PAUL SCHRAG: MEGA-CHESS GAME DRAWS PROTESTERS >>

That's it. I've had it with these damned socialist artists and their demand that public spaces be available for free to the, um, public.

Take this group of Mega-Chess players, for example, who stormed Tollefson Plaza today to re-enact a legendary chess battle between prodigy and all-around obsessive nut job Bobby Fischer and some fellow from Tacoma. The chess battle, scourge that it was, pitted two teams that moved behemoth chess pieces – pink and green spray painted jobs made from recycled five-gallon buckets and household appliances – around the plaza. Teams were dressed playfully, black and white with embellishments, and bopped a time clock made from a box with people in it.

Damned socialists and their weird ideas.

Other chess battles followed the Bobby Fischer match including a victorious Erik Emery Hanberg.

Thankfully, a group of protesters arrived with picket signs telling these artists or whatever to get over themselves and their demands that public spaces remain free for public use. It's not like all the color and activity has any peripheral benefits for the Plaza, which is so inviting and generally swarmed upon that it's hard to find a place to sit most days.

LINK: More photos from today's Mega-Chess game on the Photo Hot Spot.