decidedlyodd

Today was the official big pride day. I got up fairly early to go downtown for parade line up. I marched with GLEAM which was actually a lot of fun.

We were handing out Bazooka Joe gum and Xbox 360 t-shirts. Actually, the MSN butterfly was handing out t-shirts, while the rest of us were handing out gum. It was a very hot and sunny day for Seattle. It was probably mid-80s without a cloud in the sky, which is actually record breaking around here. I handed out a lot of gum, but it was actually a lot of fun. Plus, I think the people watching is actually better from inside the parade because I got to see all the spectators.

I took lots of pictures and two videos. One video is not worth posting (kinda boring), but the other is great. I only wish I had captured more footage. The librarians of the Seattle Public Library were in the parade pushing book carts in formations being called out by a guy with a bullhorn. It was pretty awesome. See it on YouTube here.

After the parade was over, I went up to the Seattle Center to eat my lunch and hang out at the Outventures table. Later, Ken and I went to check out the fountain. See in the middle of the area where the booths were there is a giant fountain. There was pounding dance music and hundreds of people (mostly shirtless gay men) dancing in the fountain.

I had Ken hold my camera and phone while I went into the fountain for a bit to get refreshed, but I didn’t have the time to go all out dancing there. While there, I also ran into this guy Nate I met online and then offline a while back. Last I spoke with him, he was moving back to Utah and I guess he’s actually leaving in a couple days. He seemed to be having a pretty good time in the fountain though in his last throws of Seattle.

As the festival wound down, we packed things up and headed over to the Cuff for their block party. I had two beers and a good time visiting with various people. After that, Shepherd, Don, two guys from Frontrunners and I went over to Elysian Brewery to grab a quick bite to eat. Now I’m home after a long but fun weekend of pride festivities.

All of the weekend’s pictures can be seen here.