And so I did. PhotoShop in the morning, a quick look around Jack London Square just before noon to stretch the legs and see what was happening. They were setting up for the concerts that would be starting at noon and building to a fireworks display later after dark. Barbecue at Everett and Jones, the plastic version of the original Everett and Jones located out on Telegraph, this one just a block off Jack London on Broadway. Still good barbecue, although the water glasses are Mason jars - really bad, unoriginal and embarrassing - but what the hell, it's the Fourth of July, the sun is shining and I'm alive and well enough to bitch while I'm drinking this pretty good lemonade out of a Mason jar here in Oakland.

Back for more work on ArtandLife (a fourth page of Gay Pride photos), another trip down to Jack London Square before eight, a good hour before the fireworks would start, lots of people streaming into the square from every direction, too many to be humping a camera around in a crowd, not enough ambition to stay and shoot and jostle elbows, so I walked back up Broadway against the flow looking for a bus and arrived home in time to hear if not see the display in the distance. I did not want to walk through downtown Oakland in the dark with the cameras. The detonations rumbled on for hours.