Coke in the Tenderloin

A large production crew from Los Angeles came to San Francisco last weekend for a four-day shoot on a huge, expensive commercial for Coca-Cola.



There were hundreds of extras involved in each day's filming...



...some playing participants in a mock parade...



...while most of us were stationed on the sidewalk as spectators...



...being herded around by young production assistants.



I joined the first day of shooting underneath a freeway around Harrison and Division Streets when the weather was so cold and so wet that it felt certain half of the participants were going to come down with pneumonia by the end of the day...



...particularly the poor, underdressed cheerleaders from the Crenshaw High School band who had been brought in from Los Angeles.



This last day of shooting was much warmer than the first and the rains were briefly in abeyance.



The block-long parade was being filmed on Taylor Street between Turk and Eddy Streets in the Tenderloin.



One block makes a huge difference in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood...



...and this particular block is one of the craziest in the entire city.



The San Francisco Chronicle's website has this to say in their "tour section" area:

Repeatedly described in most tourist guides as "the worst neighborhood in San Francisco," the Tenderloin thrives despite its bad rap. Sure, there are loads of drug dealers, addicts, prostitutes and mentally unstable street people, but if you can get past that, you'll find it is also one of the city's most exciting and diverse locales.

Getting its funky, florid nickname from the days when policemen were paid more to work its mean streets, thereby affording the cops better cuts of meat, the Tenderloin is moving up these days.

Most of the extras were suburbanites from around the Bay Area...



...and it was interesting to watch them calmly hang out...



...with speed freaks talking to themselves...



...and drunks in wheelchairs ranting as they passed by.



Actually, everyone got along just fine, partly because a parade...



...is usually amusing...



...and generally surreal.



Plus, the faux Miss New Mexico was stunning.



One of the parade contingents looked familiar to me, Cheer San Francisco.



I played on a short-lived, infamously fun softball team for a gay leather bar called Chaps back at the beginning of the 1980s.



During one game, a teammate from Hayward brought along some friends who were former high school cheerleaders and who wanted to take it up again.



To be honest, the team found them a little embarassing at the time, but in the intervening 25 years...



...they've become a small empire according to their website (click here), with chapters all around the country.



As some kind of karmic payback for the miserable Saturday, the shooting wrapped up early at lunch, and we were paid a full-day rate and sent home before the monsoons started up again. Hurrah!