The annual awards meeting of ETVC was scheduled at a different restaurant in San Francisco on May 26, the last Thursday of the month. I decided to make an all-day event of it, first traveling to Carla's in San Jose, which is about 50 miles south of where I live. I brought with me a change of clothes, and my SLR camera as well.
Unfortunately it had been raining steadily since the night before, enough to flood the sidewalks in some places, and was still raining when I arrived in San Jose on the train. I arrived at Carlas, which is fortunately near the train station, in time for the Thursday come-as-you-are lunch meeting of local transgender people and met many people across several generations.
My appointment wasn't until 4:30 p.m., so I had plenty of time to stay and meet people. I had planned to travel up to San Francisco on a commuter train, and had already purchased my ticket so I wouldn't have to go back into the station. But it turned out that one of the local people, known as the Mother Superior of cross dressers, was planning to drive to the meeting, and she graciously offered rides to myself and another person visiting from out of town, who had had her makeover earlier that day. While waiting for my appointment the three of us each put on our nail polish.
Then came the time for my transformation. I changed into a dress that I had recently purchased, and discovered that it still had the plastic security tag on it, which had not been removed at the store but had failed to set off the alarm. Fortunately, our driver had a tool kit, and was able to remove the tag without damaging the garment.
Carla then washed my hair, and combed it out of the way of my face. Then she applied makeup to me, and styled my hair using a blow dryer. She then sprayed different perfumes on me and the out-of-town visitor, who had changed dresses while I was being worked on. At her request, I took a picture of her on her camera at Carla's.
Fortunately the rain had stopped while we had been at Carla's. We enjoyed a scenic ride in a luxury car all the way to San Francisco. The sun was shining most of the way, and the clouds were being blown eastward. We stopped briefly at Twin Peaks, and enjoyed the view from there of San Francisco and the East Bay beyond. We also visited a friend of the driver's, living nearby, who was not able to accompany us to the meeting.
We arrived early at the restaurant where the meeting was to be held. By great fortune, we actually found a parking place on the street nearby! There we met several friends of the driver, and enjoyed dinner together.
While there, I had a few pictures of me taken using my SLR camera. Unfortunately, since the person taking the photographs was not familiar with the manual focus on it, the second and third photos are not clear.
At the meeting, the outgoing officers presented awards to several of the members who had helped them during the previous year, and the newly-elected officers were announced. There were no surprises, as most were running unopposed! The ballot proposal to change the name of the organization from ETVC (for Educational TV Channel) to another, more inclusive name, had resulted in no majority for any of the proposed names, and a run-off election will be held between the original name and TGSF (Trans-Gender San Francisco).
There was an interesting event during the meeting. A car had run into a transformer up the street, and we saw what looked liked special-effects lightening outside as most of the lights in the restaurant flickered out. We spent part of the evening with the restaurant illuminated only by the small candles in glass bowls on the tables. Utility crews soon came, and power was eventually restored.
At the end of the evening's activities I said my farewells, and took the short walk to catch a streetcar down the surface of Market Street. I took it to near its terminal by the bay, and then transferred to an underground BART train for my trip home. Once again, like Cinderella, I was sorry that my magical day had to come to an end.
This page last updated: April 05, 2000
