Christopher Neitzert
7 min readAug 23, 2024

Quayle Eggs: The story of how I was arrested for inciting a riot!

created by Midjourney.

It was a wet November evening in 1991, the kind of soggy, relentless Oregon damp that makes everything slick and grungy. Hayden Island, a gritty speck of industrial land turned into convention center-hotels wedged between the expanse of the Columbia River and the urban sprawl of Portland, Oregon, was no stranger to weather like this. On that evening, it felt like the island was holding its breath, the air thick with tension and the promise of chaos.

This the story of how I found myself on the wrong side of the law, charged with a felony for inciting a riot. A riot that I didn’t start, but certainly helped along with a gross of eggs, all under the shadow of Dan Quayle — the man who turned “potatoe” into a punchline and somehow became Vice President, setting a precedent for the future clowns of the Republican circus.

Quayle was receiving a medal for being a “patriot,” a dubious honor probably awarded for dodging the draft and butchering the English language. This farce was being played out at some elite black-tie thousand-dollar-a-plate Republican fundraiser in a hotel on Hayden Island. Outside, things were a different story.

created by Midjourney.

The cops were out in full paramilitary riot-drag, their shiny new shields, helmets, and electrified batons gleaming under the streetlights like props from a dystopian nightmare. On the other side of the road? Two camps, the larger a motley crew of the pissed-off and the disenfranchised: socialists, anarchists, hippies, gutter punks, and the “My Own Private Idaho” hustlers standing nose to nose with the motherfucking Nazi skinheads. The scene was less counterculture jamboree and more a ticking time bomb of clashing ideologies with a short fuse, already lit and all set to go off against the backdrop of cold asphalt and the oppressive weight of the wet November air.

The skinheads were the worst of the lot — swaggering around in their bomber jackets, suspenders and steel-toed boots, eyes full of hate and fists itching for a fight. They weren’t there to protest; they were there to provoke, to bully anyone they could, all while the cops turned a blind eye, as if they were on the same damn side.

You could always tell what side of the hateful line between the two groups was by simply looking at their boots and following lace code. The skinheads strictly wore red or white laces in theirs, and the rest of us, every other pair a veritable rainbow of colors, mine were purple.

I had seen this kind of shit show go down before on the TV in the last fundraise that was dubbed by the local media “Little Beirut” for the way protests often turned into battlegrounds. But this time, I wasn’t content to just watch. I wanted in, but not on any particular side, just to mock the entire spectacle in some deranged attempt at street theater. Dressed as a ballpark hot dog vendor complete with the paper hat, black bow tie, white shirt, black slacks, and a big ol’ box full of eggs — I decided to make some good trouble. I strutted up the middle of the closed street, hawking my wares like a street-corner revolutionary.

“Get your eggs, fresh eggs! Implements of the next revolution, protein or projectiles, get your eggs!” I shouted, and the angry mob around me ate it up — literally. The box was emptied in minutes, snatched up by eager hands ready to launch their own little rebellions.

And then I saw her — a tall, curvy blonde with the kind of rebellious fire in her eyes that could either get you arrested or devour you whole. She was holding one end of a “Communist Youth Federation” banner, standing just a few meters from the line of cops. I decided to take a chance.

created by Midjourney.

“Hey, I’ve got one egg left,” I said, holding it up like a prize. “It’s an implement of the next revolution.”

“Oh?” she replied, her eyebrow arching in that perfect mix of curiosity and challenge, and the hook of her beauty now firmly in my cheek.

“Yeah,” I smirked. “You can throw it at the cops, or I can cook it for you for breakfast tomorrow.” I winked, and that’s when the pigs jump us.

They hit us hard — like a sledgehammer to the back. Two on me, one on her. We went down like felled old growth, crashing into the muck of the parking lot, the cold, wet asphalt slapping against our faces. My cheek pressed into the gritty surface, and I could feel the sharp sting of gravel grinding into my skin. The egg, my symbolic last stand, was crushed under the cop’s boot, its yolk oozing out between my fingers, warm and slick, mingling with the mud — like the whole damn situation had just gone rotten, the promise of rebellion, and maybe the phone number of the blonde was now reduced to a sticky mess in my hands.

“Fucker!” she yelled, the fire in her eyes burning even hotter despite the drizzle. Her voice was raw, a mix of fury and defiance as they forced her down, her hair splayed out in the muck, her breath coming in short, angry bursts. The cops were rough, their hands cold and unyielding as they zip-tied our wrists, the plastic biting into our skin, drawn tight intentionally cutting off circulation. My fingers started to tingle almost immediately.

created by Midjourney.

They didn’t just restrain us; they made sure we felt it. They slammed our faces into the ground, the force of it jarring my teeth, the taste of blood mingling with the street seeping into my mouth. The crowd, an assembly of the disillusioned and the disenfranchised, erupted in chants of “Bad Cop! No Doughnut!” The sound rose like a wave, someone hammered on a plastic bucket, the beat crashing over us, but the pigs didn’t flinch. They had us where they wanted us — hogtied and helpless, another pair of casualties in their war against freedom and dissent.

I did my best to go limp, to be dead weight, a protest in itself, as they dragged us across the parking lot. Like an overplayed pop-song on commercial radio repeatedly screamed, “I am not resisting arrest!” with every ounce of dramatic flair I could muster, my voice cracking under the strain. It was a pitiful attempt at defiance, but it was all I had left as they hauled me like a sack of meat, their anger palpable, their boots heavy on the ground.

I was booked with a felony for inciting a riot, and as if that wasn’t enough, they threw in a littering charge for the egg I never even got to throw. It was like they were twisting the knife, just to remind me who was in charge. To top it all off, I never got the blonde’s name, let alone the chance to make her breakfast. She was hauled off in a different direction, lost to the chaos, her fiery spirit occluded from my view by the system.

Lucky for me, I found an attorney who lived for this sort of fight, the kind who saw taking on “the Man” as a calling. He tore into the Portland District Attorney’s case with zeal, ripping it apart until there was nothing left but the flimsy accusations they started with. Upon my attorney’s filing his discovery of the case with the Portland District Attorney’s office, they immediately knocked the charges down to disorderly conduct and littering in some attempt to turn a roaring fire into a smoldering ember. But we weren’t backing down. As we grew closer to our court date reduced it again to “attempted disorderly conduct” and “littering,” the legal equivalent of a slap on the wrist for jaywalking, but “…only if (I) pled guilty.”

created by Midjourney.

Six months later, at the trial, the judge practically laughed the DA out of the courtroom, mocking them for wasting her time with “this sort of case.” It was dismissed, just like that. The felony didn’t stick, but the story did. It etched itself into my memory, a testament to the absurdity of authority and the price of standing up, even in the smallest of ways.

Now, more than thirty years later, remnants of the incident is still probably hanging out on my criminal record, a ghost of the time I nearly went down for giving away eggs to people to hurl at authority. And that blonde? She vanished into the ether of lost potential and shared rebellion, a fleeting connection that dissolved in the face of institutional violence. But that day, man, that day was one for the books. I often wonder what became of her, and if she still carries the same fire that burned so brightly, even in the face of batons and riot shields…

Christopher Neitzert
Christopher Neitzert

Written by Christopher Neitzert

http://www.neitzert.io - Human, Hacker, Technologist, Occasional Artist. Aude sapere, audacia necessaria!