This year, back in June, the SeattlePride.org had a very cool new feature, with a scrolling list, moving to the right a the bottom of the page, of not just Seattle Pride events, but Pride events going on all around the region throughout the summer. This expanded well beyond Seattle city limits; I even tentatively marked my calendar for July 9 for the Tacoma Pride Festival.
Well, July 9 was the day I otherwise had available to go visit Claudia and Dylan and see their new house, and I prioritized that instead. And I didn't even realize this until just now, while I was writing this: ironically, even though Alki Beach Pride was scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday this weekend, August 13 and 14, it was
after I last visited her that she chose Saturday, August 13 as the date for her official "Garden Party," basically an outdoor housewarming party in her giant yard. And again, I prioritized that instead of the Pride event.
It was easier to do that, though, or at least so I thought, because ostensibly Alki Beach Pride events were still happening today. And Shobhit works on Saturdays but has Sundays off these days, so that actually made Sunday more ideal, so we could go together. He was actually interested. He even got on board with taking the King County Water Taxi across the water instead of driving the half-hour drive it takes to go in the car while the West Seattle Bridge remains closed (but is
reopening next month!). We had an emergency preparedness thing here at the Braeburn to stop by in the "cavern" between our two buildings at 1:00, but we left early enough to walk all the way down to Pier 50 and catch the 2:30 passenger ferry across the water.
I had been rather excited, for a long time, about this "Alki Beach Pride" idea, especially given that this is the 9th year since it officially started, and the photos from 2019
on their website depict a huge entertainment stage and large crowds right on the beach. So naturally that's what I expected to find, regardless of which day I went.
Well, to say that Alki Beach Pride today fell far short of my expectations would still be a vast understatement. The digital flyers on their website did make it clear that the activities and entertainment on Saturday would be focused at Blue Moon Burgers at Alki Beach, and activities and entertainment on Sunday would be focused at Marinatio Ma Kai at Seacrest Pier. Given that Seacrest Pier is precisely where the King County Water Taxi docks struck me as perfect. The boat goes right there!
Well, as the boat pulled into dock, all I could see at Marination Ma Kai was a large crescent rainbow balloon near its entrance. I truly figured there would be booths and food trucks, etc, as the AlkiBeachPride.org website depicts in photos from 2019. But, there was none of that. We got off the boat, and saw that, yes, Marination Ma Kai delivered on the promise of a live DJ in its large outdoor patio, itsel also surrounded by little rainbow flags—but, that was it. We agreed we would consider stopping in there on the way back, after heading down to Alki Beach itself, which was always the selling point for Shobhit to begin with.
You would not believe how long it took me to get through to Shobhit basically everything I wrote above: that I naturally assumed that there would be more Pride-related stuff right there at the pier, based on both the digital flyer on the website and the photos from previous years on the website. I must have repeated myself three times before I even started to get through to him: clearly I had been wrong in these expectations.
We decided to walk around the shore of West Seattle to Alki Beach anyway, thinking both that there may still be booths of some kind over there, and that we'd like to go to the beach regardless. This turned out to be a two-mile walk, and I got physically tired from this much more quickly than Shobhit did, but, whatever. I was fine walking out there, I just hoped not to have to walk all the way back again. We had already walked the two miles from home to Pier 50 before taking the water taxi.
As for what we found on Alki Beach: a few hot shirtless guys here and there, having nothing to do with Pride. We even found ourselves in front of Blue Moon Burgers, which had been the center of Pride attention yesterday, but merely had a Progress Pride flag hanging on the front of the building today.
To be fair, we did come across two different small booths related to Alki Beach Pride along Alki Beach itself. They were both very isolated, a good distance, maybe a five-minute walk, between them. The first we came across was the only one that held any interest for us, a booth for the
Fred Hutch Vaccine Trials Unit, specifically in regards to HIV vaccine trials.
This booth was staffed by a single young man, who seemed to be giving his shpiel to one or two people every few minutes. People were not storming his booth, is what I'm saying. He offered to let us spin the wheel and guess the name of the Pride flag it landed on (the only one on the wheel that I knew by sight was the Trans Pride flag). We could take a pin if we spun the wheel, and if we got the flag right we could take as many pins as we wanted. Or something like that, I forget the absolute specifics. Neither Shobhit nor I want any pins anyway, but, we did listen to him tell us about HIV vaccine trials; I took a couple of brochures; and we both even scanned the QR code that took us to the web page where we could sign up for consideration for being part of the trials. I'd be all about that, and if by chance it pans out, then I guess that alone would make going to Alki Beach Pride worth it today.
To be fair, it was fun spending the afternoon in West Seattle with Shobhit, whether there was much in the way of Pride content or not. I did bring this up to Gabriel some weeks ago, and he actually expressed interest in maybe coming to it. I texted him a reminder about it on Tuesday and he just never responded. It's just as well; I think it would have been a greater disappointment for him to come all the way up from Federal Way for almost-no-actual "Pride" stuff than it was for us, as we live a lot closer.
Also, I do want to be fair to the Alki Beach Pride organizers as well. The kid staffing the Fred Hutch booth was right across the street from Blue Moon Burgers, and when I asked if there were actual info booths
yesterday, he said there was, along the street on either side of Blue Moon. It sounds like it was still not as elaborate as it had been the last time they could hold the event, the year before the pandemic, in 2019, but it also sounded far more involved yesterday than it was today. I don't regret going to Claudia's party yesterday instead, but I do know now to make a note that I will prioritize heading over there on Saturday rather than Sunday next year, when I do intend to give Alki Beach Pride another chance.
Because there is yet another issue here: the pandemic. In all likelihood, this year's Alki Beach Pride overall was much scaled down from previous iterations of the event, as they have had to reorganize after two years of forced inactivity. This has been an issue with many events, and I totally get it. I don't care for how their website kind of misled us into what to expect, but, nobody's perfect, I guess.
Shobhit and I continued strolling the beach for a bit. We walked down to the water, and Shobhit walked in it for a minute, up to his shins, while I remained just outside of it. Shobhit wanted a snack, so we walked as far as Cactus Alki Beach, the restaurant we took Shobhit's cousin Harshal to when he was staying for a weekend with a cousin on the other side of his family for a weekend back in June. We split an order of nachos, choosing to stick with water as a beverage after briefly considering a margarita. I had already brought homemade margaritas with us that I put into tumbler bottles, and Shobhit and I both had our drinks finished shortly after we got off the boat. By the time we were at the restaurant, after quite a lot of walking (about four miles, cumulatively from home on the way there) and being in the sun for some time, water was absolutely our best choice.
We caught a bus back to the pier. This was how I learned, for the first time, that
route 775, which is a shuttle bus along Alki Beach and the West Seattle shore between right by Cactus and Seacrest Pier, is free! How did I not know about this? Thank god for One Bus Away, which gave us the bus schedule and the time it was expected to come by; we aimed to get on the bus scheduled to leave at 4:41, and it was about three minutes late. This cut slightly close to making us late for the 5:00 water taxi back, but we actually made it with about five minutes to spare. That water taxi only takes between ten and fifteen minutes to cross.
I was not at all interested in walking the additional two miles back
up Capitol Hill to get home, and thankfully—and unusually—the next #12 bus right up Madison Street was well timed for when we got to its closest bus stop, just a few blocks from the ferry terminal. We got back home, and I uploaded the number of photos that were fewer than what I had hoped for the day:
just twelve. And a whopping
four of those even indicate any reference to Pride. But hey, it still counts! I now have
seven photo albums in my "Seattle Pride 2022" Flickr collection, which already makes it the highest number of Pride photo albums for a given year
since 2017, tying with it for the record number. And guess what? So long as the postponed Trans Pride Seattle still happens September 2 (will Gabriel come to that one? Time will tell!), then 2022 will officially be the record holder, with eight photo albums!
My "
Alki Beach Pride" photo album, with its paltry 12 shots, is by a wide margin the smallest of my Seattle Pride 2022 photo albums. But, it's what I could manage, and as I stated already, it still counts! I went there, I went to one Pride related booth. And I might wind up in an HIV vaccine clinical trial! (For some reason I have this feeling I won't get accepted into it. I'm sure they have many demographic quotas and whether I fit what they need likely lessens the likelihood. But, we'll see.)
And, Pride or no, I still had a nice afternoon with my husband.
[poste 10:14 pm]
