Friday, December 5, 2008

2008 Macy*s Christmas Tree Lighting in Union Square San Francisco

WOW! What a great time. I have been to nearly every Tree Lighting Event since Macy*s donated their first tree to the City 19 years ago. In all my years, NEVER have I seen so many people on the streets on Black Friday.


Black Friday (or Fur Free Friday as we call it in San Francisco), is the day after Thanksgiving. It used to be the biggest shopping weekend and one of our busiest weekends in the hotel. Now, it is just a "busy" weekend for us, but VERY busy in the City. The day usually starts off with the fur protests, anarchy protests, anti-business protests and new this year, Iraq Veterans Protests.

Here is a picture of the Square taken from our roof early in the day with the Ice Skating Rink:
The fur protesters usually start in front of Saks 5Th Avenue and Nieman Marcus and then move to the Square.


The Chancellor put out its usual Christmas Decorations

The Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony was hosted by Spencer Christian of ABC

Of course, Santa Clause was there. However, this year Santa read a letter he had received which was about a young man that wanted to tell his girl friend something special for Christmas. He was invited on stage and proposed to her. She said "Yes"

Since they are not a same sex couple, they can get married in California.


The Tree was lit by a countdown with Santa, the Former Mayor Willie Brown, the Police Chief and Fire Chief. Here is the lit tree!

It is an 80 foot tree from the side of Mount Shasta in Northern California. The tree is lit with over 10,000 energy efficient LEDs.

New this year are the lit palm trees at each corner of Union Square. They look great!

These are actually pretty good times to come visit Union Square and San Francisco. Discounts are available, the City looks good, the Ice Skating Rink is back after 12 years, the palm trees are lit, Market Street has the snow flakes on the Path of Gold Historic Street Lamps. It is a good time to come to the City and forget about how bad everything is.

After the lighting, I have never seen so many people pour into the streets. Here is a picture from Powell at Post Street looking down Powell
The night would not be as crazy as it could without Critical Mass coming through. You gotta love 'em!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really loved Christmas time, it's an amazing time to share with your family and also to look for Generic Viagra

viagra online said...

I love the christmas because I love the trees in this city, the streets in december days are so beautiful, because they heve fullcolors nad everyone is happy.