Everybody is trying to decode the Occupy movement —figure out who exactly is showing up, and what this growing protest will become. Or, barring that, dismiss it, which is easy enough to do.  Perhaps what’s most confusing part of this story is the visual dissonance.

Take the scene in front of the Federal Reserve Building in San Francisco on Thursday afternoon. The police broke up the SF Occupy encampment late on Wednesday night and officers were guarding the Federal Reserve Building. The people who were camping out were scrambling to move their gear – apparently the police had threatened to take it off if they didn’t.

Most of the people at the encampment looked like the hippie, street people you might find on Haight or Telegraph streets. Easy to ignore and, let’s be honest, most of us do. There were also more than a dozen protesters holding signs on Market street. And here comes the visual dissonance.



Let’s dissect this picture from left to right. There’s the tie-dyed clad man with the white beard (hippie), there’s the woman with multiple-piercings around her mouth wearing thongs in the rain (street kid?) and then there’s Beverly Best.

The story of Occupy that’s hard to reduce rests in participants like Beverly, who decided to put on lipstick and sensible shoes to take the bus down to Federal Reserve building. She, like many holding up signs on the 99 Percent blog, bear no relation to the motley crew of typical Bay Area protesters. Perhaps the answer, for many in the media, feels unsatisfying because it's so simple. She's unemployed, angry and has time.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the "Federal Building" as the location of the protest. The protest is at the Federal Reserve Building.