Pride and the City
All right, so this is the only one in the last few that actually has anything to do with San Francisco. Shush your mouth; that don't matter none. Shaun, former roommate, dear friend, came down to visit us this weekend, and for Sunday's entertainment we went to the Pride March in San Francisco.
It was five. Bloody. Hours. Long.
We weren't anticipating that. God Almighty. We got there early, mostly at my insistance, 'cuz I thought the streets would be packed early on. I was wrong; we arrived around 9 and it was pretty quiet. That was okay, though. We staked out a place at the corner of Market and 4th, close to the beginning of the parade and gradually the sidewalk filled up behind us. We could have gotten there maybe fifteen minutes later and still gotten a good view, but I don't think we could have been later than that.
There was a group of people next to us who seemed to know each other; the two particularly relevant parties were the short slightly furry round blonde fellow next to Shaun, and the big black man in leather who was about three people away. The Chronicle said that tere were 750,000 people in attendance at the March. Between these two guys, they knew _all_ of them. Swear to God. _All_ of 'em. Except us. :)
But that was okay, because Raymond wandered by, much to Ted's and my surprise. I didn't recognize him, but then, I think it's been three years since I saw him. And his hair's different! We introduced Shaun, and Raymond, who was sporting a camera, took pictures of us. He said the best picture he'd missed thus far was all the people lined up to cheer the street sweeper; shortly after, the streetsweeper came back, so he got the picture after all. :) We chatted a bit, but he had to take off 'cuz he had other plans for the afternoon, but still, it was cool to see him.
There were millions of cops around. Did you know that the SFPD has an RV? Neither did we, but they've got one, with the insignia and lights and all. Who knew? There was a blonde lady cop who'd brought her instamatic camera and was taking pictures of the floats; she made me glad. :) She replaced another guy on the island in the street; the one she replaced spent the whole time he was there looking amazingly dour.
A handful of cops got molested by a bunch of guys in a float called Birds of Paradise -- came up, vamped them, clung to them, patted their asses. It was funny, but at the same time I felt kind of bad for the cops. I don't know that it could have been resistable for the Birds, but the poor cops shouldn't have had to have deal with that on top of keeping an eye on three quarters of a million people.
The SFPD section of the parade followed a group of protesters who didn't want the PD to be in the parade. _That_ was interesting: the crowd was very quiet as the protesters went by, and very loud for the cops. I'm sure both noticed.
PFLAG had a very large group of people marching, and got very loud, long, consistent applause and cheers. They didn't have anything special or exciting as a float, but it was really good vibes. Same with the breast cancer marchers, who were lead by three topless women who had all had masectomies; I thought they were very brave.
Speaking of breasts. My goodness, there were a lot of them on display. I would have been happier if most of them hadn't been, really, but there were some very pretty girls with very pretty bodies showing off. I didn't see any women who'd actually bared it all -- one of the breast cancer survivors was wearing a dress made of red leather straps and that's it, but she was the most undressed of the women I saw.
There were an awful lot of guys I'd have been very happy to see stark raving naked, but unfortunately, the three men whom I _did_ see were not among them. There was a pair in one of the . . . Polynesian, or something, floats, who were wearing not very gosh darned much, and woo boy. Now if _they'd_ felt compelled to go naked . . . they'd probably have been molested. Gawd.
And speaking of gawd. The Altoids float. *laugh* Oh my gawd. Ted leaned over my shoulder and said, "So is that what they call beefcake?" Yes, yes it was. Huzzah. Lots and _lots_ of very _very_ pretty men wearing very _very_ little and dancing very _very_ well. The Altoids float won Best Float, in our estimation. :)
The Dykes on Bikes, though, who opened the parade, were runners-up. Just on general principles, I think. Hundreds and hundreds of women on motorcycles just has to go down as pretty darned cool. I think they got some of the best reactions, too, just because they _were_ first. First bare-breasted woman -- who was one of the ones whom one didn't mind seeing half naked -- and man did she get a lot of screams. A woman in a Proud Mom t-shirt, who got a hell of a lot of cheers. So that's kinda the coolest place to be, I think.
It was just neat. I _really_ didn't expect it to be five hours long, and got sunburnt -- we all did -- but we agreed it was worth it.
And then we came home and basically went to bed at 5:30 in the evening 'cuz we were totally exhausted. :) Ted stayed up later, but it was a very quiet night. :)