A week ago Sunday, we noticed a group of people gathered on the side of the road leading to the airport. I was dropping Kwame off at Oakland airport for a work-related evening flight.
"Maybe they were looking at that hawk you saw," he said as we drove past. There was some sort of raptor, probably a Red-tailed Hawk, flying east as we rolled down Doolittle Drive. It was a clear, not too warm day turning into a beautiful night. We could see the city skyline and the silhouette of Mt Tam. The sun was just setting and the whole Bay glowed yellow and pink.
But they didn't look like birders. No one had binoculars.
"Fleet Week," we both said at the same time. Fleet Week, the annual air show/ship parade/general celebration of the United States Armed Forces. The events been a Bay Area tradition since the 1980s and I always forget about it until it's upon us. Now, some vintage or really fast plane was likely coming in for a landing. I recalled a Hawkwatch-related email with a plan for weekend teams to start an hour early so they could get parking and the fences up before plane aficionados swarmed the Marin Headlands in search of an optimal vantage of the Bay.
But the jets were coming into Oakland Airport now. I saw them as I was excited, the stars of the show, The Blue Angels. Six of them flew over San Leandro Bay in tight formation, trailed by another lone jet. I could see the onlookers we’d passed on the way in, craning their necks, looking up.
Admittedly, the blue jets were quite a sight against the sunset sky...but birds are so much cooler. And quieter. I could hear their engine roar as I turned back onto Doolittle. It would be a noisy week.
While I didn’t go to any official Fleet Week happening but I didn’t really have to. From their arrival to their departure, I saw — or heard — the Blue Angels as well as assorted other aircraft multiple times as they got ready for their scheduled shows.
On Friday, The Blue Angels were roaring through the park as I arrived at Golden Gate Park for a gig, walking along a paved path through the trees to get to the Conservatory of Flowers which glistened white in the afternoon light. The fog was hanging out just to the West of the park and the sun gleamed on the green grass through a high layer of clouds. A crew was setting up for an event in front of the Victorian greenhouse, but that wasn’t where I was headed.
Somewhere nearby was a stage where I was scheduled to play a set. One of SF arts nonprofit Illuminate’s latest productions is the “Golden Mile Project,” a series of arts programming including murals, installations and live music along the JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park. They'd tapped a fleet of artists and songwriters, myself among them, to perform on two stages in the park during the series.
The 'Golden' stage was a mowed patch of grass in the Peacock Meadow off of JFK, with a square mat, a simple PA and a dedicated sound person. The songwriter before me was playing original R&B on keys when I arrived, and every now and again, the planes — which we couldn't see — roared overhead as they circled back from the show going on over the Bay.
The every-few-minutes rumble of jets persisted through the first third of my set but I was happy the park-goers were on the musicians’ side that day. It felt novel, and strange, to perform solo for the first time in a long while but I had a great view of the big, block “Love” sculpture on the opposite side of the drive. People stopped to listen, more than few tipped; a man on a bike laid down on the grass and shut his eyes. Some friends and folks from my music list came out.
Gigs. You never know exactly what it will be like, which is part of the adventure of it all, and (other than the jet roar) this one was quite pleasant. I’m glad there are event producers like Illuminate working to help keep the arts alive and we songwriters playing. Illuminate is doing a fundraiser to keep the Golden Mile Project going, aiming to raise $500,000…which isn’t that much, especially when one reads that the production budget for Fleet Week is $36 Million a year!!!