I had a fun filled weekend this past weekend, attending Comicon on Friday. I figure you've seen enough about that so this blog focuses on something you may not know about. On Saturday I attended the annual Festival of Floats.
Formerly called "Floatopia" This event takes place in the waters of Mission Bay near the Mission Bay Sports Center. It was originally designed as a protest against when the beach and bay shore became zero-tolerance no alcohol. People would float out on the water in anything inflatable and raft up with boats to party, enjoy the water and sun.. and yes on the water, legally consume alcohol, all in protest to that new policy.
Obviously law enforcement has not been in favor of this event, but the event is technically legal so they don't attempt to stop it. So each year this gathering takes place and each year (as you see in the photo), the police shows up to enforce every single law and rule possible, no matter how minor that law is.
It's a back and forth dance between the floaters and the police, which 98% of the time is friendly and peaceful. The cops are nice, but they enforce rules on this day, that I've never seen them enforce on any other days. My group personally experienced this. Just as we dropped out inflatables in the water, and officer cam down and told us according ot the rules, we could not use our paddles unless we had a certified floatation vest. We didn't so our first though was- wow they got us this time. But we came up with a quick idea...and one of us flagged down a passing kayak that had a vest and told them the story and we asked them if we could tow them a tow rope and have them drag us out tot he boats. he agreed, we asked the policeman if that was ok and he laughed and said yes. Victory was ours!
One of our new friends towed us out to a boat raft up which we tied up to and spent a super fun afternoon in the sun on the water!
Here are some of the photos from our adventure...