A sense of time passing

I'm constantly amazed at the changes south of Market in San Francisco. I attended a conference at Moscone Center today and was a bit taken aback to realize that the huge parking lot I listened to Jesse Jackson in during the 1984 Democratic convention (or, why I was one of the few Devoted Democrats who didn't hear Mario Cuomo's famous address to that body) was now the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Metreon (reminds me, I still want to see the movie "Saved!"), and a nice park with well-grown shrubs and trees. St. Patrick's church, which used to be out in the middle of nowhere, grimly holding its own in the downmarket slum that was South of the Slot, is now quite surrounded by the Jukebox Marriott, the Four Seasons, the YBCftA, and others (most of them quite posh - that part of SoMa has not suffered post-bust due to its proximity to Market and BART). Indeed, when I got to the doors itself, I realized that the conference was in Moscone North, UNDER the former empty lot (and the park).

"All that is constant about the California of my childhood is the rate at which it disappears" - Joan Didion

Oh, yes, as usual at tech conferences, I am amused that I can breeze into the Ladies and the fellows have to stand in line.