A man and woman were trying to hand me a piece of folded up paper, size of a stick of gum, on the Santa Monica pier.

I was on the pier over the weekend, stopped to see if a girl could dead hang off a bar for over 45 seconds to win a prize. She actually ended up holding on for 90 seconds, winning the biggest prize.

I put my camera away after taking a pic and I felt something on my right hand. I turned and saw that a man (I think hispanic male, around 30 yo?, stocky) was poking my hand with a folded up piece of paper. He appeared to be doing this deliberately. I looked at him, he looked back at me. His face was kind of blank. I noticed he was with a woman around the same age. They were both dressed very casual, t shirts and shorts.

I didn’t say anything, he poked my hand again, as if he wanted me to grab the paper out of his hand, but I didn’t so it just fell on the ground. He didn’t say anything. My friend and I walked away.

My friend asked me what that was all about, I said no idea but I felt like it was some kind of scam. The piece of paper was folded up in such a way that I could imagine maybe a message was written inside of it? As I was walking away, I turned to look at them. They were kind of talking to each other, then started kind of looking around. I checked my pockets and my backpack. Nothing was missing.

About 25 minutes later, coming back from the end, I told my friend I wanted to see if the paper was still on the ground. It was. I didn’t pick it up.

Anybody have any idea what happened? The hand pokes IMO were completely intentional. Did they think I had dropped the paper? I doubt it.

In case it’s useful info, no, I didn’t look like a tourist. Because of the way I dress, I could be mistaken for a certain type of « rich » LA person, not sure. I was wearing sweat pants and a hat.