The Sweeper looked more tired that usual, the hundreds of thousands of Super Bowl fans swarming into the city like Mid-West barbarians probably not making her job any easier. Still, the sidewalk around her was spotless as usual. Behind her sits Bench Lady, who is always sitting on either the 11th Street bench or the 13th Street one; she nibbles on peanuts all day and changes benches as the sun-protecting shadows move. And, behind them waits the old man who pedals the ancient dog in the basket around town. As noted before, the vast gulf between those who have everything and those who have nothing in this town is stupefying.

The mostly-straight crowds have every likelihood of getting out of hand and the police (starting today) begin 12 hour on/12 hour off shifts. In addition, 350 fashion models and their retinues are arriving for the annual Volleypalooza, if not the biggest volleyball tournament, the most beautiful. That take place just blocks down the beach. My suggestion to bring in our own private police--the ones we use on Sundays (and who are gay, but armed and big) has not be acted upon yet. Common sense is in scarce quantity here, but I will be proven right.

I asked ESPN for T-shirts for our Saturday drag queens; I also suggested Geraldine do her wildly-popular Wonder Woman show and advised ESPN that the Tiara Party will parade to the sidewalk at 4PM Saturday. They promised to pan the action. We've been in the background all week, blue umbrellas and rainbow flag, and ESPN employees have started taking advantage of the discount I offered the first day they set up; it makes for an interesting mix, but everyone seemed to be having a wild time at Bi Night. I know this not because I went, but because I got texted at 1AM by Riley that people were dancing on table tops. I really didn't need to know that until this morning. :-)