Husband and I arrived at the scene at 7 PM; brought our dinner and had fun. The crowd started to come in batch and within an hour, the whole of Castro district was packed. We came in our jeans and warm jackets. And after some miles walking, we started to sweat it out. In between walking and our anticipation of the scene to come in full swing, we were drinking our red wine on the road. At Castro's Market Street where the party scene was, booze was not allowed inside; so police officers checked out our bags though not thoroughly, in fact. At check points, police officers are scattered at different angles.
At the street party, people were happy and merry; came in their most creative, silly, wacky, beautiful and outrageous costumes! We were expecting a wild party scene but nothing came through to be like that! We were looking forward to seeing the participation of at least 80% of the gay folks in this foremost gay communiy in SFO yet to our surprise they came out to be the minorities! Heterosexuals dominated the scene.
To get to Castro district, we took the bus number 15 from Columbus Avenue in North Beach which dropped us off on second street in Financial District. From there we went to the underground MUNI train station only to find out that all the MUNI TRAINS were packed with people-like sardines! They came in costumes! To save time- we opted to walk instead of going through the waves of waiting and rubbing elbows with others to squeeze inside the train. And voila, we did well on foot!
In Castro, we arrived at around 7 PM and stayed on until about 8.45 PM. We didn't want to get stranded so after a while, we were set to go home. By 9 PM we were at the underground train station in CASTRO; took the train that brought us back to Powell at the Financial District. From there, we hopped in the SFO cable car (tram) at the Embarcadero; got off at Jackson (along Chinatown)and walked home to our flat in North Beach. We didn't realize we were in the wrong tram; only find out about it after we had paid and we can't get a transfer ticket so we just stayed on then walked on our way back to our flat. Our trip was worth it. We had fun! We will do it again next year!
This morning at a little before 6 AM, we tried to catch the early morning news. We found out that 300,000 people came to party in Castro and boy, we were there! Luckily, we left early. There were gun shooting that victimized 10 people. According to the news 2 gangs had a fight so shooting began. Anyhow, we're sorry for those who witnessed this and those who were shot. That was tough as a memorabilia for a halloween party. But somehow, all was an experience for us to learn~ that life is filled with surprises be it positive or negative. As Shakespeare would have said, "To be or not to be" or as in "comedy or tragedy."
Well, in summary- husband and I were very lucky to have been home (and had our hot brewed coffee) at 9: 30 PM last night. We were home sipping our cups of coffee, accompanied by the blueberry scone I baked in the afternoon yesterday.
More later. We are off to some emergency family trip to Reno, Nevada this noontime.
Enjoy the photos! Write comments if you wish! Cheers!
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