San Francisco Part #1

Friday

After a delightful Thursday night in Ferndale with my mom, we left at 5:15am to get to the airport and catch our flight. What mom may have noticed when she checked her e-mail, however, was that our departing flight time had been adjusted at the same time that our returning flight time was adjusted, and we were, in fact, leaving at 6:15am, not 6:50am. While this error on my part nearly cost us a day of our trip, we ran through the airport (me almost in tears) and caught our flight with 3 minutes to spare. After that, our flight was relatively uneventful. We did, however, have a flight attendant with a freakishly loud and annoying voice. When the woman sitting at the end of our row told her that she didn't need to shout she responded, "I'm sorry, but this is my normal speaking voice," only nasal and loud, really loud. I tried really hard not to laugh until she was out of hearing distance. Unfortunately, assuming that she spoke so loudly because she couldn't hear well was the wrong assumption, and I'm pretty sure that she heard, even a few rows back, Alicia and I laughing uproariously in solidarity with the woman on the end of the row (who was also laughing). The flight attendant was not as polite during the latter part of the flight...

One point I forgot: as we were getting off of the plane from Detroit in DC (where we changed planes), the flight attendent (a different one...) told us, upon asking to which flight we were connecting, that we "might want to kick it up." As we were walking in the airport I repeated it, sort of to myself, to laugh a little more. Alicia, who was carrying the luggage (rolling it behind her really, but nonetheless, taking care of it), thought I was talking to her. We both laughed a lot once we realized that I wasn't being an inconsiderate jerk and that she wasn't just offended for no reason.

I slept for a little while on the plane, but Alicia only closed her eyes for a little while. Nonetheless, we were awake and excited when we finally got off of the plane in San Francisco. We had an eventless BART ride to our hotel. It took us a while to find the entrance to our hotel, however, as it is located at the intersection of three streets, two of which dead end into the third. While the street address is on Mason, there are two entrances, neither of which are on Mason. One is in the back of the building (which is unmarked on the side facing Mason) behind the parking lot. The other is on Turk, a smallish road that seemed so unimportant at first glance. Now that we know how to get in, life is good.

After some showering and unpacking, we decided that we would walk to the GLBT Historical Society to check out some photography exhibits they had. We had an address on Mission, and naively assumed that it would be in the Mission as well, near all of the other queer stuff. We walked from our hotel to that point (about a mile and a half, would be my guess) only to discover that when we found Mission St. (we walked down Market to look see what there was) that we were at the 1700 block looking for 657 Mission. It was, in fact, the opposite direction from our hotel. This is what Ann Arbor teaches you: everything queer should be located in a small little ghetto, not spread about the city. This is what San Francisco teaches you: do not assume that you know your way around a city you have never visited. We walked back up Mission St. and found it. The photo exhibit (Many Dykes, Two Photographers) was good, as was the exhibit about queer athletics (Sporting Life: LGBT Athletics and Cultural Change from the 1960s to today). They also let me use their bathroom, which was soooo nice of them.

Since we had some time before the Trans March was supposed to happen, we walked up to the Ferry Building to see the water. It was nice, and we got to walk through the downtown area a bit more. We made it, ate some dinner (tasty Mexican food...), and hopped on the BART to the Mission. (We decided that our four/five miles of walking were enough...)

The Trans March was exciting, though we didn't actually march. We stayed to watch the speakers, performers (yay drag kings!), and of course, the crowd. There was a pretty good turnout and we had a good time. At about 7:00pm however, Alicia and I were both feeling tired. It was, after all, our first day in Pacific Time, and we got up at 4:30 to be ready to leave for the airport. We came back to the hotel, read and watched TV for a while, and feel asleep at about 8:30pm.