Pride Roundup 2012!

Pride Roundup

Last weekend was Pride in my hometown.  Not that we’re not proud year-round…

Anyway, here’s how it went down.

Friday evening ~ hair cut.  Gotta look good for Pride, right?  T had a light trim and I had the clippers. 

Left side: shortish but swoopy

Right side: super short!

(I have a cowlick in front... can you tell?)

Saturday I had planned a busy but doable evening for us.  Before we could start on the gay fun, we had a backyard party for a friend to attend.  Got that done.  Then went home to don our gay apparel.

Next up was the Dyke March.  Now, let me give you a little history on that one.  Every year I say that I want to go to the Dyke March and every year T objects.  She used to say things like, “You just want to look at other women’s boobs.”  Or, “Why, are you looking for a new girlfriend?”  Yes, I know, she’s painfully insecure.  She doesn’t say that anymore, but this year it was, “It’s such a ridiculous spectacle.  I just hope the rest of the world doesn’t judge all lesbians by that.”  I mean, really.  I can’t spend the time going over these pointless arguments.  It’s …  never mind.

So, this year we were going.  A friend of mine was going to come with us.  My friend the jumper.  She needs to stay busy these days and I thought that our busy evening would be perfect for her.  We had a complicated arrangement logistically.  She met us at our house.  Then we took our car to the place where we would end the evening and parked it.  We got in her car and drove downtown to watch the March.  Only, when we got there, we discovered that we had missed it!  Argh!  Made T happy, though.

We went out for a bite of dinner.  There were two more things on our itinerary: the Hot Flash/Inferno Pride Party which was slated for 8pm to 4am.  No, we were not staying for the whole thing.  And the other entry on the itinerary was the World Naked Bike Ride.  We saw it last year and unbelievably T said, “Let’s do that next year!”  Of course she changed her mind, but still wanted to see it.

So, at this point, sitting in the café having dinner, I said “look, if this is too much for one evening, let’s skip the bike ride and just go to the Party.”  Yes, they agreed with that.  Fine.

So, we drive back across the river and arrive at the warehouse for the big Pride Party.  Holy smokes!  The place is teeming!  Teeming and Steaming!  We danced some, we had a drink or two.  We saw lots of friends, lots of gals who we typically only see on Pride weekend.  My fragile friend left after a couple of hours.  We stayed on a bit longer but eventually the heat and noise drove us out.  When we were leaving, maybe 11:00ish, there was a line down the block to get in.  I love that.

On the way home, we got up to 7^th and Burnside and found traffic at a standstill.  We drove up a few more blocks and parked the car and got out.  What do you know, we got to watch the Naked Bike Ride after all!  In fact, we couldn’t get across Burnside to go home for probably 45 minutes.  There are thousands, literally thousands of people participating in the ride.  Wow.

On Sunday, my fragile friend was picking us up to go to the Parade.  We got downtown in a timely manner and found a reasonably good spot along the route.  T and I nipped in to Hobo’s for a couple of quick mimosas.  We met up with another friend and the four of us watched the parade together.  Afterwards, we walked down to the Waterfront and strolled through the booths and enjoyed a couple of beers.  My fragile friend left and we caught a ride home with T’s friend Donna.  I would have liked to stay longer – the people watching is fantastic and we hadn’t seen some friends that we usually see there.  But, overall, we had a pretty good time.

Who else has a Pride story to tell?  I hope you are all out there waving your rainbow flags!

A Not Sad Post

It was Gay Pride weekend in PDX this last weekend and even with my life turned upside down, it felt like a good idea to get out and have some fun.  Plus, there was the work obligation.

We went out dancing on Saturday night.  There's a monthly dance called Hot Flash that is held downtown.  It started out as an old gals dance, but it's open to all women and during Pride weekend it's open to all queers and allies.  It's pretty fun ordinarily, and on Pride weekend it is packed to the rafters and you are likely to run into people you haven't seen in ages.  I had the delightful coincidence of running into some bloggers that I know only in the virtual world!

I was talking with a group of friends and looked over and saw a couple who looked familiar.  I did the usual trip through the mental rolodex trying to place them and finally realized who they were.  It was Jen and Sara from We are (having) so much fun!  I couldn't remember Sara's name at first, but I remembered Jen and I called Sara "The Splicer".  If you read their blog, you'll know that Sara is pretty handy with rope (although we are still waiting for the blog post on splicing, we have seen pictures).  I introduced myself, and we marveled at the collision of real life and virtual.  They are just as nice as they seem on their blog.

When we were ready to go, we were standing outside saying our goodbyes to various friends when someone said, "Hey, it's the Naked Bike Ride!"  How could we not look?  We walked to the end of the block and sure enough, there they were in all their pale glory.  We waved and waved and waved, and the line of naked riders kept coming and coming.  It was actually quite nice out, not too chilly, and not raining.  It looked like they were having fun!  In fact, it looked so fun that T actually said that she wanted to join next year.  We'll see about that!  We found out later that there were something like 10,000 participants.  Ten Thousand!  That's Portland, for you!

Sunday morning we got up too early and made our way downtown for the Pride parade.  I had gotten roped into serving on my work's Pride committee and we all had to be there early and help out.  We sorted, folded, stacked and distributed t-shirts, blew up hundreds of balloons, bagged up buttons, organized the tote bags, and then waited for our turn to step out in the parade line up.  The parade route was not long, I'm happy to say, but what with all the busy work and the standing around and the walking, my legs were tired by the end of the day.  We made it down to the Waterfront, had a corn dog and a beer, picked up some free samples of dog food, some condoms and lube,  and plenty of buttons and stickers and Mardi Gras beads.  Got to chit chat with friends we haven't seen since last year's parade.  It was a long day but fun to see our community in all their colorful glory.

Not a restful weekend, by any stretch, but nice to get out.  How about you all?  Is your city's Pride celebration coming up?  Do you have one?  Go out and get your gay on!

Pride

Gay Pride is this weekend in Portland. Yay! Well, it's already begun but the big stuff is this weekend.

I was looking for various gay-themed paraphernalia at the store yesterday ~ decided that I didn't have enough rainbows in my wardrobe. My best finds were in the cheap jewelry aisle and girls accessories. Rainbows and unicorns aplenty! Of course, Tess isn't going to wear anything like that. I did find an awesome t-shirt for her in the men's clothing section. It's an Oregon State University t-shirt that loudly proclaims, "BEAVER PRIDE". That will be perfect for the Dyke March!

Happy Pride, everyone! Go get your gay on!