Summer and San Francisco

Long time, no post. My last post mentioned the ridiculousness of the semester so far, and I'm happy to say the situation has fairly improved, thanks very much to two things - as you may guess from the title, those two things would be summer and San Francisco.

First, with great excitement (and relief) I have my summer internship lined up - woohoo! I'll be working as a law clerk with the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) which is one of the leading GLBTQ legal organizations. They're based out of San Francisco, but I'll be working with their one attorney who is down here in Los Angeles. Not only does this mean that I no longer have to spend time looking for a job, but it's given me a great infusion of enthusiasm and excitement, which actually started back when I interviewed with them a couple weeks ago (which I didn't have time to post about). First and foremost, it's a fantastic organization to work with. Despite its name, it is one of the most inclusive GLBTQ legal organizations out there. In terms of impact litigation, some organizations can tend to be pretty selective in the cases they take--namely, they take cases that they think will be the best vehicles for the causes they are trying to promote. This is good and worthwhile work, but it leaves people in all the other cases out in the cold. NCLR certainly doesn't take every single thing that comes their way, but their scope is amazingly broad, and they tend to focus more on fighting the fights that need to be fought, rather than those that they want to fight.

I knew going into this process, though, that whatever organization I ended up with would be doing good work. What was more of an amazing surprise for me is that the attorney I'll be working with is transgendered, which is simply amazing beyond words. Nonconformity is not a hugely common characteristic in the legal world, and while the public interest sector is not quite so unforgiving as traditional law firms, the interviewing process was not something I was looking forward to. Then, lo and behold, I'm going in for my first interview, and I'm sitting across the table from a trans lawyer. It was amazing on so many levels. The most obvious was the sense of freedom and relief, knowing that this person would truly be interviewing me, not wondering why I didn't have makeup, why I looked like a 12-year-old boy, why he was interviewing some weird woman in a man's suit. He would see and evaluate me, actually me, not my lack of panty hose. There was also an amazing sense of self validation. I was looking at someone I could identify with, who was in a position I wanted to be in. It was proof positive that it is possible, it can happen.

So that's the summer part of things. It dovetailed nicely with the other half of my recent relief - I got the phone call offering the NCLR position while I was on a train heading to San Francisco two weekends ago with LT. Thanks to cancelled class giving me last Friday off, and Presidents Day giving me Monday off, I had a nice four-day weekend to relax, with no memo due upon my return. LT similarly had Monday off, so she took a vacation day on Friday and we hit the road. Er, we hit the rail. It was really a great weekend, and offered a chance for LT and I to just relax and be together, which we really didn't have a chance to do during the semester break.

As somewhat of a mass transit junkie, it was pretty spectacular. We took Amtrak up there, and spent the weekend wandering pretty much all over the Bay area by transit, from Palo Alto to various parts of San Fran, out to Berkeley, and then back on Amtrak to head back south. We got to sleep a lot almost every night. I got to have some weather and rain (a lot of rain, actually), which I have missed horribly. We got to see a number of LT's friends, all very awesome people. We ate some amazing food - I highly recommend Tartine in the Mission for pastries and coffee, Sausage Factory in the Castro for good Italian (insert gay boy joke here), Celtic Cafe near City Hall, and Barney's in Berkeley for great burgers. Oh, and any running and coffee aficionados should check out Zombie Runner in Palo Alto. I didn't have the coffee there, but one of LT's friends works there and I can attest that the owner is obsessed with having everything they do be the highest quality, so I'm sure it's as good as the store is cool (and the store is pretty damn cool). They have a website, too...though I guess that won't help if what you want is the coffee.

It was my first time up in that area, and I found it to be pretty amazing, and definitely a good bit more in line with my heart than LA is. I've never seen so many bikers and people walking dogs, and types of mass transit all in one place! Oh, and most amazing to me, on Sunday we happened to be near the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, and saw a veritable mob of people waiting to get in. We heard one passerby tell their friend that they were at capacity, and wouldn't be admitting people for at least a few hours. We asked someone what was going on that it was so crowded, assuming that there was a special exhibit opening or something. But no, there was no special exhibit. A lot of people in San Francisco just decided that on this random rainy Sunday, they should go to the museum. As a lifelong nerd, this made my heart spectacularly happy.

Oh, and HILLS!! Hooray HILLS!!!! No, not the old defunct department store chain. Living in a hilly area, amazing views, fun topography. I know LA has the surrounding mountains, but let's face it--the parts where everything is are pretty much flat flat flat. And I really don't like flat places so much. Hills are just better.