it's over. move to somnia.

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No More Chanting! No More Chanting!

Every once in a while San Francisco spectacularly reasserts just what it is that makes her such a draw in the first place.

*12:15. I arrive at Justin Herman Plaza, where Market just about (but not quite) meets the Embarcadero. The revelers are already there, marching in a circle and beating drums. Dressed like clowns and clubbers and carrying signs with various types of nonsense ("I LIKE HALVAH!" "He's always never not been there!") scrawled across them, the First Church of the Last Laugh looks like a PG-rated version of San Francisco's famous Halloween. Kids running around in frightwigs and crazy pants further the impression. They're surrounded by plainslothes bystanders. It's a little too voyeuristic.

But this is my first time witnessing the annual St. Stupid's Day Parade, and I have no idea what's going to happen. So far, it seems a lot more orderly than its autumnal counterpart.

*12:20. The parade begins. Young women (my age, probably) wearing angel wings skip around and sprinkle glitter, while pretty much everyone else who isn't playing some sort of solipsistic character is sticking dots on one another. I am handed a sheet of yellows and commanded to send them around. I do as I'm told.

*12:25. Bishop Joey--the ringleader of all this stupidity--stops the crowd and starts talking on his megaphone. I'm in a bad position to hear, but from the crowd's reaction he's pretty funny. Old lottery tickets are waved around. I find myself wanting one, but I feel silly enough being there in officewear.

*12:30. We're in the Financial District, at the Tomb of Stupid. I have no idea what the thing is. Perhaps a utility shed. Somebody knocks three times: no answer, just like the last 23 years. The Bishop asks for a moment of silence, so everyone starts screaming.

*12:45. Despite all the emphasis on stupidity, I notice the paradegoers are very good about not blocking traffic or being obnoxiously loud. Critical Mass could learn something here.

We stop in front of the bronzeworkers' memorial statue at Market and somewhere. The Bish invokes John Ashcroft as someone climbs up on the statue and tastefully covers the three of the workers' exposed buttocks with red fabric, red fabric, and an adult diaper. Two knobby features at either end of the mini-plaza are revealed to be giant lug nuts holding Old San Francisco to New. They are mystically tightened and we all jump at once, about three or four hundred of us, to see if any of the City dislodges. Nope.

*12:55. Filing into the plaza under the E*Trade building, I notice that costumed people now heavily outnumber those (like me) in plainclothes. Dodging out of the way of a mini-stiltwalker, I wonder where they all came from. They start chanting, "Go back to work!" at the smiling onlookers, and the comment is made that anyone who'd work in a cubicle for eight hours a day must be really stupid. I am invisible.

*1:10. We're in front of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange building. I really have to admire how synchronized all the disparate drummers and other percussionists are. Some announcement is made, and the Sock Exchange begins, with old leggings of all sorts being flung in the air. It reminds me of the tortilla throw before the Bay to Breakers, except I find myself relieved that this time it doesn't involve wasting food...not to mention that a sock falling on one's head hurts a lot less than a flying tortilla. This is anything but stupid.

I take off toward the office shortly thereafter, figuring I don't really need to see people flinging pennies at the Banker's Heart, that hideous black sculpture on the north side of some anonymous financial tower. As I pass, stickers strewn about my shirt, someone seeing the parade a block away asks, "What kind of freak show is that?" I say nothing.
peachy as always, Mike at 6:50 PM