Chinese New Year, SF style

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During class on Feb 23, Janel told me that San Francisco's Chinese New Year Parade was happening that night. It's supposed to be the biggest celebration of its kind outside of Asia. Well, when we got out onto Main St., we found several floats ready to join the cue! These floats remind me of the annual Good Friday processions in Sta Cruz. The thing is, these floats reflect upon how commercial the parade has become: each float I've seen is embellished with a company name, perhaps to show who sponsored the float.





I was with Allan and Nhan (TA's in the data analytics class), Janel (my classmate), and Allan's machine learning mentor that afternoon because we were going to eat out as despedida for Janel at in the North Beach District. After dinner, I was surprised to see the huge crowd that gathered behind road blocks, awaiting the arrival of the floats. Nhan and Janel took off towards Chinatown to join in the celebrations but I was more inclined to go home. So I went with Allan and his mentor to find the best route to avoid the rush. Note that the sky was still blue when we started our walk to the train station.


We had a bit of a detour (several blocks were closed off to pedestrian and vehicular traffic) and it was dark when we reached the first uncrowded BART station: Embarcadero. This was where I realised how big of an event Chinese New Year is in the city. The tail-end of the parade was near the Embarcadero station... that's right, the last of the floats AND the golden dragon were still waiting for their turn to move!


And just to make sure that no vehicles made a mistake of using this patch of the road, two trucks blocked it. Only foot traffic was allowed.

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