This whole week I have been bummed out that I was going to miss my good friends’ concert up in Seattle today. Sure, the plane ride is short, but other forces prevented me from going.
Actually “bummed out” would be understating it a bit, but I am trying to not sound melodramatic so the phrase stays. Oscillaror X not only makes awesome music that I LOOOOVE, but they are also dear friends of mine, so to not be there to support them was driving me nuts. (side note – you will see a couple of shots that I took of them in their Photos section! /shamelessselfpromotion)
Somewhere around Wednesday this week I was perusing the San Francisco Fun Cheap websites for distractions this weekend when I saw events listed for the wrap-up of all of the Chinese New Year celebrations happening this weekend – how could I have forgotten?!?!?! I’ve only wanted to go to the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade since forever!
While I wasn’t able to be magically transported to Seattle for the concert, I did have the parade to look forward to and it would be so sweet to finally see it in person! I immediately studied the parade route, diligently scouting out the perfect position for me and my camera – oh and Chris too. I really wanted to share the parade with him – to have that memory to share together.
This morning I awoke, sleepy and cuddly when suddenly my mind remembered what day it was… PARADE DAY! I jumped out of bed with anticipation of the evenings festivities to come – why was the morning crawling by?
Afternoon came and my excitement grew. Chris just looked at me with a half smile and a shake of his head.
Oh! It’s time to go! We put on our coats and half walked and half jogged the 3 blocks to Market St. – despite wanting to be in Chinatown, I felt that we would have the best experience with fewer crowds (for Chris’ sake) and I could still get a good angle.
We weren’t far from the beginning of the parade, so that meant less time standing around too. We stood just north-ish of Market on the corner of 3rd and Geary, right underneath the Geary sign. (Some of the intersections downtown are soooo odd) We had a front-row seat! er, stand!
A few parent-less kids (where were their parents, anyway?!?!) attempted to make the crowding more miserable by yelling at each other and shoving both themselves and people around and didn’t stop until the guy to my left said “Look, you should stop shoving and shouting because if you don’t I’m going to shove back, and I’m definitely going to win”. That made them leave – hooray!
The parade was a cacophony of colors and sounds that constantly bombarded your eyes and ears and it was hard to focus on any one thing for too long due to the whirlwind of activity before you. One of my favorite parts of the parade were the Chinese Lions dancing all around the street and coming up to greet and dance right in front of us! I was determined to use my iPhone as much as possible as an experiment – sometimes the images are just a blur of color (once it got dark) and sometimes the motion really added to the sense of movement in the picture, in my opinion.
This picture is actually pretty clear:
Chinese Lion Dancers – SF Chinese New Year Parade 2013
Here I am now at home, re-living the parade tonight with relish – I’ve wanted to see this for such a long time, and finally I was able to attend! I’ll never forget when my former boss Stan told me, in great detail, what this parade is like. He definitely described it well enough for me to yearn to go and being there to experience it myself was really a treat – I felt like a kid again.
