I See San Fran, I see France!

I’m baaack! Pretend you all missed me for a moment. Done? Thanks. And special thanks to Kat, Amanda and Lola for filling in for me while I was gone.


So, there were a lot of interesting things that went down while I was in San Fran. There was a gay bar where heteros like Scott and I were extremely unwelcome. Seriously, I think the bartender used sanitizer after we left, not wanting to be affiliated with our straight-people money. There was the homeless man outside said bar who tried to convince me that they tried to use pigeons for military tactical missions, because of their “visual acuity.” It failed because “they weren’t very focused.”

But, by far, the most interesting thing that happened to us in San Francisco was the naked lady on the tour bus.

Allow me to set the scene. When we arrived on Saturday we walked eeeeverywhere. And seriously, guys? San Francisco is the only place in the world where you actually CAN walk uphill both ways. So by Sunday morning I insisted we take the tour bus that allowed us to get on and off as we saw fit. Sunday we spent the whole day going from town to town.

Monday we slept in, in homage to the fact that we could. We both woke up at our normal work time and kind of contentedly sighed and went back to sleep. Because we COULD, people! No baby, no dog, no work.

We got some coffee and some breakfast and we’re feeling pretty giddy. As we are turning the corner to the bus area, we see a cop car. Then we see three cops on top of the double-decker tour bus. It wasn’t our tour bus, it was a different company. We stretched our necks to see our bus, but no luck. So we sat back and watched the show.

So of course we watched the cops. We couldn’t see who was in the bus, but that person was clearly not leaving. And the cops didn’t seem overly anxious to get that person off, which seemed odd because this particular tour bus wasn’t touring. It was actually where people bought tickets, and the company reps were sort of wandering around looking oddly frantic.

Based on what we saw, and what we overheard, here’s what happened.

A homeless woman who, let’s say, had been more sober in her life than she was that day, climbed on to the top deck of the bus. The tour guides asked her to leave. She refused.

I am not sure in which order this happened, but two things occurred: the police were called and the homeless lady took her clothes off and threw them over the side of the bus.

So when we had arrived, the lady was bare-ass naked sitting in the seat with three cops pulling on gloves, but each refusing to touch her.

Why the wait? Well, you see, they couldn’t very well take her down all naked, right? Only they didn’t have on them a tarp big enough for this lady.

So they called the fire department.

You guys, TWO fire trucks and an ambulance turned up.

So now there is a cop car, an ambulance, two fire trucks, and one very naked lady with three very uncomfortable cops.

One fire truck? Had a cherry-picker attachment.

All we saw was the woman stand up with a huge blue tarp around her. How she got off was a bit of a mystery because our bus pulled up and there were so many people getting on and off and telling the story that all we saw was the cop closing the door to the ambulance.

I won't lie, I want to believe so very much that she had to be forklifted off. If only because then someone else lived my own nightmare, and what are the odds these things repeat?

So there you go. What was the most interesting thing that happened to you on vacation? If you’re a parent, did you do a baby-free vacay? I have to say, by day 5 I was missing her like crazy. But the first few days? Total recharge.