San Francisco Pride

Squid hats!

San Francisco was a sea of rainbows on Sunday. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many LGBT people in one place, let alone people period. There were flags on street poles, flags in the parade, flags in the crowd and visible gestures of happy pride from San Francisco businesses. There were even rainbow squid hats!

Over a million people were estimated to have attended the pride festivities this weekend. The parade lasted for some six hours. Civic Center was closed off for blocks and large crowds listened to music on several stages. Most of the day was celebratory and peaceful. Given a gathering of that magnitude (and that it was pride in San Francisco), there were also a few obligatory nude folks (it’s almost never the people one wants to see naked that are the self-appointed exhibitioners, right?), and a few other annoyances like excessive trash on the streets.

Some photos: 

Panorama of parade attendees along Market Street.

Jim Obergefell, who was the lead plaintiff in last week's Supreme Court case.

Civic Center

Many welcome signs.

Steve Grand performing at the main stage at Civic Center.

The Apple contingent in the parade They must have had 5000 marchers. It went on forever.

Happy pride!

Seattle pride

Two weekends, two pride parades. I don’t want to give the impression that I am on some sort of tour; it just happened to be convenient to attend pride in Seattle in coordination with family visits last weekend. My oldest son (10 yrs old) also attended the parade and a breakfast gathering of gay Mormons held before hand. I didn’t do any explaining prior to the parade, but he is a smart kid and must have answered any imperative questions for himself.  I explained that dad is gay earlier in the year. This news he took in stride. At the parade, he seemed most excited to collect the myriad free items tossed into the crowd.

Pride parades evolved in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots that took place in New York 43 years ago. While the riots were a violent assertion of gay frustration and pride, today’s parades are peaceful (if sometimes boisterous and highly suggestive) celebrations with an eclectic mix of corporatism, music, dancing, politics and a lot of color. In my ignorance about almost all things gay for such a long time, I had no knowledge of the events that occurred at Stonewall until very recently. I found this excellent American Experience program on-line and highly recommend it for some historical perspective.