Blue Angels over San Francisco

San Francisco isn't always sunny and isn't often warm. But it was both on Saturday afternoon, for the airshow portion of "Fleet Week." There is something dapper and 1940s-ish about the groups of sailors patrolling the streets in, yes, their Navy blues and white sailor hats. There is something I can only think of as pre-2001ish about the general public enjoyment of the air show -- and I mean that in a good way.

Crowds were on rooftops and along the water watching aerobatic planes race around pylons, and giant C-130s lumber through turns low overhead, and then of course the Blue Angels go screaming around in their unbelievably precise maneuvers.

People in general like fireworks, and I submit that people in general like seeing this kind of aerial spectacle too. This is one of many natural human instincts blunted in the last five years especially in and around DC in particular, as part of the out-of-control security mania. If it's in the air, it must be a peril -- that's why the airspace for thousands of square miles arond the capitol has been put into high-security mode on a permanent basis. (It may also be why the great majority of the Blue Angels' appearances are nowhere near big East Coast cities.)