Greetings from San Francisco – Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Ph.D.
Heather and I are in San Francisco tonight, for tomorrow's Nike Women's Marathon. Heather's running the half, and I'm essentially packing up the room, bringing the car to the finish line, and meeting up with the kids.
We're staying at a place called Hotel Frank, which is a renovated old hotel a couple blocks from Union Station– quite a bit closer to the starting line than the Metropolis, the Frank's sister hotel where we'd originally booked a room. When we got there it turned out they were overbooked, and since they're on the edge of the Tenderloin, we were happy to move, since the race starts at Union Station.
The rooms are quite pleasant, nicer even than the Diva, where we stayed before last year's NWM.
After we got registered and picked up the race packet, we went to the Team in Training dinner, a raucous and ethnographically fascinating affair. It's about 4000 people, and it fills Moscone Center South; teams from around the country are there; and the overall effect is part political convention, part tent revival, and part industry trade show (you can never quite ignore where you are). I always feel a bit odd eating there, given that San Francisco has one of the greatest restaurant scenes in the world, but in many ways it's a more interesting experience than dinner at a nice sushi place.
Tomorrow it's up at 4, with a 5 am start time. In other words, Very Early.