LOVE, LOVE, LOVE-VOLUTION S.F. STYLE

I love a good parade. Marching bands, baton twirlers, tuba players, drummers all in synch and high stepping to the beat and lead of the band major. I enjoy good parades with colorful floats and fancy horses, high spirits and good cheer for all those on the parade route. Civic patriotism on display. Funny clowns giving out clean and sweet candy to the happy and giddy kiddies. Proud parents and relatives watching and waving to their dandies in the lineup. Boyscouts and girlscouts and the brave policeman and honored firemen in their finest and shiniest flaming red trucks all marching to the tune of the MUSIC MAN. Americas finest, all on display on the main street or the grand boulevard. A good parade makes me proud to be an American.

To our surprise, on this past Saturday, San Francisco had a grand parade. It was held in a place of honor on their grand boulevard, Market Street. Beginning from the mighty Embarcadero and ending at the place of civic pride and power, City Hall, the thousands of marchers marched and the mighty fleet of gilded floats glided as if on a cloud in a elegant and ornate style of an era gone by.

My wife and I had just finished touring the fine shops of the Westfield Mall on Market and Powell Streets when, as we were exiting this fine tribute to vertical commercialism (the building is like 7 stories straight up and it is really dizzying), we were hit with a blast of bass (KA-BAM, A THUMP THUMP, KA BAM) a sound so loud that it almost stopped my heart from beating. I was confused and dazed and wobbly for a moment. Luckily the second blast of bass got my heart beating again ( the second blast was like a defibrillator: I hit the pavement face first in full heart arrest and shock, the Doc races over and shouts: "Clear" , ka-bam the bass hits my chest and my heart starts again). "Damn", I say, " that was a rush." "What the hell?? What is this horrible glass rattling noise?"" Did World War 3 start while we were shopping?" Still confused I stagger, with my knees buckling, to the curb and I see this monster of a truck bearing down on me with all this huge, huge humongous noise coming out of it. Not a horn noise, but "The Noise", all bass, is thumping my brain to mush and I'm confused to pieces, I'm like a deer on a freeway at midnight not knowing which way to go with headlights coming from all directions. The deer ,confused, runs straight at the lights; boom, dead deer and wrecked car. Like the deer, I'm running straight for the truck; I'm getting run over by the marchers, thousands of them coming at me like a tidal wave, but they aren't marching, they are bouncing and prancing and spinning and jumping and hopping and kissing and hugging and nothing in unison. I'm being bumped and prodded and banged and jangled. My wife grabs me by the collar and jerks me back to curb just as some freaky,totally naked, wild ass face, warrior painted, derby wearing, drugged out male marcher tries to give me a body slam. I can't hear anything other than the god awful pounding and blaring of unadulterated noise coming from that black behemoth truck. This truck had a 10 KW generator on it the size of a small car. It was pumping juice into telephone booth (for those of you who don't kow what a telephone booth is; in the pre-cell phone days, a booth is a little house where you could put coins in a little box and make phone calls, it was connected to a big wood pole with wires that went that way somewhere and connected you to people over there somewhere) sized speakers. On this truck were people who were gyrating to this noise like it was music. Most of these people were young ladies and these young ladies were ,like, naked except for small little patches of material that covered their private parts (after I gained my bearings, seeing this was actually kind of cool, my wife didn't think it was too cool).

This bizzaro scene was repeated time after time. There were probably 30 of these monster semi-trucks oozing down Market Street at 2 miles per hour. It took forever for each truck to pass and for some reason they all stopped in front of me, like I was the reviewing judge. After I checked out the chicks on board and gave them my thumbs up, the driver of the float-truck would look at me and I would nod my o.k. and give him permission to move on. I felt like I was the general of the parkway.

I would wager the parents of the paraders would have been proud to see their pretty little ones in this activity. As in:"Ahh look dear, here comes HONEY BUNNY BETTY with her cute little black heart shaped pasties lap dancing that wino from the homeless shelter now!!!" "I'm so proud of her." "These kids to day are so full of Love, and Ecstacy, and crank and crack. They have it all, not like when we were kids, when all we had was cheap Mexican weed cut with oregno and every once in awhile we could score some acid."

The favorite color of the day on the "floats"( everybody on those platforms were "floating", now I know how those platforms got their names) was gold. Gold bikinis, bold gold thongs, gold shorts, gold paint. "All that glitters is gold". "Show me the gold". GOLD, GOLD, GOLD. Gold everywhere except for the marchers. The marchers and paraders loved lime green, bright, eye blinding, LIME GREEN; except for a bunch of guys who were wearing pretty pink tutus and seemed real friendly amongst themselves, with all the hugging and kissing and such.

This spectacle went on for at least an hour, my ears are still ringing three days later, as in: "honey will you answer that? I hear the phone ringing". Honey answers: "Clean your stupid ears out, cell phones don't ring anymore, where you been for the last hundred years, huh?"

Most of the floats had Rappers on them and the common theme was: "Hit the Bitch", Slap the Bitch", "Hump the Bitch", Bitch, Bitch, Bitch, etc., etc., Ryhmes with itch, snitch, hich, rich. No wonder they like that word. What ever happened to good old favorites like "I ain't nothin but a Hound Dog", or " Jumpin Jack Flash", or catchy little " Yellow Submarine"? I think I've become my parents; a fogey, out of it. I looked out of place with USC hat and USC Trojan tee-shirt. I wish they came in more vibrant colors like neon flash red and yellow. I would have fit in better with the teenies.

They called this parade ( it was sanctioned by the city, police protection and all) THE LOVE EVOLUTION. Crazy isn't it? No wonder AL QUEDA AND THE TALIBAN want to kill all of us. Actually it was part Boom Box on steroids and a marching, stomping RAVE. I always wondered what a rave was like. Too cool, should have gone to one long ago.

It was fun experiencing this event though, saves me a lot of $$$$ from having to go to Rio De JINERO for Mardi Gras. Maybe next year they'll put a little more effort in the floats. The floats were a little tacky, but what would a person expect from drugged out LOVE FLOATERS?