The arrival time is good. The parade starts at 10:30, I was there at 8:30, and by 10:30 I was one tired old fart. Better to cut the slow beginning of the event, people just starting to arrive and then feel fresher to take pictures during that last half hour before the parade begins. I've said this many times and done nothing about it. Still, a number of photographs - a lot, actually - we'll see how many may have turned out after going through them later. I've been down about my photographs after a first go through and then discovered I was wrong, but I really am wondering how I did this time. Still, one or two pop right off the monitor and one is enough to justify the effort.

Do you really believe that?

Yes. I do.

As the parade was starting (I was recording the start this time on my slick, but almost ever used, digital recorder the size of a pack of cigarettes and one of these days I'll get around to off loading the audio file and listen to it) I got on BART and headed home, exiting at the 12th Street station to find, as expected, Broadway closed to traffic and a number of primarily bicyclists riding leisurely up and down. There was one couple on roller blades pushing a baby carriage. For some reason I thought this neat and it put me in a good mood. Well, the mood was always good and I was looking forward to seeing Broadway cleared. You can be in a good mood and tired. No one says you can't be happy and slow.

Now, I had no idea where my bus was running, since it usually runs along Broadway, now closed to traffic for this Oaklavia thing, so I ended up walking back home with many stops to catch my breath on various benches. By now I know where to find all the benches. Started tired, ended the walk even more so, but what the hell, that's what I'd expected.

I took a few crappy pictures along the way, but I'll look at them more closely later and see if that's true. In this case I suspect it's true. I passed three small bands playing along the way, a jazz group with a woman blowing sax out in front of Farley's East, no big crowds, although Bakesale Betty's and the new bar next to it were packed and going full bore. Most of the activities were probably concentrated in the Jack London Square area where the larger commercial interests reside, but I had neither energy or desire to see. Deedle-dee-dee. Jack London being in the opposite direction, you understand.

I liked, even as tired as I was, the feeling of the thing. The odd sense of seeing no cars where there are always cars, just people strolling about - even the slower pace of the bicycles gave you the feeling of “leisurely” rather than “oh-my-god they're taking their lives in their hands in this traffic!”, but the proof will be in the business the local restaurants and stores do when the day is done.

You can talk all you want about good vibes and such but, if the local Chamber doesn't like it, you won't see it again. And, with the Pride Parade running at the same time in San Francisco (a million people involved in that), I suspect there's only so many hot dogs you can sell. Well, I was tired, am tired, maybe I'm thinking too down. This is not the first year they've done this, let's hope there are more. But not on the Pride Parade Sunday, OK? I'm too old to be photographing both.

Later. I spent much of the afternoon taking an hour or so's nap and then going through the parade photographs and running the ones that seemed OK through PhotoShop, creating jpegs suitable for the web. There's a bunch of them. Enough for at least three groups of twenty-one photographs on artandlife, is my guess, and that's a lot. I was hot or the day was hot or both. It's good to be hot. Now, with a night's sleep, some time to get some distance, we'll see if I'm still talking good pictures tomorrow. We need to settle down, here. Keep our head on straight. Take a nice bath and get a long night's rest as I have an MRI tomorrow.