Independent journalist Katie Baker
last month posed a question on the SF Appeal online newspaper that's been bugging a few San Franciscans: Have the Guardian Angels been solving enough mysteries and making enough citizens' arrests to suit fashionable young San Franciscans?
"Many of the people (the San Francisco Guardian Angels) chapter strives to protect do not understand how, exactly, they are being protected," wrote Baker, a recent college graduate.
Within weeks, a solution to the insufficiently aggressive vigilante patrol problem materialized along the San Francisco waterfront.
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Will evil-doers enter San Francisco through this phalanx of Ninjas? We think not.
Guardian Angels are a non-profit volunteer group of unarmed citizen patrols.
Here's Guardian Angels founder Curtis Silwa looking less than menacing.
Ninjas, meanwhile, are covert agents and mercenaries of feudal Japan,
specializing in guerrilla warfare techniques such as sabotage,
infiltration, and assassination
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Here's a Ninja throwing a sign understood only by other Ninjas. Is he going to assassinate somebody?
Guardian Angels
loiter on trains and street-corners in red berets.
Ninjas, at least the ones patrolling San Francisco Monday, perform
scary waterfront break dance moves in order to stop malfeasance before
it starts.
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Notice how the woman in the background isn't trying anything funny? Thanks, Ninja!
Guardian Angels can be recognized by the way they
scowl with their arms crossed. Ooooh, scaaaaaaaary!
The Ninjas guarding San Francisco Monday, meanwhile, await danger suspended horizontally from sign posts.
Don't try anything, buster, or this Ninja will swing around and bust a feudal Japanese move on you.
When danger lurks even further up a traffic pole, the city's new Ninja squad are there.
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Thinking of tampering with city stoplight cameras? Think again Mr. Red-Light-Runner. (The camera's the white device aimed at the Ninja's head.)
If, during this holiday season, law-abiding readers notice a new feeling
of security, while criminal-mastermind readers are plagued with unease,
they should remember whom to thank.
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Warning, criminals: Beneath those black robes await cans of 14th-century whoopass...
UPDATE! Apparently, the Ninjas aren't actually fighting crime.
They're kids dressed up as part of a corporate publicity stunt,
promoting the video game-oriented website IGN.com. Here's publicist Sheila
Bryson, accompanying them on a day that included Ninja trolley
rides and other fun.
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Sorry Sheila!
And our apologies to the Guardian Angels: Now that we know the Ninjas
were just funning, it's safe to say the Angels are still San
Francisco's best ever citizen vigilante patrol force!
