Last Friday, a shirtless man was seen sitting in a basketball hoop in Cal Anderson Park. Yes, actually sitting in the hoop. As if a hoop were a chair.

Can you imagine being a cop? Can you imagine the rampant nakedness you have to encounter day to day? "Um, we have a naked man in a basketball hoop." "Roger that." Conversations like that daily. Plus increasing scrutiny from the outside world about every little thing cops do.

According to an eyewitness the man who thought the basketball hoop was a chair was also holding a hammer. That may explain why those officers look so perplexed.

This is the part where I go: Oh, it's art.

Clearly, it's not art; if anything, it's a test of patience. And those cops are passing it! He's falling slow-mo out of a basketball hoop just to see if the Seattle Police Department will help? Sure enough, the helping hands of the Seattle Police Department are there, helping, trying to prevent him from cracking his skull open.

Here's how eyewitness (and brilliant Stranger illustrator) Brian Britigan recalls what he saw:

So what's hard to see in the photos is that he's holding a claw hammer. However, he didn't seem to be violent or angry at all, wasn't yelling or anything and barely acknowledged the crowd of police and spectators that had gathered around him. It was almost like he was playing on some monkey bars or something, hanging upside down and stuff. People in the crowd were making Cirque du Soleil jokes. The police didn't seem to feel very threatened, they did make an effort to take the hammer away (with some difficulty) but it wasn't a violent struggle or "drop the weapon" type situation. Once they got the hammer away they let him hang out for a bit before bringing a ladder to untangle his feet from the net and lower him down. I didn't stick around for long after he was done on the ground so can't really say what happened after that.

God, that is so #Seattle. On May Day, the day everyone's in the street protesting cops, the cops are busily carrying a ladder over to a man with a hammer who's sitting in a basketball hoop.

On May Day, aka How Many Helicopters Can We Get Into the Sky Above Seattle Day, a helicopter belonging to KIRO 7 Eyewitness News happened to be looking down on Cal Anderson Park during #hammerhoopgate and got footage of the whole thing going down. Not-so-slow-mo after all. The footage that suggests that the man wasn't doing performance art nor modeling nor dance nor anything even basketball-related. He seemed to be in his own world.

According to SPD spokesman Sean Whitcomb, "We watched it on live TV. I think his leg was caught up in the actual net. We cut him out of the net and referred him to an area hospital for social services."

When I remarked that this was a softer, gentler SPD than we're all used to, Whitcomb said, "I think it speaks to the new training. No need to rush in and grab the guy out. Just give him the resources he needs."