Andy Reitz (blog)

 

 

In San Francisco today - lunch and protest

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On my first day of unemployment, I got roped into heading up to San Francisco for lunch. Mike is in town for the RSA conference, and Sheila and Miriam came along for the ride:

Mike holding Miriam
Mike, holding Miriam.

We were joined by Koji-san and one of Sheila's friends from UC Berkeley, at a place called 'wichcraft. The food was pretty decent, and it wasn't too crowded, so we were able to hang out there for awhile. Miriam was pretty well behaved - Sheila says that she likes being taken to new places - so maybe she inherited her father's wanderlust.

After lunch, Sheila, Miriam, Koji and I checked out the protest surrounding the Olympic Torch relay. San Francisco is apparently the only U.S. city that the torch will visit before the Olympics, but I don't know how well America acquitted itself:

Some of the more peaceful protestors along the Embarcadero in San Francisco
Some of the more peaceful protestors along the Embarcadero in San Francisco

What was strange about all of the protesting, is that there weren't designated areas for each group. The pro-China and anti-China people were all mixed together. At one point, we got stuck in a pretty thick crowd, and people were exchanging verbal insults right next to each other. It was pretty amazing, but I was a little surprised to see so many people out in the city today in favor of China. I guess that's what happens when you only hear about the negative stuff (the oppression of Tibet, the support of Sudan, control of Taiwan, etc.).

Ironically, I wasn't there to protest - I would have actually liked to have seen the torch. But, we noticed that the protestors were both flocking to the supposed ending site of the relay, and going away. As it turns out, many of the protesters were in contact with one another via SMS - and as the relay route changed, they were attempting to track it. We didn't want to bother, so I wasn't able to see anything actually related to the olympics.

All of the pictures that I took are up in a gallery.

-Andy.