Last night was the first attack, a "pinpoint strike" aimed to "decapitate the leadership." On the radio they kept going on about "shock and awe," and how this was not that. The military had failed to deliver its promised spectacle, 3000 targeted explosions going off in choreographed precision, but we were assured that the real show was yet to come. It is the mark of grace of a place like San Francisco that rather than indulging in anti-French, "boot in your ass" chauvinism at such a moment, the response is a good deal more ambivalent. Most people seem to be almost deliberately going about their business, though reminders of this new unexplored space we are entering pop up unexpectedly amid the routine like a mutant virus, and it is necessary to learn new rhythms, new tactics of engagement or evasion. Coming out of my flat around noon, right away I was in a space being monitored by the police. The helicopters had been flying overhead all morning, several of them hovering without interruption over the neighborhood where I live. As I stepped outside, I saw that the police had closed the street to traffic just half a block away, and I entered this zone on my way to Civic Center. At Seventh and Market several police were lined up shoulder to shoulder, batons across their chests, to prevent people from using the crosswalk at that particular spot. I went under the street through the subway station and came up the other side, where the weekly open-air flea market was in progress. Only today, among the vagrants and sellers of African chotchkes and city workers on their lunch break, there was also a strong scent of militancy. Protesters milled about, some with signs, others in bandanas and boots, as if looking for a place to gather, or perhaps prepared to squat the whole city on some spontaneous signal. Clusters of people stood in the street though traffic still moved slowly through, and groups of police wandered too with everyone else. To one side, a large contingent of bicyclists had taken over a lawn, so that their bicycles formed a shiny mound. In front of City Hall itself there was more focus, with political tables and a small grandstand from which a continuous chant was led. As I arrived, the man up there was saying, "Join the march!" Since the march was beginning to move out at that very moment, and since it was headed in the direction of the diner where I wanted to eat breakfast, I fell in.