I could already hear the wail from blocks away as I walked toward the San Francisco Immigration Court on Tuesday. The sound — a melancholy moan with a sandpaper edge — was reverberating off the concrete, prompting curious looks from pedestrians up and down Sutter Street.
The source of the wailing emerged when I turned the corner onto Montgomery: a young man in a black tam ‘o shanter cap and a matching balaclava blowing the holy hell out a bagpipe.
Meet Bagpipe Guy.
Like most of the anti-ICE protestors I’ve spoken with, Bagpipe Guy declined to give his name to protect his identity and safety. What I did learn is that he is 21, lives in San Francisco, and has a “vaguely Scottish” lineage. He showed up to a downtown protest earlier this month, and now plans to be a fixture at ICE protests around the city.
You can’t miss him or his beautiful set of pipes, especially when he’s standing on the corner, blowing Coltrane-like licks amid the cheers of protestors.
And if you find the signature cry of bagpipes a tad abrasive, well, that’s kind of the point.
“They’re not always fun to listen to, right? But it fires people way up,” Bagpipe Guy told me earlier this week. “The pipes are loud, a little scary, but in a good way. People won’t fuck with us because of the energy.”
In the last month, local activists have shown up every week in downtown San Francisco to protest, document, and obstruct abductions of immigrants by ICE, which is disappearing people to facilities with no transparency about their whereabouts, well-being, or legal rights.
Resistance to these frightening and illegal tactics has grown, especially with reports of escalating violence and clashes with federal authorities going viral. On Tuesday, dozens of people occupied the sidewalks outside of the court at 100 Montgomery St., while others patrolled the local headquarters for ICE at 630 Sansome St., on the lookout for federal vehicles and potential detainees.
Tactics to stymie heavily armed, aggressive federal agents remain in the forefront of protestors’ minds, but the act of creating joy and excitement, whether by offering people free food or playing music, is key to sustaining the resistance, noted Eddie, a companion of Bagpipe Guy.
“Even if some people don’t necessarily have the courage or time to come down here and be part of the protest, I know that when they see and hear us, it ignites them,” Eddie said.
The duo recently met in Portland, where Bagpipe Guy attended the local No Kings protest on June 14 and saw a fight outside of an ICE facility. Bagpipe Guy played his pipes as the soundtrack to the melee, and felt inspired to bring that same musical energy when he returned to SF.
A protest is like a giant human amplifier for all manner of sounds, from chanting and drumming to screeching vuvuzelas. A bagpipe’s strains, though, can function as both noise and song. Bagpipe Guy first picked up the instrument in 2022, and he’s proud of his current set of pipes, a reproduction of a century-old antique played by virtuoso Stuart Liddell. The curves of the carved African blackwood and engraved metal accents glimmered in the sunlight as he played. It looked like a piece of art.
The pipes have a long history of being used not just for traditional music in Ireland and Scotland, but as an instrument of war, Bagpipe Guy observed.
“Everyone’s seen Braveheart, even though it’s not historically accurate,” he told me. “The bagpipe is a revolutionary instrument in it.
“The IRA used bagpipes during the Easter Rising and other actions. So I think it’s a very martial instrument. They’re built for battle.”
While he was dressed in demure grey on Tuesday, he has also donned full Highland dress, most recently on Monday while he performed outside of the Tesla dealership on Van Ness as a kind of critical performance art. Protecting the right to protest, be it with bagpipes or anything else, is a goal for the instrumentalist. “They’re already taking these rights away,” he said with a shake of the head.
Bagpipe Guy plans on returning to downtown every week, to breathe life into the frontline. As I walked away from the protest at 100 Montgomery St., I could hear his pipes again, warbling into the sky — a celebration of strength, and also an urgent cry for help.
