Just past 4 p.m. on Thursday, riot police in heavy armor reminiscent of "Star Wars" stood 15 across and several rows deep, billy clubs at the ready, at the intersection of Seventh and Liberty.

Seemingly from nowhere, like that brave lone protester in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, Jonathan Lusty, a 23-year-old Pitt Law School student, stepped before the imposing force carrying nothing but a sign, which read:

"Pirates Rebuilding Since 1993."

Laughter bubbled up from the crowd and everyone started taking pictures.

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PG STORE

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Brian O'Neill's book, "The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-first Century," is available in the PG store.

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"Someone needs to do it," Mr. Lusty of Shadyside told me. "The world's here. Let's get the message out."

The G-20 summit presented an empty canvas (and nearly empty Downtown) for any protester who cared to craft a vision. Before Mr. Lusty arrived, a couple of guys who could have been understudies for Beavis and Butthead carried the banner, "Smoke Weed Everyday," and tried to get up a chant of "Smoke Weed! Cure Disease!" Alas, even their factoid that George Washington grew hemp couldn't get the crowd to do much but smile.

Pittsburgh prepared for an army of protesters, but the 4,000 cops and more than 2,000 National Guardsmen encountered only scattered platoons Thursday, and the thousands of protesters who marched from Oakland to Downtown to the North Side with a huge police escort on Friday epitomized a peaceful march.

Eyewitness accounts of the various scenes were like those from the ancient tale of the blind men and the elephant.

In that story, a group of blind men touch an elephant. One feels a leg and says the animal is like a pillar. Another feels the tail and says the pachyderm is like a rope, a third finds the trunk and says the elephant is like a tree branch, and so on.

"All of you are right," says a wise man.

Those locals who made their way Downtown on Thursday found a peaceful, sometimes comic scene, as people bicycled on pleasantly open streets past stores that had been boarded for an onslaught that never came.

People in Lawrenceville and Oakland witnessed far uglier scenes Thursday afternoon and night, with police turning tear gas on crowds that wouldn't disperse, with some among those crowds smashing windows and rolling Dumpsters down the street.

What I saw was somewhere in between. I left the calm of Downtown on Thursday afternoon to bicycle over the Andy Warhol (Seventh Street) Bridge to the North Side and then back over the Allegheny River via the 31st Street Bridge, reaching the scene of a Penn Avenue confrontation at the eastern edge of the Strip District around 4 p.m.

Police declared unlawful assembly to those in the street, and the 50 or so protesters, media and onlookers moved to the sidewalks and a grassy area off 34th Street. A police line then formed on the sidewalk and people were told "anyone standing here will be arrested."

Not long after, though people weren't demonstrating much beyond boredom, police made a handful of arrests for failure to disperse. The handcuffing went down so quietly, I couldn't tell if those arrested had been in the street or on the sidewalk, but for some of the onlookers -- seeing only that part of the elephant, and not the more violent confrontation that had occurred earlier farther up the street -- there were complaints that police had gone too far. At that point police were the only ones blocking Penn Avenue.

I could question the necessity of the arrests but not the execution. There was no excessive force (beyond a sonic device so obnoxious it could make a freight train take a dirt road). But a guy I know likes to say, "perception is reality." Those directly involved would see it differently, one way or the other.

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On Friday afternoon, I put my bicycle into the police motorcade that followed the protesters from Downtown to the North Side. (A wise priest, Father Lou Vallone, once told me it is sometimes better to ask forgiveness than seek permission.) So I was able to hear onlookers lining the sidewalk cheer and yell "thank you" as the long police motorcade of horses and cars slowly made its way down Fifth Avenue.

A silent gantlet of police with billy clubs and a few long guns lined the sidewalk for the entire Downtown stretch as well.

Now that this G-20 elephant has passed through Pittsburgh, it's clearer still that the semi-moated Golden Triangle was relatively easy to defend and contain. In fact, the event could have been handled with a considerably smaller force, with more businesses open, with less or even no boarding of Downtown storefront windows, and considerably less expense. (Note to self: Next time America hosts a G-20, buy shares of National Rent-a-Fence.)

Visitors might have been more impressed had our Downtown shown more life, but that's an easy call to make after the fact. The principal goals -- to keep thousands of visitors safe, to project a more vibrant image to the world -- were met, judging by the stories visiting media sent forth.

As I write early on Friday evening, the G-20 has wrapped up, though at least one protest in Oakland has yet to begin. The G-20 elephant didn't pass through Pittsburgh without a scratch, but those who feared it would do considerable damage have to give the handlers credit, even if we didn't need so many of them.