Random SF happenings

Odd things sometimes happen when living in San Francisco.

Shopping in Union Square on the 15th of March, we spotted a huge crowd of people - men and women - wearing bridal gowns of all different styles milling about. When asked what this was all about, we were told "We're the Brides of March!" The Brides of March on the Ides of March. How very random.

Riding the 31 bus, which goes down Turk straight through the Tenderloin last week (not my usual bus), a whole crowd of young black men got on the bus somewhere around the SF Shopping Center. Within a few blocks of turning onto Turk, the whole group of them were staring apprehensively out the back window and muttering nervously to each other. I was reading a book at the time in the back seat so I wasn't entirely paying attention but I finally caught on that there was a car - a BMW, I guess - following the bus with a guy in a ski mask hanging out of one of the windows. At one stop, the car went around the bus but then stopped not far ahead of it. The entire group were on edge, not sure what to do, yelling at the bus driver to stop and let them off the bus, but then too nervous to actually get off. One guy opened the emergency window and jumped out of it, and took off running around the corner. A few others got off (or jumped out the window for some reason, even though the bus was still stopped and the door was only 3 feet to the left of the window) and took off running, while others chose to stay on the bus but kept watching apprehensively out the window. There was some relief when it was reported that the car had turned off the road, but they all wondered where it had gone. More guys got off a few stops later, but three guys stayed on the bus past my stop (which is a good distance away from where this all occurred), apparently deciding it was the safest place to be. Somehow the rest of the people on the bus, even when we figured out what was happening, couldn't seem to get too nervous about this, but these guys were obviously quite terrified. Then again, given that I read that a teenager was gunned down in a drive-by earlier that day in Western Addition, I don't blame them for being nervous. Guys in ski masks hanging out of cars..not something you generally want to see (though I never did see him). I did have the nervous thought that if someone *did* open fire on the crowded bus, there'd be nowhere to go..but I somehow couldn't believe they'd just randomly shoot into a crowded bus either. The 31 isn't top on my list of buses to take these days after that, though, I must say...which isn't to say I won't take it if I need to go somewhere it'll take me.