San Francisco continued...

Since I cannot fall back asleep due to below-freezing temperatures in the apartment and worrying about finances, I might as well make good use of my extra hour and continue with the San Fran adventure...

After going to bed so early Thursday night, we were wide awake and ready to hit up the conference Friday morning. Our first talk centered around the speech of gay and transmen in relation to the power relationship with heterosexual male and female speech. It was very interesting and suggested that it is in fact hetero male speech that is the odd-man-out. That morning also included Bryan's historiography of Waldensian Patoua, which laid out how Patoua has been studied over the past couple centuries.

For lunch we decided to keep it cheap and head across the street to 'Naan & Curry', an Indian/Pakistani place across the street that was recommended by our Foodies Guide to SF. For $10 we piled out plates with spicy goodness - our only complaint was that we REEKED of smoke from the kitchen upon leaving the restaurant and hence had to change once we got back to the hotel.

For the next hour and a half I sat in on three presentations having to do with Creoles and Pidgins, something I've never studied extensively but would really love to - it started out with an English dialect spoken in the Dominican Republic, moved onto media portrayal of Hawai'ian Creole, and then onto copula variability in basilectal, mesolectal, and acrolectal levels of Hawai'ian Creole. FUN FUN FUN!!! Finally at two we listened to our friend and former BC linguist Shawn present on two less-well-known linguists of Algonquian languages.

For dinner that night we were joined by Shawn and our Professor, opting for a Thai place a few blocks away. Being somewhat between the Tenderloin and Little Saigon, the cast of characters we encountered on our way were quite fun. The Thai place was delicious, though we're still not quite sure what its deal was since it was "halal" and had decorations written in Arabic. I'm guessing it is owned by an Afghan, judging by the Afghan-looking man and his two sons that waltzed in like they owned the place. We would end up seeing our little gaysian water two days later in the Castro.

That night was the "mixer" for Graduate Students at a local bar. While it seemed like it would be heinous, we went and ended up having a great and cheap time thanks to the free drink tickets we got. We sampled some local Brews like Fat Tire and (the name escapes me) and made friends with some linguists from San Francisco State. One of them took us to a different bar, which he called a gay bar that "nobody knows about" or something afterwards for another round of drinks. It was pretty dead, but we had fun talking about gay-related language and other things. Sometime after midnight we cabbed it back to the Hilton.

The next morning was another round of talks, the most interesting being about perceived ethnicity via speech since it has to do with what I plan on researching in Andorra (if i get the grant, of course). Taking advantage of the amazingly gorgeous weather, we headed back out immediately after the talks were done. We decided to book it across town to see the Painted Ladies - those beautiful colored houses reminiscent of the 'Full House' residence. It was a bit of a trek but well worth it - we ended up having to walk through some of SF's projects. Were it not for the sudden demographic change, however, I'm not sure I would have realized that we were in a less desirable area - the architecture was still very bright and fun and everything was relatively clean. I'd have to say that this is one of the things that stands out most to me about SanFran - the sudden demographic changes from block to block. All of the sudden you'll go from white to black to asian to tranny prostitute!

The views from Alamo Square, where the Painted Ladies reside, were spectacular and 360 degrees. We could see the whole city (minus the bridge) sprawled out before us. On the way back we walked through Hayes Valley - a really fun and trendy looking area with boutiques and restaurants. Walking by city hall on the way back we encountered an Anti-Israel protest that was very intense. I can't say I was a fan of the screaming in Arabic at the top of one of the head protester's lungs. Back at the hotel it was time for Professor Thomas' 2 o'clock presentation....

to be continued (again)...