Last Sunday, May 27, the Oakland Symphony Chorus sang at the 75th anniversary celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was quite a day, complicated by the facts that:
- The celebration was held at Crissy Field, a beautiful spot on the San Francisco shoreline which is a long way from anywhere, and
- There was No Public Parking.
It only took me an hour and a half to get there, taking BART and the 30 Stockton bus, and then walking (I estimate) a mile and a half from the last bus stop to the Crissy Field Stage, where we were to perform. It may not have been that far; I was wandering around, as I hadn't been to Crissy Field since it became a nature reserve. Crissy Field tidal marsh is gorgeous:
I took these photos with my husband's Canon S95, a competent little point-and-shoot which was not up to getting me a serious closeup of this great blue heron, but at least I got one good shot of him:
The rest of the gallery is at this link; I'm just showcasing a couple of shots here.
Because of the announced lack of parking, there weren't anything like as many people as I expected; that steady but moderate stream of people along the path is about what I saw everywhere. It was a gorgeous day, sunny, breezy, and not too warm. By the time we performed, at nearly 6 PM, "breezy" had become "windy" enough to make loud noises on the microphones, and our conductor had to hold her score lest it blow away. The audience seemed to like our concert a lot. I didn't stay for the fireworks at 9:30 PM. As I was leaving, around 7:15, there were many more people coming out for the fireworks than I had seen during the day, so I missed the big crowd.
I didn't get any photos of us, of course; but here's the Crissy Field Stage featuring the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus:
We sang about an hour after them, following a brass band playing swing tunes.
I was gone 8 1/2 hours, during which I walked to and from the stage, also over a lot of the rest of Crissy Field, and sang all the way through our half-hour program twice (once for prep, once live), standing the whole time. I didn't think to take the folding chair and there was NO place to sit except the ground. After we finished the concert I set out for the 30 Stockton bus stop; I had to stop, sit, and eat something on the way. There was a class in swing dancing going on in the food court, great fun to watch. Swing dance classes no longer assume that the gentleman leads, they still divide pairs into "leaders" and "followers" but dancers get to decide which one they want to be.
Fortunately I got to the bus stop just as a bus arrived at the turnaround, which meant I got a seat. By the time that bus finished going through the Marina, there were not only no seats, there was no standing room. There were people hanging from people; they were almost hanging out the windows. I was a little concerned about the 2 young men swapping swigs from an open gallon jug of red wine, but nothing came of it; I was charmed by the bouncing Indian baby boy (at the 4 tooth stage) who was much too wired to go quietly to sleep as his father kept suggesting. The bus took most of an hour to get to Market Street and a BART station. I finally got home about 9:25, just in time to hear the fireworks go off. The pedometer app on my phone said I walked 6.11 miles that day.
