Valentine's Day, San Francisco Style

Good Afternoon:

“Is there a vagina in the house?”

Your town’s City Hall has probably never had a woman asking that question over a PA system while standing in front of the main entrance (technically, not “in the house”). But if your town’s City Hall has had a woman asking that question over a PA system while standing in front of the main entrance (technically, not “in the house”), chances are that your town’s City Hall did not close off a street to vehicles in order to allow said woman to ask such a question.

Welcome to Valentine’s Day, San Francisco Style.

At work, we did have donuts in the house:

Donuts in the House! (Krispy Kreme’s annual Valentine’s Day special)

Not to mention chocolates and homemade Red Velvet Cupcakes from one of my co-workers who literally stayed up all night baking. I written it before and I’ll write again; my place is a bad place for a diet.

‘Twas after work whilst walking through the Civic Center that I heard the woman asking that question at the start of her speech. You can see her in the big screen below:

The funny thing is that you can easily spot human beings in the crowd who sport the other sort of genitalia, yet she didn’t ask if they were “in the house.” Seems a tad unfair. The occasion was a demonstration/rally/dance party in support of the Violence Against Women Act making its way through the US Congress, and part of a series of demonstrations/rallies/dance parties taking place across the globe campaigning against violence against women (“One Billion Rising”). I’m old enough to remember when such affairs drew almost zero male versions of Homo Sapiens; let’s give the guys a little credit.

On my way to the bus stop, I passed an unusual musical quintet: percussion, flute, saxophone, acoustic guitar. White college-aged kids, goofing off, having fun, improvising something that was sort of a folk-jazz-classical hybrid, sounding pretty darn good and playing for free. A good end to a good day.

Vonn Scott Bair