When A Street Fair is an Island of Calm

Saturday I had all sorts of errands to run and took the N-Judah to the bank past 19th Avenue. In my rush to get over there I realized in a “no duh” moment that there was a reason the traffic was so weird – Saturday was the day for the big annual Asian Street Fair on Irving St. Never mind that there were only, say, a ton of posters all over the neighborhood – I’d been so busy with work lately it just sorta slipped my mind.
So it was a nice “surprise” if you will – my only regrets were I didn’t bring my camera, and that I didn’t have more time to hang around. After a hectic work week and contending with over a month of no home internet connection (screw you, Earthlink), it was a nice diversion that had nothing to do with the hassles of the week.
I wish I’d brought a camera, if for no other reason than to get a picture of the wacky little BART train with a big cartoony happy face on the front that was parked out as part of BART’s outreach to the community. Me describing it doesn’t do this wacky little thing justice.
I also got a chance to meet San Francisco’s elected Public Defender, Jeff Adachi. Now, some San Franciscans may know him as our elected official in charge of running the Public Defender’s office. But many more may not realize he’s also a filmmaker, and his first documentary, The Slanted Screen was just released, and is playing through May 25th here in town. (The Infamous 22 Bus will take you right to the theater, too!)
Mr. Adachi was a truly pleasant person to talk to and exchange movie chat with, and it’s kind of amazing a guy like this can be so nice and so smart, and yet also be successful in the rough and tumble of San Francisco public life.
And the pleasantness kept rolling along. I had to take care of an unusual (but not bad) matter at Washington Mutual Bank, and the people there were so unusually nice, I just had to give ’em a plug in the blog. It is so rare, esp. as a mass transit user, to be treated politely by competent folks in customer service these days, you almost feel a need to reward people for doing what used to be standard (i.e. treat customers and citizens the way they should be, not the way they usually are)
But after meeting Mr. Adachi and dealing with the nice folks at WaMu, I was feeling so good I did not mind the slowest freakin’ N-Judah ever recorded, which took forever to get me downtown to meet my mom and brother for lunch. I guess the residual serotonin boost from the good vibes on Irving St. at the fair were helping. Thanks to all for making my N-Judah ride powered by turtles not nearly as irritating as it would have been otherwise.