit of food for a small attempt on saving your soul?
To the left of the circle looks like a set of tables and the white van has the hallmarks of a churchy type run around.
My research also reveals that this is an area of some deprivation and crime so my murder/ memorial hypothesis has some grounding and although i have gone through 4 years of LVPD crime reports i cannot find any such crime.
I can also reveal that the park is named after Ethel Pearson who was a civil rights campaigner. Her main achievement it seems was to lobby for an intersection to be built on a nearby highway! Not an achievement that deserves recognition one would think but it turns out that the surrounding area was populated largely by African- Americans and that not building an exit from the highway was apparently putting the community at a disadvantage. Anyway Ethel got her intersection built, had a park named after her and i’m sure she is now happy to know that it is full of homeless people and a weird circle of people which is perplexing all us Sightseers.
I made part of the last post up by the way. I’ll let you guess which bit!
cookie monster, if you went back just a bit further, you’d have found this:
“Date: September 25, 2002 Author: Review-Journal
Section: City Page: 5B Words: 68
Person shot to death, police say
REVIEW-JOURNAL A person was shot to death Tuesday afternoon in an apartment off Washington Avenue, west of Ethel Pearson Park.
Police said the apartment was used for drug activity.”
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=LVRB&p_theme=lvrb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0F64C6EA1B1A09C6&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
Mobile soup kitchen occurred to me as well for the same reasons: “table”, a queue, out of the way location and a passenger van. The strike against is that they tend to avoid disruptions such as blocking streets. A rally or vigil of some kind seems equally likely since the people appear to be holding hands (see small uniform shadows between the figures). Also I’m reading the irregular shadow in the NW corner as 3-5 people lined up holding placards about chest high.
Cookie’s research was just googling Ethel Pearson Park on google =]
@Lee – what other kind of research is there? 😉
@Bob – I definitely see that they’re holding hands, and the placards are definitely there too! Good eyes sir.
So what are they demonstrating about? bbs.keyhole.com shows nothing, but as others have said, this doesn’t look like the most savoury of neighourhoods, so perhaps something terrible did happen here?
A mystery to be sure.
Maybe it´s an Excel error: Circular Reference… 🙂
Yes, there’s definitely placards there. Also you can of course tell this is mid-morning by the direction of the shadows.
5 minutes googleing though revealed that Barack Obama’s North Las Vegas campaign office (which is just a few minutes away) had a BBQ at Ethel Pearson Park on Aug 25th last year. It seems possible to me that they held hands and said a prayer for the food before eating.
I found a couple pictures of the BBQ here. http://flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/sets/72157601840077134/
This is the oldest part of Las Vegas, with roads mapped in 1904. It used to be very dangerous, much less so in recent years. From here stretching a few miles to the north is historic black Las Vegas, these days referred to as Uptown. There is something of a renaissance there as it is connected to the newest part of Las Vegas by the street immediately to the west, if you go under the freeways to Grand Central Pkwy.
This street has virtually no car traffic. The cars parked near the cirlcle almost certainly belong to those in the circle. The white van is typical of the huge Southern Baptist churches 5 blocks West on F st. Their stance is typical of the church activities.
I believe these are local church members doing a cleanup in the immediate area, where the City of Las Vegas has bought several parcels to upgrade the offramps. The homeless area is between the two freeways to the South, and the spillover can be messy in this area.
This is actually a very interesting part of LV to check out. If you are into choppers, go to Jackson Avenue to the North about 8 blocks on a weekend.
Agree in pricipal with Vegas Guy – disagree that you can see placards.
I missed the murder blurb. Good catch. If it’s the Obama event it had to be before or, less likely, after they erected the tents visible in the photographs.
When I first looked at it i immediately new it was a church work team. they are finished, thats why most everything is cleaned up and they, with some local residents, are getting ready to depart. NO placards present.
Places of interest says there’s a church on the corner. So my guess would be prayer circle.
Maybe “placard” is the wrong term. In the NW corner there is a long rectangular shadow that I imagined being cast by three or four people standing next to each other. Each one holding a rectangular piece of poster board about chest high with the top edge just below the chin. There are also three or four bright highlights to the right of the long rectangular shadow on the inner edge of the circle that I imagined was the morning light reflecting of these boards. Placards (?) are a common feature in these local prayer vigils/rallies (i.e., “stop the violence”, “taking back our neighborhood”, etc.). Either way it’s a fascinating moment.