Switcheroo

Apologies for the misinformation in yesterday's post. The Olympic torch was run through the streets of San Francisco today. It arrived yesterday in this fair town under the cover of darkness.

I couldn't really miss out on the action, so a coworker and I decided to join the crowds to check out the commotion. There were huge gatherings of people all over the Embarcadero as you can see from this picture taken from the office. There was a band, and traditional Chinese performing artists like lion dancers and dragon dancers to entertain the crowd until the torch arrived. I must have seen the dragons walk in circles 20 or more times before I decided to hightail it back to work. Below you'll also see a picture of a tired dragon resting. Luckily I left when I did because the torch would never arrive. Instead it was rerouted to avoid the crowds and protesters.

True, it must have been disappointing for the crowds of people who were eagerly awaiting the torch at Justin Herman Plaza, but I think it was a good executive decision on the mayor's part to have switched the route to avoid too much public disruption.

The protesters I saw were relatively peaceful. You had the pro-Tibet and then the pro-China demonstrators who were waving their respective flags.

Just as an aside, I think the cops in San Francisco have a much cooler uniform than the police in Germany in their greenish-yellow uniforms that make them look like forest rangers. Neither of them can beat the Italians in terms of cool police uniforms though. In Italy they've got many different types of police, each with their own spiffy costumes! :-)