night of the lion dance

tonight my friend katy and i ventured downtown to take in the annual chinese new year's parade. as always, when the two of us are together, it is uncertain as to what kind of curious happenings will ensue. here's a brief re-telling:

-- one of our favorite things to do is to roam the virgin megastore and then end our visit at citizen cupcake over cappucinos. life is good when you're surrounded by music, books, great coffee and your best friend.

-- a family of four sat on the sidewalk, next to us at grant and geary. the little boy, luke, kept making big goofy grins in my general direction and hammed it up for my camera. he then insisted he wanted to sit next to me, so i pointed out floats and the chinese lions dancing throughout the parade.

-- a float came by our way from the group "sambasia" and following the float, a lone samba dancer resplendent with feathers and a loin cloth danced the samba and looked incredibly familiar... until we realized it was our salsa teacher jaime! we yelled and whooped and when he saw us his face broke into a wider grin and he samba'ed in our direction, as if just for us.

-- we realized that our bus route was still blocked off after the parade had concluded and we were somewhat stranded, so we hiked up to california to try to catch the 1. along the way we saw a mariachi walking down powell with a girl. katy of course yells out, "gustavo!" of course she knew the random mariachi singer walking toward us from music school. of course.

-- we reached the top of california and inquired the bus route's whereabouts from a cop who tonight was not dispensing hope of a muni in our future. so we hopped in a cab and set out for a more central location, thus bypassing the lovely tendernob neighborhood.

-- the cab then dropped us off in front of the "lucky penny" restaurant and we begin to walk, occasionally looking back to see if a bus is heading our way. we walk for about 30 minutes and see a 38 zoom by. hope!

-- we jump on the next bus and ride it all the way to our stop.

-- as we begin walking toward my house a tipsy/drunk woman and her boyfriend walk in our direction. she holds in her fist a bunch of strings attached to gold and silver balloons. she walks up to us and asks in a thick, velvety russian accent, "ladies are you happy?" as a wide smile is plastered on her face. and we respond that yes, we are happy, but is she happy? and she responds saying she is forever happy because she loves this man. he then replies saying he is forever happy and they have just left a chinese wedding, but clearly they are not chinese but russian. we nod our assents. she then tells us she wants to give us a balloon. she breaks free a gold balloon for katy, a silver one for me. next she grabs my arm and says a prolific statement, "the main point in life is to be happy." and we all walk off in our own directions.

-- a block away from my house now, i smile, seeing our shadows cast on the sidewalk by streetlight- two women walking with balloons from a chinese wedding neither of us attended.

only one thing remains to be said: "gung hay fat choy."