In an act of supreme cosmic coincidence, I happen to live in the Presidio right above Crissy Field, about a block’s distance from the Golden Gate Bridge, on the future site of Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy, but I didn’t attend any of the 75th anniversary festivities (exhibition tents! music stages! who knows what else!) on Sunday, May 27th, aside from the food tents and the fireworks show. Why? That’s a story.
The city had shut down access to the entire Presidio except for buses, taxis, cyclists, and residents who had special passes, and I thought I was going to be fighting rivers of pedestrians trying to get around, so I’d resolved to stay home and walk down to the field later. However, I discovered an errand I needed to run that morning which couldn’t be avoided, so I had to make use of my pass to get in and out. To my delight, I discovered that the system worked incredibly well. If I had a hat, it’d be off to whoever worked out the logistics of the roadblocks and police officers thereat — getting in and out was very smooth!
Armed with this knowledge, I felt secure in leaving later that afternoon to go see Men in Black 3 on a spur-of-the-moment impulse with some friends. It was great, btw, and if you liked the first one, you should go see it (nobody liked the second one; we can acknowledge this). When the movie was done, my companions and I reentered the Presidio utterly frictionlessly, the cops waving us past the barriers like VIPs at a big arena concert. It was awesome.
So were the food tents. I don’t remember the name of the one I went to, but I got a nice pile of tasty noodles and a big hunk of delicious chicken on a stick. Grilled cheese sandwiches stuffed — stuffed! — with bacon were also in evidence. There was no beer — no alcohol of any kind, in fact — but this was probably the one and only time that my home’s location would prove to be an advantage (it’s an otherwise lonely existence here in the Presidio; nobody visits you, but it’s okay — I like to think of my time here as keeping the place warm for the eventual construction of Starfleet’s most important planet-side site). It didn’t matter anyway, as the sun went down and it started to get cold, like it always does out here.
I need to tell you that the fireworks show was probably the best one I’ve ever seen. There were plenty of stunning fireworks in a variety of colors, but there were also laser spotlights, volleys of rockets, and showers of multicolored, coordinated sparks launched from the Bridge itself that boggled the mind. Just do a Flickr search for “golden gate bridge anniversary” and you’ll get some idea of what it was like. I’m sorry you couldn’t be there yourself, but if ever there was a good excuse for violating the Temporal Prime Directive, this would be among them. Real talk.
~Cmdr. Jon Sung
Executive Officer
USS Loma Prieta
Starfleet, Region 4
