Alright Cube_Rat, here’s my take on today’s parade and yes, it was a beautiful day for a Gay parade.
I got there just as the motorcycles came roaring thru and as you might imagine, a hundred Harley’s in between tall buildings and you got a sound that is deafening. Then came the bicycle club and some overweight guys is buck-nekked, letting it all hang out. And he weren’t no Brickhouse from where I was standing but it was a bit cool. Possibly the most fun was watching a young girl assigned to keep people from crossing the street between groups. She had the entire block to guard and she would run and stop the offender and send them back. The crowd was cheering her and those trying to cross were getting booed and heckled. Someone yelled, “ I love the Security girl” and everyone cracked up.
Some of the most interesting events and people were in the crowd. I estimated that 25% of the crowd was gay/lesbian so if there were a million there, that makes out to be 2500,000 gays in the crowd. I’ll bet the parade itself had 10,000 gays/lesbians marching. A couple of times I made some extra room for the big hairy backed type that were wearing nothing but a Speedo. Saw at least a dozen of them.
The parade seemed to bring out the freaks and fringe elements also, the Goths, the Satanists, the leather lovers, the kinky sex types, the mystics, the tattoo/full body type, the aged hippies, the he/she/other types, and you know, some average nerdy, boring types were there also. And then there was me who combines several of those fetishes into a type called OAP. But, the thing that really surprised me was the number of 50ish year old types who are gay or lesbian. I saw dozens and dozens of gray haired men holding hands. They looked like doctors, lawyers and corporate chiefs.
Cisco Systems had it’s own marching cheering squad. Delta Airlines had a real float and had put lots of money out to get in on the parade. Foreign Legion, police, firefighters, teachers, cowboys, and you name it, they were represented.
The parade was not the high budget Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade, it was lots of small groups dressed outrageously and trying to entertain the crowd which was pretty big I suspect. They handed out millions of condoms, and I got a 25 year supply, one. But the funny thing was they kept sort of honing in on and giving these two young college age guys beside me condoms. One of them finally realized that the performers thought they were gay and one said to the other, “Hell, you obviously look gay cause I sure don’t”. They cracked up.
Two 20 somethings were sitting on the sidewalk in front of me and the parade obviously put them in the mood for each other. Both had buzz cuts and the amount of use of the tongue would have me believe that they were getting very charged up for the evening. Wonder what they are doing right now.
I do believe a good time was had by all. I saw nothing but shiny happy smiling people.
