SAN FRANCISCO AIDS WALK 2010

Today Marty and I worked the San Francisco Aids Foundation  (SFAF) Booth at the AIDS WALK in Golden Gate Park.  This is our 10th year to work the booth.  It is a wonderful event.  And at the same time it is awful that this event is still going on. We do not have a cure yet for this disease.  I work registration.  Marty helps me.  He also does part of the walk, and then turns around and comes back to work in the booth.  The worst part of working this is we leave home at 7:30.  I don't usually get up until after 8:00.  That would be A.M.  Below are a few of the pictures of our day.   It was cool:  55 to 60 degrees.  Very foggy and really really windy.  So windy the team shirts( and the Master registration list) blew off the table.  Every now and then the sun came out, but not for long.  The fog controlled the day.  And that is fine, cool but not cold is the best thing for this event.

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People are arriving and the Meadow is filling up.

Some of the SFAF team.  Shirts are sorted by size.  The big shiny jar is for donations.

My helper at registration, Marty.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a in your face charity and protest organization.

More of the Sisters

Feeding hamburgers to our team as they returned from the WALK.

To your left the black stage with bands, singers, dancers entertaining all the Teams as they ate lunch.  Around 25,000 walkers were there.  Then you had hundreds of volunteers at the booths; doing garbage; doing outreach; passing out ice cream, condoms, water, candy, pins, juice; collecting money and lists of names. 

As I said, this event is wonderful.  We meet people who have HIV or AIDS and benefit from the services provided by the non profits that are funded by this walk.  We meet people who have lost loved ones to this terrible disease.  We meet people who just want to help. 

Today we had two young girls who worked the team shirt table.  They passed out shirts and lunch tickets.  They answered questions.  They greeted the public, including some who were higher than a kite.These girls just contacted SFAF and asked to help.  They worked at a maturity level some of the adults volunteers never reach. They stayed longer when relief volunteers didn't show up.  These girls are at the most 14 years old.  They were superb in their work ethic.  We all praised them for their good job.  And we asked them to come back for other events.