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.

( For those who would like to believe that the pride parade is a flawless execution of coordination, a labour of love & community to be watched with awe, don't click here. )

( We now get into the portion which contains perhaps TMI about my digestive tract. You may not want to click here. )

( The rest of the parade performance went pretty well. )

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.

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.

( For those who would like to believe that the pride parade is a flawless execution of coordination, a labour of love & community to be watched with awe, don't click here. )

( We now get into the portion which contains perhaps TMI about my digestive tract. You may not want to click here. )

( The rest of the parade performance went pretty well. )

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.

Survived Another Pride Day

kent4str and I left home around noon, heading into downtown DC for today's pride festival. Thanks to a generous co-worker of kent4str, we had parking pass to allow us to stow the minivan at kent4str's office, just a few blocks away from the festivities.

We went directly to the DC Lambda Squares booth to stow our stuff before scoping out the immediate area of the arts stage run by the DC LGBT Arts Consortium (DCLS is a member, as are most of the other organizations with which we have volunteered in various capacities over the past decade).

( Victory is ours! )

We left the festival around 4:30 PM, stopped at kent4str's office pantry for a quick cold drink, then headed for home. We detoured slightly for dinner at Mi Rancho but were home by shortly after 6 PM. Just in time... my feet are killing me.

Survived Another Pride Day

kent4str and I left home around noon, heading into downtown DC for today's pride festival. Thanks to a generous co-worker of kent4str, we had parking pass to allow us to stow the minivan at kent4str's office, just a few blocks away from the festivities.

We went directly to the DC Lambda Squares booth to stow our stuff before scoping out the immediate area of the arts stage run by the DC LGBT Arts Consortium (DCLS is a member, as are most of the other organizations with which we have volunteered in various capacities over the past decade).

( Victory is ours! )

We left the festival around 4:30 PM, stopped at kent4str's office pantry for a quick cold drink, then headed for home. We detoured slightly for dinner at Mi Rancho but were home by shortly after 6 PM. Just in time... my feet are killing me.