Halloween at the Castro
The Castro district, San Francisco. Gigantic Halloween street party, for those who aren't familiar with the area.
Here's a slightly blurry picture near the center of the insanity (you can see the gigantic rainbow flag in the center if you look closely). People as far as the eye can see...
Last year I went with Juliana, who wore practically nothing and attracted quite a lot of attention in our direction. This time I felt like I did a lot more observing and a lot less of being observed. Although I did get my cleavage patted by a random woman in a tiger suit.
Some people have really elaborate costumes and spent all their time being photographed.
A very lovely man:
One of at least two peacock ladies I saw. This one said she spent two weeks making her costume:
I'm not exactly sure what this person was, but it was very large and looked to be made entirely of plastic:
I thought these protesters were great. They were marching all around Market between Civic Center and Castro. Since you can't see their signs all that clearly, I'll transcribe them: "Peace is for pussy's" "Fuck the Poor!" "More guns 4 the children" "Herpes rule!" "Fuck peace" etc...
On our way back to the bart station, we passed a group of 20 or 30 people who had a very large sign that said "YES! (on prop. such-and-such)" and were just chanting "yes! yes! yes!" while pounding their fists in the air. It was amusing at the time.
Some guys dressed as, well, feminine products. The o.b. guy's box says, among other things "obehave" and "obi-wan kenobi, you're my only hope". The Vagisil box says "Cleanses away fish odor. Needs no water or gargling."
I saw at least 3 or 4 Waldos in the crowd, and every one was constantly hounded by people: "Hey Waldo, I found you!" "Waldo, where ya been?!" etc.
The ride back on Bart was *not* fun -- similar, I'm told, to an average day on the Tokyo subway, but maybe with more oddly dressed people. Then again, maybe not.
Everyone who was officially employed that evening for city things had to have a sense of humor. And for the most part, they seemed to. Police officers were cheerfully dumping drinks out onto the ground, Bart guards let hundreds of people through the gates without paying, etc... and dealt with the thousands of drunken revelers in an overall very nice manner.