DC Pride Weekend

DC Pride is fun. I also dread it every year.

I have to dig back into my notes but I think this was the fifth year kent4str and I supported the DC Lambda Squares as square dance callers. We've participated before then as dancers too but being callers increases the hours and overall level of responsibility significantly.

We were calling in the pride parade on Saturday evening. We had delivered the sound systems to Ronnie to place in his truck on Friday night so we wouldn't need but the single truck in the parade staging area. However, we needed to get our own vehicle into the downtown area near the tail-end of the parade so we could retrieve the equipment when it was all over. This turned out to be tricker than anticipated since the DC gov't had adjusted the parking meters recently to increase revenues, effectively requiring all meters within the business zone to be fed every two hours up to 10pm, even on Saturday. We got lucky: we found a spot at 10 & L Streets NW just outside of the zone which only required the meter be fed to 6:30pm. Whew.

The parade was to start at 6pm but all vehicles and performers were to be queued up in place by 5pm. We were there on time, hanging around in the hot sun on P Street NW between 24th & 25th Streets NW. That placed us in the leading edge of the tail of the parade, not the end but close to it. OK, I can deal with that.


For all I know, the parade did start at 6pm: we were so far in the rear of the parade that we have absolutely no idea when the leading edge started moving. I can report that we began moving along at 7:45pm, nearly two hours after the scheduled kick-off. We were tired before we even began marching in the parade.


Our segment the parade itself moved pretty smoothly. We only had an opportunity to pause for a quick dance demo a few times; there were also very few instances where we had to collectively speed up to keep pace with the floats in front of us, closing the gaps. I was pleasantly surprised the crowds were still cheering wildly when we moved through them; at that hour, I thought they'd have been tired of standing & waiting and exhausted from cheering the heaven-knows-how-many floats & groups before us. Still, they were there and enthusiastic, bless 'em all.

When the parade was over, my feet hurt and my voice was a little hoarse but I think it was largely a success.

Sunday was another matter.

DC Lambda Squares was sharing a dance tent with Capital Country, a local LGBT two-stepping & line dancing group. kent4str and I were providing the sound system, a much larger & more powerful system than we used for the parade. All motorized vehicles had to be off the festival grounds by 9:30am so we needed to get the equipment on-site at our tent by 9am at the latest. That aspect was relatively smooth; kent4str even found parking not too far away.

Our tent was in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue NW, directly in front of the Canadian Embassy. It was a great location but the tent itself was smaller than I was expecting. Sure, dancing on pavement is less than ideal but I thought we'd have a very large tent, say, 30 feet wide by 30 feet deep or so. Nope, it was a lot smaller: more like 12 feet by 12 feet. OK, we can work with that. We had six tables and 20 chairs, thank heavens: that gave us lots of flexibility to move people and equipment through the course of the day as the sun shifted so we could take advantage of what shade we had.


DC Lambda Squares and Capital Country traded hours through the day: CC had the odd numbered hours, beginning at 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm while we had 12pm, 2pm and 4pm. As the heat rose into the upper 90s F with high humidity, kent4str and I used slower square dance numbers and long breaks so our dancers wouldn't keel over in the middle of a dance. I threw on some two-stepping pieces during our breaks to keep the music running even if there wasn't any dancing at that moment.

The arts stage this year was off the main street in John Marshall Park, next door to the Canadian Embassy. While this seemed like a great idea at the time, effectively it guaranteed there was absolutely no audience for any performers. DC Lambda Squares did a dance demo at 1:20pm in that space.

We theoretically had a 20 minute block but we used only 10-12 minutes or so. kent4str and I had the stage for calling but the dancers were in direct sunlight that whole time and were baking. Instead of full dance tips with some chatter about our upcoming open houses and such, we scaled back to a brief patter, abbreviated announcements and a closing singer, then called it done. There was no point in going further with effectively no audience and we needed our volunteer dancers as intact as possible for our dance tent demos.

In the middle of the afternoon, we had a welcome surprise: a torrential downpour. Suddenly our tent was the most popular spot in the entire festival. Our equipment stayed dry thanks to kent4str packing a waterproof tarp, just in case. My backpack got a little wet but I escaped the worst. In ten minutes, it was over and all was bright & sunny again.

By the late afternoon, my body was starting to severely object to the way I was treating it. I had been standing nearly the entire day and I don't deal well with heat & humidity at the best of times. The Capital Country folks decided to skip their 5pm hour as they were too exhausted to dance. We began shutting down our tent around 5:30pm or so. While we couldn't bring vehicles on site until after 6pm, our cars were all within walking distance so we were able to shuffle our equipment with a few trips and some hand trucks.

My first act upon returning home at 7:30pm was a cool shower. Ahhhh. Despite drinking water continuously, I'm sure I was more than a little dehydrated so I chugged more fluids before going to bed. My body will still be complaining for the next day or two but I think I'll survive.

Some thoughts on the whole weekend:

1. Do we really need so many groups & floats in the parade? I heard there were more than 200 groups participating. While I like the principle of everyone being able to participate if they wish, there comes a point where the logistical difficulties and costs of clean up & street closures are prohibitively high. I wonder if we might get a better quality parade experience if we capped it at the first, say, 150 groups to apply.
   
2. Lordy, we need a cooler, less humid weekend.
   
3. OK, the arts stage in the park didn't work this year. I didn't see that coming. I did, however, know that having it so close to the main performance stage with their nuclear powered sound system which could make my ribs vibrate at 200 feet was a very, very bad idea.
   
4. For that matter, why do we have a main performance stage? Why do we need "headliner" entertainers at all? I'd prefer to skip that and give that stage space to the local performers & artists who were relegated to the arts stage.
   
5. I'm glad there were plenty of porta-potties but I'm deliriously glad I never needed to use them. Ick.
   
6. DC Pride seems to suffer from the same festival envy many other cities have: they need/want it to be HUGE so they need correspondingly huge pots of cash & sponsorships which then leave them vulnerable to the demands of those corporate & gov't sponsors. Witness the recent politics in Toronto where the city would only give money to the event if the pride committee would reject one particular pro-Palestinian group. The event has become so over-sized it can't run without the city's money so the group was given the boot. Remember when the event was a self-funded reflection of our local community instead of a faceless corporation chasing big money? I think there are plenty of better places to put all this cash.
   
7. I know how to make a fortune at the pride festival: attach a water sprinkler to a fire hydrant and ask for a dollar donation to stand in the spray as long as you want. Put it in the park by the arts stage and you'll actually get an audience.
   

DC Pride Weekend

DC Pride is fun. I also dread it every year.

I have to dig back into my notes but I think this was the fifth year kent4str and I supported the DC Lambda Squares as square dance callers. We've participated before then as dancers too but being callers increases the hours and overall level of responsibility significantly.

We were calling in the pride parade on Saturday evening. We had delivered the sound systems to Ronnie to place in his truck on Friday night so we wouldn't need but the single truck in the parade staging area. However, we needed to get our own vehicle into the downtown area near the tail-end of the parade so we could retrieve the equipment when it was all over. This turned out to be tricker than anticipated since the DC gov't had adjusted the parking meters recently to increase revenues, effectively requiring all meters within the business zone to be fed every two hours up to 10pm, even on Saturday. We got lucky: we found a spot at 10 & L Streets NW just outside of the zone which only required the meter be fed to 6:30pm. Whew.

The parade was to start at 6pm but all vehicles and performers were to be queued up in place by 5pm. We were there on time, hanging around in the hot sun on P Street NW between 24th & 25th Streets NW. That placed us in the leading edge of the tail of the parade, not the end but close to it. OK, I can deal with that.


For all I know, the parade did start at 6pm: we were so far in the rear of the parade that we have absolutely no idea when the leading edge started moving. I can report that we began moving along at 7:45pm, nearly two hours after the scheduled kick-off. We were tired before we even began marching in the parade.


Our segment the parade itself moved pretty smoothly. We only had an opportunity to pause for a quick dance demo a few times; there were also very few instances where we had to collectively speed up to keep pace with the floats in front of us, closing the gaps. I was pleasantly surprised the crowds were still cheering wildly when we moved through them; at that hour, I thought they'd have been tired of standing & waiting and exhausted from cheering the heaven-knows-how-many floats & groups before us. Still, they were there and enthusiastic, bless 'em all.

When the parade was over, my feet hurt and my voice was a little hoarse but I think it was largely a success.

Sunday was another matter.

DC Lambda Squares was sharing a dance tent with Capital Country, a local LGBT two-stepping & line dancing group. kent4str and I were providing the sound system, a much larger & more powerful system than we used for the parade. All motorized vehicles had to be off the festival grounds by 9:30am so we needed to get the equipment on-site at our tent by 9am at the latest. That aspect was relatively smooth; kent4str even found parking not too far away.

Our tent was in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue NW, directly in front of the Canadian Embassy. It was a great location but the tent itself was smaller than I was expecting. Sure, dancing on pavement is less than ideal but I thought we'd have a very large tent, say, 30 feet wide by 30 feet deep or so. Nope, it was a lot smaller: more like 12 feet by 12 feet. OK, we can work with that. We had six tables and 20 chairs, thank heavens: that gave us lots of flexibility to move people and equipment through the course of the day as the sun shifted so we could take advantage of what shade we had.


DC Lambda Squares and Capital Country traded hours through the day: CC had the odd numbered hours, beginning at 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm while we had 12pm, 2pm and 4pm. As the heat rose into the upper 90s F with high humidity, kent4str and I used slower square dance numbers and long breaks so our dancers wouldn't keel over in the middle of a dance. I threw on some two-stepping pieces during our breaks to keep the music running even if there wasn't any dancing at that moment.

The arts stage this year was off the main street in John Marshall Park, next door to the Canadian Embassy. While this seemed like a great idea at the time, effectively it guaranteed there was absolutely no audience for any performers. DC Lambda Squares did a dance demo at 1:20pm in that space.

We theoretically had a 20 minute block but we used only 10-12 minutes or so. kent4str and I had the stage for calling but the dancers were in direct sunlight that whole time and were baking. Instead of full dance tips with some chatter about our upcoming open houses and such, we scaled back to a brief patter, abbreviated announcements and a closing singer, then called it done. There was no point in going further with effectively no audience and we needed our volunteer dancers as intact as possible for our dance tent demos.

In the middle of the afternoon, we had a welcome surprise: a torrential downpour. Suddenly our tent was the most popular spot in the entire festival. Our equipment stayed dry thanks to kent4str packing a waterproof tarp, just in case. My backpack got a little wet but I escaped the worst. In ten minutes, it was over and all was bright & sunny again.

By the late afternoon, my body was starting to severely object to the way I was treating it. I had been standing nearly the entire day and I don't deal well with heat & humidity at the best of times. The Capital Country folks decided to skip their 5pm hour as they were too exhausted to dance. We began shutting down our tent around 5:30pm or so. While we couldn't bring vehicles on site until after 6pm, our cars were all within walking distance so we were able to shuffle our equipment with a few trips and some hand trucks.

My first act upon returning home at 7:30pm was a cool shower. Ahhhh. Despite drinking water continuously, I'm sure I was more than a little dehydrated so I chugged more fluids before going to bed. My body will still be complaining for the next day or two but I think I'll survive.

Some thoughts on the whole weekend:

1. Do we really need so many groups & floats in the parade? I heard there were more than 200 groups participating. While I like the principle of everyone being able to participate if they wish, there comes a point where the logistical difficulties and costs of clean up & street closures are prohibitively high. I wonder if we might get a better quality parade experience if we capped it at the first, say, 150 groups to apply.
   
2. Lordy, we need a cooler, less humid weekend.
   
3. OK, the arts stage in the park didn't work this year. I didn't see that coming. I did, however, know that having it so close to the main performance stage with their nuclear powered sound system which could make my ribs vibrate at 200 feet was a very, very bad idea.
   
4. For that matter, why do we have a main performance stage? Why do we need "headliner" entertainers at all? I'd prefer to skip that and give that stage space to the local performers & artists who were relegated to the arts stage.
   
5. I'm glad there were plenty of porta-potties but I'm deliriously glad I never needed to use them. Ick.
   
6. DC Pride seems to suffer from the same festival envy many other cities have: they need/want it to be HUGE so they need correspondingly huge pots of cash & sponsorships which then leave them vulnerable to the demands of those corporate & gov't sponsors. Witness the recent politics in Toronto where the city would only give money to the event if the pride committee would reject one particular pro-Palestinian group. The event has become so over-sized it can't run without the city's money so the group was given the boot. Remember when the event was a self-funded reflection of our local community instead of a faceless corporation chasing big money? I think there are plenty of better places to put all this cash.
   
7. I know how to make a fortune at the pride festival: attach a water sprinkler to a fire hydrant and ask for a dollar donation to stand in the spray as long as you want. Put it in the park by the arts stage and you'll actually get an audience.