Chorus Girls!

On Thursday night, I accompanied my mother to the University Club to hear the San Francisco Girls' Chorus, since my progenitor was feeling indisposed and two tickets had already been purchased. The University Club is located near my original alma mater, Cathedral School for Boys, whose construction proceeds apace. This Club looks like a real Club, complete with cute hatcheck girls, although the secret door from the library to the former brothel has been closed forever. I'm glad to see that they finally labeled (for the sexes) the restrooms which they have disguised as, or converted from, mirrored coat closets, even if the handles are forbiddingly stiff. I have to confess that after I had stopped at the restroom on the 3rd floor, I got confused and initially entered the wrong holiday party (the Princeton one). I could have sworn I had heard or read the name of the person (L., One of the Levi-Strauss line?) behind me in the check-in line of the Princeton party.

Once I had ascended to the fourth floor, where the party I was supposed to be attending was, I found the bar and ordered a wine spritzer. I  met a member of the Club, a white-haired gentleman named Murray. He regularly attends the Charles Fracchia lectures on the history of San Francisco, which I cannot attend (to my regret) because the Troop meets the same night. He, too, is an Eagle Scout (even many Scouts forget that Eagle is the only rank you retain as a adult).

The San Francisco Girls' Chorus event was a participatory event, a sing-along, but they must have been singing quietly or taken a break from singing, since I knew we had arrived in the middle of the event yet I did not hear them when I first arrived. There were some sing-along sheets, but the extras were placed, rather unwisely, directly in front of the chorus, where no latecomer (who would be most in need of a quick update) could possibly grab one. The chorus performed with quality, which is no less than I expect from San Francisco artistic institutions. Speculation on whether any of the chorus members were relatives of one of my Scouts (and if so, which ones) briefly distracted me. This is a small city, after all.

After the singing had ended and the singers had filed out one by one, I went out to the south-facing (downhill) balcony so I could take in the sights of the downtown. The balcony is sufficiently vertiginous from the slope of Nob Hill without alcoholic contributions.One of the towers, possibly one of the Embarcadero Center ones, was lit up in green,  outshining the building outlined in yellow and the relatively tiny red pinprick of the Transamerica Pyramid, still visible from Presidio Heights in my childhood.