Monday, June 30, 2008

United by Pride, Bound for Equality

Such was the theme of the 2008 San Francisco Pride parade and festival, in which Caroline and I participated yesterday (much to the chagrin of our now-aching feet). We had a fantastic time hanging out, marching, and otherwise schmoozing with our friends in the Royal Grand Ducal Council of Alameda County, and then had almost as good a time wandering through the festival grounds.

Wanna see some pix?


There was one whole float full of Charos...


The Teatro Zinzanni Float, which was amazing...




My new husband (though he doesn't know it yet, and probably never will)...




Me in my festive best...


The Honorable Ron Dellums, Mayor of Oakland. My Grandmother can't stand him, so I made sure to get a picture with him (but it's on Caroline's camera, so the pic isn't available yet). The Grandmother and I had a little set-to about my participating in Pride, so I've been alternating between defiance and conciliation towards her all week.


General fabulousness was everywhere. So were dogs and babies. I rather prefer dogs, myself, but it was so cool seeing so many families with children about.


This is the contingent that marched (or rather vroomed) behind us in the parade... I was never very clear who exactly they were, aside from a lot of queers on motorcycles.


The Imperial and Grand Ducal Courts of San Francisco, and Mr. & Ms. Golden Gate, were in front of us in the parade.


Me again, in full-on parade waving mode...


I loved this sign...


The Barbie Support Group... very funny.


These guys were just fabulous...


And the blond on the right is my other new husband...


The Charos in action... note the one on the far left carrying a baby... the baby was fast asleep.


The quality of my new camera left something to be desired... you can't see how delectably hunky all the members of the Crunch gym contingent were...


There were a lot of churches represented in the parade. There has been a lot of Christian outreach to our community recently.


More hunks, this time on the Mamma Mia! float.


You might be wondering at the sparseness of the parade pictured above... the thing is, I had my hands full with the parasol and the waving, so I didn't take any pictures of the parade itself. So all of the pictures I took were in the staging area before the parade started and in the demobilizing area at the end of the parade. I wish I'd been able to carry my camera as well, as there were many fabulous sights along the parade route, but alas: of all words of tongue or pen, none are sadder than these - what might have been, etc. and so forth.



The dense crowds at the festival; mind you, this was before the parade was even over, imagine what a zoo it became later on! I had some difficulty with dealing with the crowd, but every time I started getting a little panicky, we lucked into an open space like this one, so I didn't have a breakdown.

When I pointed out to Caroline what her wrist was touching, she freaked out... fortunately she didn't notice it at the time...


One of the many dance areas in the festival...


And that's all for now. I took more pictures, of course, but these are the highlights.

It was a generally wonderful gay day, and we had a lovely time. But it was tiring! My feet still hurt, and my back hurts, and I somehow managed to get a slight sunburn on my face even though I was under that damned parasol the whole day... must have been from reflected light. I rather wished I'd been able to watch the concert (Cyndi Lauper headlined) or spend more time in the festival perusing booths, but one's age does tell on one in these events. Forty may be the new thirty, but my joints didn't get that memo.

In closing, here's a fun little slideshow I made (I'm still exploring MS Movie Maker, so it's rather amateurish) with one of my favorite songs.

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