I meet him at Tom's Kitchen (his brother keeps me amused until he arrives hot from lunch service at Tom Aikens) and even once he's in front of me, I can't imagine him marching on the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, placard in hand.
I will fall in rank, placard in hand, alongside the others voicing their dissent to the continued, illegitimate occupation of indigenous land.
His family name is Romney-present: Romney signs are wall-to-wall, snaked along roads, and people come to events with Romney placards in both hands, leave with Romney yard signs and buy $5 Romney buttons on the way out.
Paul's people appeared early and in droves, placards and megaphones in hand, ready to demonstrate their allegiance to a man who has been all but ignored by the mainstream media in his drive to be the Republican nominee for president.
"Hitler Lives," says the placard in his hand.
In one a young man with long, dark, hair looks at us sardonically, his expression underwritten by the placard in his hand, which bears the motto "Aut Tace, Aut Loquere Meliore Silentio", a Pythagorean tag which translates as "keep silent, unless your speech be better than silence".
Many of these onlookers clasp hand-made placards in their mittens, from which scream out, in felt-pen letters, the names of their home towns: Ishpeming, Michigan!
The demolition crew did not stop to take down the old hand-lettered placards in the windows, advertising "Stereo Players" and "Blues Jazz Gospel".
While some parents post up behind their own child's placard and wait for takers, others peruse the aisles with notebook in hand looking for a match.
When officials finish handing out new placards in the coming days, they will have cut the number of permits to 54,891 from 80,770, significantly surpassing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's pledge to cut them by 20percentt.
