Emerging into Matthews Quad from the narrow walkways along the edge of the construction zone, you hit the crowd like a brick wall: MAGA hats everywhere, Punisher skull t-shirts, red-white-and-blue everything, Jesus merch, and Sharpie signs. Blond heads were all over the place — so many, in fact, that you could be forgiven for wondering if you’d been catapulted into an alternate dimension where the Nazis won the war. A blonde woman in the event organizer uniform — MAGA hat and blue Turning Point USA t-shirt —mentioned that she’s from San Diego State University. Being invaded by the Aztecs, UC San Diego was following in the footsteps of many unfortunate Meso-American city-states. A quick physiognomic scan of the crowd indicated that many — possibly most — of the people filling Matthews Quad don’t go to this school.
Everyone had their eyes turned toward the center of the quad, toward the little white tent surrounded by barricades and emblazoned with the words “American Comeback Tour” — though the dense mass of humanity meant that hardly anyone can actually see anything. Somewhere in there was Charlie Kirk: founder of TPUSA — a right-wing student organization — friend of the president, liberal-annihaltor, and, thanks to the White House’s generous patronage, a member of the oversight board of the United States Air Force Academy. Kirk, who never served in the Air Force, does not know how to fly a plane; this does not stop him from saying that Black airline pilots scare him. Kirk is a community college dropout, but his abiding fixation on universities — for which the reader can infer whatever psychoanalytical explanation they choose — is bringing him on a tour of campuses across the West Coast in which he challenges limp-wristed university leftists to prove him wrong.
Kirk could not be seen, and given the poor sound quality, rowdy crowd, and construction noise, he could barely be heard either. To have any hope of seeing the heart of the action, people had to elbow their way through the packed crowds, climb a lamppost, stand on a picnic table, or scale the exterior staircase of the adjacent Student Services Center, which the cops were busy trying to seal off. The table seemed like the best choice.
There, at last, was the man himself, standing in the tent, microphone in hand, surrounded by his entourage, and separated from the crowd by metal barriers. One after another, a hodgepodge of liberals stepped up to the microphone directly across from Kirk to debate him. At that moment, he was getting into it with someone about tariffs.
That seemed like a good time to call it quits. From the Epstein Family Amphitheater, another event was calling.
Approaching the entrance of the packed amphitheater, a bald middle-aged man ran across one of the Epstein employees who asked him, “Are you here to see the guy eat the chicken?”
“No, I’m here for Charles Kirk,” the man replied.
“That’s not this,” said the employee.
“Oh, right,” the man said, and he wandered off.
On stage, it was about to begin. Jacob Hoang, president of the UCSD Costco Club, held aloft a bagged Costco rotisserie chicken. As the crowd roared wildly, Hoang lifted the bird to his face with his bare hands and wolfed down a huge bite. The amphitheater, full of hungry Tritons, resounded with unchecked enthusiasm.
“This is absolutely amazing. I mean, I love chicken already, and this just gives me an excuse to eat even more chicken,” said second-year Alex Winicki. “The vibes are immaculate.”
Hoang did not stay on the stage, separate from the crowd, for long. He leapt down and swung through the front rows, high-fiving, hand-shaking, and tearing huge slabs from the bird. The crowd cheered lustily as Hoang bounded up the steps, tossing chicken bits left and right like a farmer planting the seeds of a magic beanstalk. At one point, he dropped the entire bird into the grass and immediately scooped it back up. “I’ll still eat it! I’ll still eat it!” he cried.
“Five-second rule,” added The UCSD Guardian Associate Photo Editor Thomas Murphy.
As Hoang rampaged through the amphitheater with the chicken, club members on stage raffled off gift cards and entire rotisserie chickens, which they advised should be eaten or refrigerated within the hour to ward off food poisoning. Third-year John Gorman was among the lucky individuals who won a prize. “I love Costco Club!” he exclaimed, returning from his trip to the stage and scratching the tape off his $25 Costco gift card. “This will pay for like, two groceries maximum, but I appreciate the sentiment,” he added.
Third-year Rohan Nambimadom proudly showed off the grease-covered hand with which he’d accepted a piece of the Holy Bird. When asked why he was there, Nambimadom replied in a staccato rattle of sentences: “Community, you know … Sun God’s this weekend. I love free snacks. I shook the guy’s hand. He gave me a piece of chicken. Very oily, but at the same time, very aura.”
It was the third year in a row that a president of Costco Club had publicly scarfed down an entire rotisserie chicken, but everyone in the crowd on this May Day was aware that this time had a different meaning — owing to the event taking place simultaneously just a few hundred feet away.
“It’s just really great that we have different options for people,” said second-year Jessica Zhou, taking a more optimistic view on the day’s dueling events. “I personally lean more towards more bright, more open, more loving, a warmer environment. To each their own.”
Others, like Nambimadom, were more blunt: “I feel so happy that I’m not getting destroyed by the state of the economy, state of the world. Charlie Kirk’s here, but [f—] him. Let’s eat chicken.”
Hoang, with help from his thousand-plus friends in the audience, polished off the chicken in just under 40 minutes. As the clock struck 1 p.m. and the students streamed out of the amphitheater, many of them were caught up in the thick crowds in Matthews Quad. A far cry from the all-student crowd in the amphitheater, a plethora of characters made up the gathering: a guy in a MAGA hat and a “[F—] Fentanyl” t-shirt; a pregnant woman with “PRO LIFE” scrawled on her exposed stomach; and a man with a shirt that read “Reject Modernism Embrace Lord Jesus Christ” —though whoever made the shirt probably meant “modernity” instead of “modernism,” unless they have some intense personal beef with Ernest Hemingway. One grinning LARPer was roaming around in an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement hoodie, carrying a sign that read, “The government is lying to you.” The fact that his people are now the government did not seem to occur to him. The right can always have it both ways; while wielding arbitrary power of life and death over 330 million Americans, it retains the persecution complex and shock-jockying that it picked up during its years in the opposition. But the smirking, gleeful cruelty on these fascists’ faces indicates one thing: They’ve won, and they know it.
Others in the crowd were less enthusiastic. Many of the students seemed to be there for no reason other than morbid curiosity; the real enthusiastic ones were high schoolers, SDSU students, or random middle-aged people.
“I don’t think I’ll get a chance like this again to see something with my own eyes,” said one bemused fourth-year UCSD student.
The real die-hards were less willing to answer questions. One individual, wrapped in an Israeli flag, refused an interview on the grounds that The Guardian was “anti-Israel.” Another said they don’t talk to the mainstream media, which is as sure a sign as any that The Guardian has made it. No need to bother with them — back at The Guardian office, President Hoang was waiting for us.
Hoang’s hands, arms, face, and Costco Club t-shirt were still streaked with grease from the chicken that he had devoured with his bare hands. He had fasted for 24 hours before chowing down on the bird and now wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep. Still, his mood was cheerful, even exuberant. He breezily brushed off the criticism that the chicken thing was getting old.
“People say the club is beating a dead horse,” Hoang said. “In fact, we’re beating that dead horse, including sides, and we’re making a feast out of it. I just wanna say, like, god forbid college students have some fun and be silly. In a world that’s constantly changing, why can’t we do the things that we love?”
Hoang was more cagey when asked if Costco Club had planned this year’s chicken extravaganza to coincide with — or pull focus away from —Kirk and his MAGA invasion. “All I can say is that that’s a crazy coincidence,” Hoang said, laughing. “And I want to give a hypothetical wink.”
