bjarvis | Parade Adventures at DC Pride

Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of pride parades. They huge, unwieldy, difficult to organize, a tremendous financial drain on the community & festival and I'm not convinced they make much of a difference either in visibility or community, especially in a city which has a major demonstration or parade almost every weekend of the year.

I've kept my distance from the coordination of our particular part of the pride day festivities for the past few years, be it for the DC Lambda Squares, the Lesbian & Gay Chorus of DC, DC's Different Drummers, Equality Maryland, or my employer's LGBT group. I'll contribute at other, less glamourous times of the year and let others pick up the slack on this event. Nevertheless, as kent4str and I were calling for the DC Lambda Squares' performance in the parade, we had to be in the staging area early to set up the sound equipment.

Staging & setup was a slow moving train wreck. The parade organizers relayed to us that our contingent was to rendezvous in the "blue" section at 24th & M between 5:30 and 6 PM with the parade launching at 6:30 PM sharp.

We were indeed at the desired location at the right time, but there was utter chaos for blocks in each direction. The locals apparently hadn't a clue that there was a parade today and much space was taken by cars parked along the street as people went about their regular business. The police were out in force, blocking off streets and therefore also blocking off parade participants from getting to the staging area. Some of the wealthier parade participants (read: bars) didn't have just floats: they had whole semis in tow which could barely cut the corners on some streets, requiring all traffic and parked cars to be moved before they could proceed. As the larger vehicles paused, we had utter gridlock in all directions.

While Don (driver of the pickup truck which we used for our sound system) and kent4str sat gridlocked and hoping for a break, I hopped out and walked around to determine who was in charge and identify precisely our position in the line-up. I learned after considerable effort that the section coordinators were only identifiable by wearing radio headsets: no particular uniform or marking to stand out from the thousands of other people. If they took of their headsets or covered them with a hat --which some did because it was warm & sunny-- they looked just like every other confused bystander. Great.

I found the "green" coordinator. He couldn't help us since we were in the "blue" section but he did tell us we needed to be almost two blocks further north along 24th Street NW, not in the area which the parade organizers told us 48 hours before. Remember the gridlock? Moving the extra two blocks took more than a half hour.

I never did find the "blue" coordinator but one of our other DCLS folks did and we found our location: on N Street NW, west of 24th. Thank god.

Shortly after we set up the sound system, my stomach began grumbling in a not-very-nice way. In about 15 minutes, it went from grumbling to extreme cramping. From there, it went to debilitating cramping, the kind where one quickly hides inside the cab of the truck and closes the tinted windows as to not make a scene while attempting to relax enough to let one's body sort itself out as best it could. I was hoping that all I needed was a little time to let the cramping pass, but it soon became apparent that I'd need a bathroom quickly.

Alas, there are no porta-johns or public restrooms anywhere in the staging area or along the course of the parade. Too expensive. Via cell phone with kent4str, we knew of a restroom at a service station a few blocks away but there was also a line to get to it. Oy.

In desperation, I started stumbling in that general direction as best I could. Fortunately, as I approached 22nd Street NW, I remembered there was a Marriott hotel a block south where we had hosted a square dance fly-in this past February. While I generally frown on just floating off the street to use a restroom without being a customer, this was an emergency and our room last February was a little overpriced so I rationalized this would be an acceptable exception to my rule.

Let's just say it was a photo finish, but I did indeed make it in time. Thank god.

To further assuage my guilt at abusing the good graces of the Marriott, I bought two overpriced chocolate bars from their convenience shop. Chocolate always makes everything better, even if it's Hershey's.

Returning to the float a much happier & relaxed person, I was able to sit in the cab for a short while, relaxing, regaining my strength and mentally rehearsing our on-speaker spiel for the masses, which went something like:
"We're DC Lambda Squares, Washington DC's only square dance club, proudly square dancing since 1981. We have open houses coming up on Monday, June 19 & Monday, Sept. 11... come check us out at First Baptist Church, 17th & P! No prior dance experience required! No dress code! Can't tell your left from your right? That's OK, neither can I! Ever square dance in elementary school or high school? Sorry about that... come dance with us instead: we make it fun! Check us out at www.dclambdasquares.org! We dance every Thursday at First Baptist Church, host monthly dances for the entire greater DC community and are proud hosts of the 2009 IAGSDC convention here in Washington DC!" Etc., etc.

Once we were under way at 6:50 PM, everything went rather smoothly. Our DCLS volunteers distributed business cards with our contact info and open house dates to folks along the parade path. The cards this year are really sharp and colourful... I'll have to see about scanning & posting copies when I have spare time. When the parade paused periodically, we'd have the dancers square up and Kent or I would call 30-45 seconds of simple Mainstream level patter as a demonstration.

There was much cheering but it was more for the PFLAG contingent behind us... I'm OK with that. We just billed ourselves as PFLAG's opening act. :-)

As usual, the crowd along the parade route was, shall we say, friendly. More than a few people --mostly complete strangers-- jumped up to say hi, a handful grabbed my butt --one of the perks of the job-- and there were many strands of beads tossed about. I re-gifted most of the ones which landed on me but I do still have two as souvenirs.

There was much candy tossed to the crowds as well by the float in front of us, the 7th Day Adventists. I hadn't realized they were also tossing a few behind their float until I personally received a butterscotch hard candy solidly against my left forehead. Good thing I didn't have my microphone on at that particular magical moment or the crowd would have been treated to a little extra uncontrolled exclamation.

We did have some occasional problems with the sound system though. Every now & again, the system would kick out, as though it were overloaded. We figured out quickly that we only had to reset the amp and my Palm Pilot which was playing the music and all would be well. I still don't know if we were overloading the system, if the power inverter was overheating or if the truck itself was occasionally idling down or scaling back the power to the inverter. In any case, it wasn't a big deal, just a little annoying.

As expected, I saw a lot o' familiar faces along the way. In fact, here's a couple of hotter LJ folks below:

Bigfundrew & Bumbelion1977
DC Pride parade, 6/10/06

Today, we have a 15 minute dance performance block at the Arts Stage and kent4str's ensemble, Ties Optional, will be performing. I'm hoping our appearance at the festival will be relatively brief as I have a lot of work to get done before I head to Toronto tomorrow.