The SF demo was a great day, great weather (mid-60s), long, big, packed. We (with Joanna and Sabri) met in a yuppie breakfast place in front of the Embarcadero Plaza fountain---lattes and croissants around 10:30a. Very civilized. The speakers in the Plaza were terrible, nobody listened and the march started off around 11:30. Market St was packed including the sidewalks, but slightly thinner there. Lots of drums, lots of different groups, lots of signs, pickets, banners, posters, t-shirts, very slow ten blocks, took until 2:30 to get to Civic Center. About three hours to take a thirty to forty minute walk. Lots of kids, younger teenagers with parents. Along the way, I got some great photos of downtown streets off Market that had no traffic.
The Civic Center was too packed to get a view of the speaker's platform. We got there late and heard Cecil Williams, Joan Baez, somebody else then headed for BART.
The numbers were at issue as elsewhere in the US. Guessing this was bigger than J18 when the cops said 80k and the organizers claimed 150k. Since the cops report something like 150k for today, you could probably guess at 240k or so. Some group set up an overhead video in one of the buildings and taped the whole march so they could better estimate the turn out. I would say it was the biggest demo I've ever seen here and easily out numbers the biggest of the Vietnam moratorium marches in SF of yesteryear.
About the time we left around 4:00 some part of the back of the march headed for Union Square to do upscale shopping. See LP's account under (breakaway).
Chuck Grimes