At 10AM this morning, the 5 Fulton bus stopped indefinitely at the corner of McAllister and Hyde because police were stopping all vehicular and pedestrian traffic from crossing Hyde Street, trapping quite a few people at the Heart of the City Farmers Market above.
Though San Francisco's Finest have a terrible track record solving crimes or protecting the city's citizens, when it comes to dignitaries they tend to be a model of efficiency and overkill, as evidenced by at least 20 motorcycle cops tearing down the street one-by-one as the advance guard of a major motorcade.
They were followed by quite a number of police cars, and finally the dignitaries and their own bodyguards went flying by.
The new president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev arrived in San Francisco via a large motorcade yesterday, and this was probably his entourage on its way to visit Silicon Valley companies such as Cisco this morning.
While waiting for the N on 9th yesterday, two huge tour buses pulled up at the light, and they were full of Japanese sailors on a special tour of SF, so I got everyone at the metro stop to wave at them. They at first were like "Why are they waving" but them got in to it and waved back and were smiling.
ReplyDeleteI figure if the Russians and the Japanese are coming tou Our Fair City, the least we can do is make 'em feel welcome, so they don't nuke us in the next war....they'll be all "Oh yeah those nice people in the Inner Sunset...and oh yeah Twitter!"
Dear Greg: I wave at tourist buses too, but this was closer to serfs being snarled at by Russian guards while horse-driven coaches with the tsar inside were being driven through town.
ReplyDeleteGreat coverage, Mike... And I'm going to guess that those cops were all getting overtime pay...
ReplyDeleteAnd FYI, Troy Holden has a photo of him at Twitter on today's CaliberSF...