San Francisco loves to party. And we turn down hardly any excuse for a parade. It seems like parades happen on an almost weekly basis. Last week we had the gigantic Pride Parade. A few weeks earlier we had a parade at Market and O’Farrell by people supporting a current matter in Palestine. We’ve had quite a few anti-war parades this year too. The previous week there was a bicycle-oriented parade aimed at blocking access to gas stations owned by BP. Along those lines, on the last Friday of each month there is a giant bicycle parade with police escorts and all – Critical Mass.
In the interest of administrative efficiency, it seems San Francisco has streamlined the parade application process to the point where paraders like those in Critical Mass don’t bother with a parade permit. The SF police escort them as they block traffic – cars and mass transit busses idling for hours as the cyclers make a point about wasteful oil consumption. The parade is so popular that people drive in from distant suburbs with bicycles attached to their cars, park over by the ball park, and then pedal into the city for the big event.
But I digress desultorily. San Francisco loves a parade. This morning I recalled good times past - Hyatt laborers banging their drums for weeks, the 9-11 Truth for Peace gang, Stop US Israeli Genocide, Arab Queers Against Israeli Occupation, boycott Arizona, Immigrants Against Democracy, etc. I grabbed the 5DII and walked downtown to capture some of the action:
Desultorily? Really? I thought my family had the lock on hooty snooty vocabulary, but I must bow down and pay homage to your vast superiority in this regard.
I’ve waited 40 years to use that word, since I heard Paul Simon use it on tv. Long enough. At this juncture of maturation, clutching gracelessly at mellifluent grandiloquence, such sesquipadalian verbosity is perhaps a facade on my minuscule lexicon.
PS Loved the article.