labor day weekend is both my favorite and least favorite weekend in san francisco. it's my least favorite because of the crowds. mind you, on labor day itself and the day before, it's generally pretty quiet here. a few thousand san franciscans head up to the desert to participate in the annual burningman festival. the big pagan festival is mostly an excuse to take your clothes off, do lots of drugs, and have druggy sex with strangers. it's the type of thing where you know if it's your scene or not without even going. you hear about it, and if it sounds intriguing, you go. most of us choose to stay home.
because of the burningman crowd passing through the week before labor day and the week after labor day, the city is a madhouse. parking spots disappear, the beaches and parks get really crowded, and all of your favorite bars and eateries become jammed. also, you have to deal with dirty tourists (mostly dreadlocked and exhibiting that tinge-of-beef odor) and their art cars, rented ryder trucks, and sketchy vans with their cyclocide trailers, disco tents, and dusty yurts in tow. they have a tendency to double-park on mission street en masse in front of taquerias and tie up traffic wherever they go.
hippie-phobia aside, it's a pretty calm weekend. the restaurants are still crowded, but most of the people that you see there are happy and enjoying themselves. lest we forget, also well showered. i'm planning on having a great time picnicing, playing a little rock music, and watching long movies like "the godfather". we spent yesterday drinking cerveza and watching our friend's band (they are called the ex-boyfriends) tear it up at the infamous parkside. it was sweltering, we stayed as long as we could. the heat has been in the nineties.
the best part about labor day weekend for me is that it marks the beginning of the vuelta a espana. the last of the grand tours, and also the one big bike race they don't show live on OLN. i'm forced to follow along online with the rest of modern society. i'm also participating in the fantasy vuelta. you pay ten bucks, you pick a team of 15 riders, and you pick stage winners, mountain winners, points winners, and GC winners from your field. stage two was this morning. i'm doing remarkably well right now considering that the three big winners so far — pettachi, max van heeswijk, and floyd landis — are all on my team. the name of the team is "ciao ciao" and we are sitting comfortably at 57th in a field of roughly 3000 teams. my other big guns are dario cioni and aitor gonzales from fassa, damiano cunego, tyler hamilton, santiago botero, alex vinokurov, and oscar sevilla. i have a few wild cards, like jacob piil, who failed to get into the breakaway today. maybe carlos sastre, his teammate who was unintentionally hurt by one of piil's attacks in the tour de france, is asking him not to attack just yet. also, pavel tonkov, the elder russian rider, is getting dropped pretty easily on the flat stages. hopefully he's kick out the jams so i don't have to dump him.
anyway, since the race isn't on television, i'm glued to the computer for an hour every morning reading the coverage. now i know how my brother feels without television coverage at his home in japan. i miss my phil and paul routine.
i just realized that the last two paragraphs mean absolutley nothing to you if you don't follow bike racing. happy labor day.
Posted by snackfight at September 5, 2004 01:44 PM