The Battle of State Street

I was tanked up and when I was tanked up I never knew what was going to happen next. Sometimes I  merely wound my way home and crashed. Other times it was as though I'd developed Tourette's syndrome; as I made my way down State Street, letting out whatever peeve was bugging me at the moment to shocked, and perhaps frightened, tourists.This particular time it was the panhandlers (who gathered at the statue of Juan Carlos) that became the focus of my ire. I crossed the street to where they were hanging out. One scruffy character demanded spare change as I approached.
"What? You tell me what spare change is and I'll think about it."
You got plenty, part with some of it."
"It just so happens that I do have plenty..." I pulled out a wad of c-notes and peeled one off, dangling it in front of the overly aggressive panhandler. The guy's eyes lit up as he grabbed for it. I deftly snatched it away and tossed it to the hangers-on on a bench at the side of the square. Now everyone was paying attention. I had acquired an audience as I began my rant:
"What is a statue of a murderous monarch doing in a prominent place on a street called State?" I shouted, needing no megaphone. I was no longer impotent Sean McKee but I was the Mick to the max. A chord... the delicate chord that bound my sanity ... that chord that reined in the wild beast and kept me pinned to a peg... the tamed elephant had gone rogue... I had begun what I would finish... I had tried to live right but that chord had been stretched to the breaking point!
This noise raised a few jeers and a crowd started to amass hoping, I'd either heave a few more c-notes or an opportunity would arise to take from me the wad I'd displayed.
"Why do you panhandle and play games begging spare change and dealing street drugs?" I continued, "this town is wealthy enough... why don't you just take some from those who have more than they need?" I became transformed into an old-fashioned rebel, haranguing the unwashed masses. I was Jesus serving up a revolutionary version of the Sermon on the Mount. I was Thomas Paine spittin' on the Brits or Saint Paul on the Areopagus on Mars Hill. I was imbued with the not so Holy Spirit of Joe Hill, rallying the Wobblies: "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth... at six feet of it at the most!" and this was my soap box.
"That king," I raised an arm and pointed at the statue, "was ordained by a Christian God to reign over and rip-off a thousand year old civilization... yes, Chumash slave labor built the Santa Barbara Mission and you sit hear pleading for that, which by the grace of a Christian God, you are granted a nickle or two! I say, fuck Jesus Christ and fuck his bloody king too!"
I was insane with virtue and then
I tossed the rest of my wad... about five-hundred bucks into the crowd... shouting as loud as I could, "Jesus Christ did not die for my sins. He died because pigs like Juan Carlos could not abide him. Adding insult to injury, they use Christ's name to bestow regal powers on a fop like this usurper! If you had any balls at all you wouldn't be sitting here! You'd be burglarizing those houses up there in the hills above us."
One of the late-comers, who'd missed out on the cash bonanza called out from the crowd, "Why don't you shut the fuck up and throw us some more money!"
The crowd laughed as he came at me swinging... I was untouched by him but landed a few blows before we were interrupted by pepper-spray.
A bicycle cop had pulled up to see what was happening. Clearly it was a disturbance that could not be tolerated on State Street. The cop had seen the fists fly... he called for back-up and cuffed us both