Belmont University

June 19, 2009

just beat it...

RashinaSo I was awoken at 3:00 this morning by Ken, telling me that the bus was breaking down and that we were going to have to turn back to Los Angeles to get it fixed. This was immediately followed by the words: “We might have to skip San Francisco all together.”! By 7:00 I was still trying to process what exactly was occurring and I started making phone calls informing the people whom we were supposed to meet with throughout the course of the day that we weren’t going to be in the city until at least 2:00 pm. However, given the stressful nature of the hours of re-planning, the morning was speckled with incredible music, conversations, card games and just an overall stillness of being awake without running off the bus in the usual fashion of this trip.

After reworking our plans and realizing that we weren’t going to have a rental van, we decided to take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) across the city. Regardless of the fact that we had to pay for transportation, riding public transportation all day (in a city that advocates living “green”) thoroughly excited me.

Our day began at the airport, where we jumped on the BART to 16th St Mission. This stop was about ten blocks away from the Castro district, wherein the majority of San Francisco’s gay population resides. As we walked up towards the district from a less-safe area of town, I noticed the gradation from working-class restaurants and shops to higher end locations, surrounded by Gay Pride rainbow flags and a slue of ethnic restaurants and stores.

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