What an evening!

During my google searches I found out about a concert and tree lighting ceremony in Grace Cathedral on this evening which would feature the grammy award winning San Francisco Boys Choir which was free. I didn't read the details too closely - there was something about the tree having been donated by the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bi and transsexual) community. Well what an interesting evening it was!

We arrived at the cathedral a bit early at the end of our day's wanderings and a sound engineer told us that there was another tree lighting event in the park opposite before the one in the cathedral. We went to the park and one of the organisers told us about the free refreshments on offer - all welcome. So we spent a very pleasant half hour listening to a jazz trio,  drinking warm mulled cider and eating cookies and joined in with the countdown to the lights turning on.

We then went back to the cathedral for the concert. The Christmas tree was covered in paper origami cranes which had wishes written on them - e.g. " let there be peace and no war", "equal rights for everyone", " make it snow for 2 weeks so school is closed". These had been sent by the public and by famous people including Barack Obama. The tree had been donated by the Rainbow World Fund a charity whose volunteers are from the GLBT community and the theme of the night was 'hope'. It was also World Aids day today.

The choir sang Christmas carols for about 25 minutes and were fab. Then a duo came on to sing and play the piano. We soon worked out that the singer was a drag artist. There were then speeches from the Mayor of San Francisco, Margaret Cho, (comedian), the Bishop of California, and an evangelical Cleve Jones who initiated an aids memorial in the eighties. Then the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, some of whom were in over the top drag (google them) got us to join in with their performance by chanting "they gotta have hope" then led the countdown to lighting the tree. What a diverse and unusual evening!

The mayor and the japanese consul with the sisters: