About last Tuesday

Shot with my Ocean.

After working and voting, I just couldn’t sit still. I started the evening at Twitter HQ, where they were having a company party (and keeping the service running smoothly as the world of Tweets exploded, mine included). I was taken aback at how nice and gracious everyone there is; I mean, I didn’t expect anything amiss, but it’s always good to find out a service I use and enjoy has cool people making it go. It’s impossible to convey — though I’m sure you felt it, or was in it some way or another — what happened when they announced President Obama; the yelling and screaming at Twitter was deafening, and I just sat there trying not to cry. Then, Hacker Boy nabbed me by my text leash, and off we went into the night.

Our first stop was my neighborhood; a good idea since the Castro was being shut off as we parked the car. We ogled the street party there, grabbed a cab and went to NOPA in the Western Addition. It’s fulla Marina yuppies, but it’s my favorite restaurant in SF — it’s a comfort zone, and it’s my old stomping grounds. The area of Divisadero around Hayes is the old “Goth Ghetto” and while it’s being yuppified and the strollers make me want to put a burning painful hex on all real estate agents, it is still the Goth Ghetto. I lived there for many years; it was a real resting place of a neighborhood when I got off the streets. I used to do my laundry in the space the NOPA now occupies. I used to manage the occult store near Haight — for over 3 years (now sadly gone). I used to have artists’ and writers’ salons in my teeny apartment on Divis and Page. I was friends with lots of little old black ladies from the projects down the street (thanks to working at the occult store). I saw a lot of beat downs in front of my apartment, saw a homeless guy die across the street from my apartment, helped a lady who’d been stabbed in broad daylight one afternoon next to my house, hung with young African American girls from the projects who got off the block and would steal me kitchenware from their new jobs. Anyone remember the guy getting his head blown off in front of the liquor store at Divis and Fell? You know, the liquor store with the long counter — they told me once they keep a loaded gun under the counter there every six feet. I was inside the Victorian next door that night — yes, Anne Rice’s old house. I made friends with the guys who owned the recording studio downstairs and some nights after work I’d go to the studio and hang out and see who was there; the bands always stayed in Rice’s old house upstairs. It’s a creepy place. I hung out with Fat Mike quite a bit in those days. One night, in front of what is now the Independent (pictured above), I saw two cars full of guys drive very slowly down *both* sides of the street in the same direction, slowly shooting at each others’ cars.

Back to last Tuesday. When I got the news, I headed from Twitter downtown to get HB and people were running down the streets screaming OBAMA. In the cab from the Castro toward Lower Haight/Divisadero, I got the lowdown on street closures from the cabbie: parties in the Castro (where go-go boys danced on newsboxes; video), Fillmore, Union Square (prize photo, IMHO), Valencia, Mission, (where they danced on top of buses), Guererro and 16th, even Eureka Valley! The cab was blasting Obama’s speech, and when I came in the restaurant, I was wiping tears from my cheeks. NOPA was quiet — save for the occasional restaurant-wide cheer of OBAMA! — and then from our table we saw through the giant windows, the flood of people begin to fill the street…

NOPA let us run outside as it started, and Jonathan shot this video:

This was happening in the Castro:

This was happening in Union Square:

And after we ate, we rushed off into the crowds. At Divisadero and Hayes they set up some serious beats. The police were quite tolerant, and even in some cases, smiley.

Photo with my Ocean.

We sped off through the Castro to the Mission — where we found the Extra Action Marching Band (I recognized a song a block away and started running); hugs and smiles and dancing all around. It looked like this:

And, like this:

Photo by my dear and very talented friend, The Blight; see his post, too.

Photo by my dear and very talented friend, The Blight; see his post, too.