[Adapted from photo digest email sent at 9:44 pm]

Saturday, June 25: PrideFest Capitol Hill 2022

Yes! Bring more camp back to Pride, please!

Side note: I bring this up every year even though hardly anybody cares: there is a differentiation between "PrideFest Capitol Hill," which takes place on Broadway between Olive/John and Roy and is organized by the same organization that puts on the Pride Parade downtown and PrideFest at Seattle Center on Pride Sunday every year; and "Capitol Hill Pride Festival," which is now mostly relegated to Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill and dates back to about 2009 by people on Capitol Hill forever bitter about the parade being moved downtown in 2006. Stupid rivalries between the two organizing groups continue to this day, and I suppose the irony is that to the casual festival-goer on the Saturday before Pride Sunday every year, it all looks like it's just the same festival, from Cal Anderson Park near the Pike-Pine Corridor all the way up to its north end on Broadway at Roy.

The Capitol Hill Pride Festival website said their event was at Cal Anderson Park this year, but when Alexia, who joined me again for this event the first time I walked the few blocks over there, at around noon, there was literally nothing set up inside the park itself—even though their festival was supposed to have started at 10 a.m.

They did, however, have several booths set up along E Denny Way—which is the street at the north end of Cal Anderson Park. We walked into this one booth and were amused to find these self-defense devices in the shape of cats.

Alexia and I found a Thai restaurant to have lunch at on the north end of Broadway, and we sat in one of the three small tables they had for outside seating, on the sidewalk but inside fencing. Alexia got quite the education about queer subcommunities yesterday, including "furries," a group of which passed by down the steet as we ate lunch, some of them stopping to do a bit of dancing in the street before moving on.

Sunday, June 26: Seattle Pride Parade 2022

As always, the Pride Parade—Seattle's first in three years—begins with the "Dykes on Bikes" contingent. This person was my favorite, not just because the Pride flag was very cool, but because of a T-shirt that read: CLAWS: Cat Lovers Against White Supremacy.

Given that the Seattle Kraken only started playing in the NHL last year, this would be a first in Seattle Pride history: a rainbow themed Kraken zamboni. (Note the sign on the front: PRIDE RUNS DEEP.) I suppose it's possible they had some kind of presence in the 2019 parade while still in planning stages—I really can't remember—but this is certainly their first appearance in the parade as an actively playing professional team.

Given the diversity of my now-50+ distribution list for my email travelogues, I try to be a bit conservative about sharing photos of scantily clad men at Pride (although for the record, I take a lot of pictures of them). This guy, you can barely tell he's dressed in anything all that risqué. I actually love the elaborate and colorful design of his getup, and I even love its shadow.

I can't remember which contingent this was, but I love those Seattle landmarks with rainbows either sticking or spilling out of them: The Space Needle, and the International Fountain, which are actually located quite close to each other at Seattle Center.

The City of Seattle contingent. I love, love, love that rainbow skyline silhouette design, which almost makes me wish I worked for the City of Seattle. This photo just makes me smile.

Presumably this is the contingent for Gilead Sciences, their presence at Pride really making sense given they are a biopharmaceutical company heavily involved in HIV treatment (among other viruses, including COVID-19). Unfortunately, every time I see that name I just think of the fictionalized, theocratic post-coup America depicted in The Handmaid's Tale: "The Republic of Gilead."

This flag was . . . new to me. I was so taken aback by the crocodile and the caption that I had to look at the photo several times before I realized it includes the "Progress Pride" stripes: Black and Brown for queer people of color; and the pink, blue and white of the Trans Pride flag.

Anybody else remember this guy?

(Side note: I literally googed to make sure I was gendering Nyan Cat correctly.)

It's Rainbow Vader!

In the past it was just the classic rainbow flag carried in a massive version by a group through the parade—in the early days it was long known to be a place where spectators threw donations, usually coins, out into the middle of it, to help fundraise for the Parade organizers. You don't see that so much anymore; maybe too many people got beaned in the head by quarters, I don't know.

In any case, it was very cool to see a Progress Pride version of it this year; I don't recall seeing that before.

Side note: there was a lot of pro choice content in the parade this year, the likes of which had never been seen, quite understandably given that Roe v Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court just days ago. This is an issue that should be laser focused on people with uteruses right now, but there's no denying that, although there wasn't a lot of talk about it at the Pride events this weekend (at least not where I was), I found myself often thinking about how the rights of queer people can easily be the next ones this court rescinds: it's certainly what Justice Clarence Thomas quite openly wants, anyway. And both of these issues give the essential nature of Pride new meaning and urgency this year—people in recent years have speculated as to how "necessary" Pride even is anymore (it's always been essential, in my view), but we're not hearing as much of that sort of talk now. We, all of us,right now, are in a truly precarious position.

Seattle PrideFest 2022

Always one of my favorite sights at Seattle Pride: the Pride flag flying atop the Space Needle.

Guess who actually got into the water at the International Fountain this year!

I took this selfie while Shobhit was taking one of his two or three turns. He's been eager to get to Seattle Center after the parade to do this for years now. I usually like to stay to the end of the parade, which takes fully four hours (at least an hour too many in my opinion but whatever), but my iPhone battery life has gone down the tube since my contract ended (surprise!) and I wanted to get to Seattle Center to get a good amount of photos there before my phone died.

After I attended the last in-person Seattle Pride Parade in 2019 with a truly unusual number of people (Shobhit, my cousin, four other friends and four teens among them), this year's Pride Sunday was just with Shobhit. I almost took a selfie of the two of us once during the parade but he was distracted and the moment passed; I never thought to try again. Dammit! Oh well, maybe you'll get some photos of him again in my next email.

And even though I wasn't accompanied by as many people this year, any thoughts about the first time back after covid making the crowds thinner were obliterated once the parade got going. It honestly didn't feel any less crowded than any average year before the pandemic, and anyone still skittish about crowds, outdoor or not, definitely would have made the right choice to stay away for now.

For my part, however, I had a fantastic time, and have never felt more strongly than I do now how essential Pride is, for all of us.