Ever since I started working in San Francisco in the mid-80s, I’ve loved the Gay Pride Parade. If I had to work in the office on Pride Sunday, I always took a good long break to head over to Market Street to soak in the joy and happiness and hilarity. It felt like being a witness to history – and a positive history, for a change. Other times I brought my kids in with me from Marin to see history in the making with their own eyes and feel the love for themselves (though some things along the parade route did require a bit of awkward explanation on my part). I explained that what they were seeing was like the civil rights movement I had seen as a child, except with Harleys and dance music and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They got it.

I’ve missed the last few parades. But this year I at least got the chance to catch the very tail end, when I came into the city for an appointment. Getting off the BART train at the Civic Center, I was greeted by a multitude of revelers heading for their own trains – all raucous laughter, hand-holding, and pink tutus. I was like a salmon swimming upstream against a giddy current.

As I emerging onto Market Street, the concluding festivities had apparently just ended, and people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and levels of intoxication were flowing happily in every direction. The food and drink booths were closing up but there were still thousands of people milling about, gradually taking the party elsewhere. It seemed like the most thoroughly mixed-race event I’d ever seen in San Francisco.

With some time to spare before my appointment, I headed into the thick of things, up Larkin Street into Little Saigon to treat myself to a Vietnamese banh mi sandwich.

But I was immediately struck by the vast amount of garbage in the streets, despite the abundant trash cans. “Litter” doesn’t come close to doing it justice. I’ve been to many large public events in my life – from huge concerts and music festivals, to massive demonstrations, to Burning Man – but I’ve never seen more trash simply thrown to the ground at any event, ever. The monumental volume was staggering. The first two or three steps leading up into buildings were piled high. Every step I took in my trek a few blocks up Larkin required my eyes on the ground, navigating a safe passage through the hideous sea of human indifference and waste.

I was struck by the absolute lack of pride in thoughtlessly trashing the beautiful city that made this otherwise wonderful event even possible. I wondered who was responsible, hoping it was out-of-towners, here just to gawk and get hammered. But the level of filth and thoughtlessness, for me, took away from the good feelings I had always felt for the Pride Parade. How sad to feel shame at an event celebrating pride.

Later in the evening, when it was time to head back to BART, the crowds were gone and only scattered groups of people wandered about. One group was walking in the same direction down Market – maybe eight strong, half men/half women, all white, and in their early 20s. They were weaving and shouting and I tried to ignore them and made a wide circle as I passed. Unfortunately, they too were headed to BART, and ended up sitting on the platform near me waiting for the next southbound train. They were very drunk and very loud, shrieking with laughter at their own alcohol induced “humor,” oblivious to anyone but themselves and hell-bent on disturbing everyone within shouting distance.

My bad luck continued as they boarded the very train and car I was in for the trip down to Millbrae. The car was crowded at first, so they had to split up. They spent the entire half hour trip shouting to each other, swearing at the top of their lungs, as everyone else onboard struggled to ignore them. I couldn’t decide who was more obnoxious, the boys or the girls. The boys stalked around and were vaguely menacing; the girls were hysterical and verbally aggressive. As we headed south, their volume increased steadily. It was a very painful trip for the rest of us.

Suddenly, one of the girls plopped herself down in the vacant seat next to me. Her mascara was running, no doubt from some aspect of her group’s non-stop drama. Surprisingly, she was polite and asked if it was okay if she sat with me.

“I’m so sick of these assholes and need to get away from them.”

I told her I could see why she felt that way. Only half drunk herself, she explained they were friends from high school on the Peninsula. She was home for the summer from the University of Arizona, which she explained had a beautiful campus but that Tucson was otherwise the meth capital of Arizona, with all that entails. She preferred Phoenix for its better bars and nightlife.

As we talked I kept one eye on her friends, who were getting louder and angrier. The boys – egged on by one of the shrieking girls – were picking a fight with a group of three young Filipino guys sitting two rows behind us. Their targets were trying their best to mind their own business, but one of the drunk boys clearly intended to fight, regardless of what they did.  He screamed horrible taunts at them from two feet away, all bulging veins and drug-induced fury. People were quickly moving towards other cars to avoid what was coming.

Suddenly, the provocateur dived at one of the boys and began punching him viciously in the face, while his friends menaced the victim’s friends enough to keep them out of the “fight.” My cellphone was dead so I couldn’t call the police. I had an urge to jump up and grab the attacker around the throat from behind and pull him off, but – fortunately for me, no doubt – my seatmate was in my way. So my likely beating at the hands of the three drunks was avoided.  In the pandemonium, one of the attackers yelled that someone had pulled a knife. But it was over in moments, when the Filipino boys made a quick escape at the next stop, one of them bleeding profusely.

As the victors celebrated in true Lord of the Flies fashion, my seatmate just shrugged.

“See what I mean?”

I asked her, “What if the kid being attacked had had a gun?  What if the police had shown up? Haven’t’ you seen ‘Fruitvale Station?’ Somebody could have been killed.”

“They’re just idiots,” she said, stating the obvious.

My heart was still pounding when, moments later, the train reached the end of the line. My seatmate gave me a hug and apologized for her friends. I quickly headed for the door, a trail of blood leading me to the exit. The drunks continued to howl and jump around.

As I went up the escalator, one of three young lesbian women standing ahead of me asked if I’d been on that car.

“I was. Truly disgusting.”

“We’ve known those kids since junior high.” She shook her head. “They were assholes then and they still are.”

Heading home, I was saddened by the violent, garbage-strewn flip side of Pride Day. Even in a day for celebrating something as glorious as civil rights and dignity for an oppressed people, humanity’s dark underbelly is always just below the surface, eager to defile something (and someplace) beautiful. On Pride Day, the best and the worst were on stark, vivid display.

Shakespeare was right: What a piece of work is a man.

Copyright © 2014, Daniel W. Hager. All Rights Reserved.