— पांच हजार दो सौ इकहत्तर —
I really should have posted a dedicated entry just for Trans Pride Seattle 2022, which finally happened on Friday this past weekend;
every other Pride event I attended this year had posts dedicated only to them, after all. Okay, just to clarify, the events of
Seattle Pride Weekend 2022 (Capitol Hill Pride Festival, the Pride Parade and the Pride Festival on Sunday at Seattle Center) did all go into one post, but that post was still entirely dedicated to Pride events. Outside of that, there were dedicated posts to
Seattle Pride in the Park earlier in June; the
Seattle Queer History Tour I took myself on, on June 30; and the barely-existent
Alki Beach Pride on August 14.
Today, however, we're back after a long Labor Day weekend, and I have too many other things to cover as well. I really should have posted a dedicated entry about Trans Pride sometime earlier over the weekend; I actually could have made the time. I just, sort of, spaced it. Oh well!
Starting Friday of this three-day weekend, effectively giving it four days of possible "weekend activity," Shobhit actually managed to make two days, and thus two points on the Social Review, of social activity with me. That started with Friday, when he actually walked up to Volunteer Park with me to check out Trans Pride.
It was the first time Trans Pride was held at Volunteer Park as a venue, but especially with its reconstructed and reopened amphitheater stage, I would argue is a better spot now than Cal Anderson Park where it has always been in the past (with the exception of 2020 when it was virtual) anyway. After all, at Cal Anderson, they had to construct a stage, and at Volunteer Park there's already one right there for rent. I genuinely hope they just keep it at Volunteer Park going forward. I think I'm even going to message them to say so.
Gabriel, unsurprisingly, was unable to make it. I don't use the word "unsurprisingly" to disparage him in any way; there are multiple reasons really beyond his control that made it unsurprising. First, he's got a lot going on and I'm sure it would have been very difficult for him to fit it in—that's actually the closest thing to "typical" of all the reasons, for him. Second, I don't think he's too keen on going to a crowded event even now, and even with it being held outdoors. Somewhat ironically, I think he may have had concern about it being a shadow of its former self, much like Alki Pride, which Gabriel had previously expressed interest in attending but was also unable to make it to, wound up being a shadow of what it had been expected to be. On the upside, the presence of live entertainment, booths,
and attendees was far greater than I had feared—the only thing I would say there was less of than we would particularly hope for was food trucks (or booths). That can be largely remedied by next year, I would assume. Anyway, all that notwithstanding, it still wasn't overly crowded and, even for Gabriel if he had come with a mask on, was probably at a pretty comfortable level. Far better presence than pathetic, and far less crowded than would be all that triggering for those still concerned about covid. Third, and this is probably the most significant element here, Tess, the whole reason for Gabriel's presence at Trans Pride
since 2015, is now 15 years old and developing other interests of her own, Trans Pride Seattle getting bumped lower on her list of priorities. She was all of seven years old, just weeks from turning 8, when she attended Trans Pride in 2015; she attended every Trans Pride event between 2015 and 2019, and thus between the ages of 7 and 11. Trans Pride went virtual for 2020 (when she was 12) and she took no part in it; Trans Pride was canceled outright in 2021 (when she was 13); and had Trans Pride actually happened the last Friday of June as is tradition then she would have been 14 when it happened this year—but, as I already noted, it got postponed this year, and since her birthday is August 15, she turned 15 in the meantime. In terms of teen development, her last Trans Pride being when she was 11 and her being 15 now is a pretty massive change.
I spoke to Gabriel about this for a few minutes on the phone last week, and he expressed disappointment that Trans Pride could not happen over Pride Weekend as usual. I was disappointed by it too. Gabriel knows a woman who is heavily involved in the organizing, and based on what he has been privy to, it sounds like the organization has been faced with a lot of steep challenges—not least of which was their "nearly 100% turnover" on Gender Justice League staff since they last produced Trans Pride, as noted in the FAQ section of
their website, this being also one of the reasons there was no march this year either.
I have a feeling Gabriel had a similar expectation to mine: that it might be too disappointing to come to this event and find it falling notably short of its former glory. Except! Whoever organized what finally came to fruition this past Friday really should be commended, because I found it to be just about as "glorious" as could be expected. There must have been a good
sixty booths or more on the grassy lawn in front of the amphitheater—far more than I even realized can fit in there—and the live entertainment was both perfectly pleasant and fairly eclectic between acts, from what I could tell.
Granted, we weren't there long enough to hear more than two acts. Shobhit and I merely made our way through all the booths and then left again, so we weren't there long. But, I managed to get a photo album
of 19 shots out of it. Granted that's a record low for number of photos I've taken at a Trans Pride Seattle event, but it's not a far cry from the previous record low (2016), of 23 shots. I'm just delighted I was able to attend an in-person Trans Pride event again at all, thereby achieving a record
high number of photo albums in a given year's collection of Pride events
out of the history of such collections, at fully
eight photo albums. (Five events from June—Seattle Pride in the Park; PrideFest Capitol Hill; Seattle Pride Parade; Seattle PrideFest; Seattle Queer History Tour—plus the requisite "Random Hot Guys" album; one event from August, Alki Beach Pride; and one event from September, Trans Pride Seattle.)
Shobhit and I arrived at Volunteer Park Friday evening at 6:45, an hour and 15 minutes after the event officially started; we left at about 7:30, so we were there all of about 45 minutes. But it happened, and we did go, and I was really happy to see how evidently successful it was.
— पांच हजार दो सौ इकहत्तर —
— पांच हजार दो सौ इकहत्तर —
As for the rest of the weekend, Shobhit had a work shift on Saturday from 10:30 to 2:30, during which time I spent mostly working on the birthday tribute video for my brother, Christopher's 50th birthday later this month. I worked on it at other times too, and am very close to done; I may have one or two tweaks left to do on it but that's about it. I really built on what I had done before: the
video I made for Angel's 50th in 2019 is all of 3 minutes and 19 seconds long; merely runs the length of the run time of the Fleetwood Mac song "Landslide"; and features only still photos—exactly 50 of them actually. I took a similar approach for
the video I made for
Gina's 50th just last year, which is longer, at 5 minutes and 21 seconds, but also still spans only the length of one song (Lady Gaga's "Hair"), and in this case includes a bunch of video clips from over the years, interspersed with still photos. That one also goes through "fifty hairstyles" so it sticks pretty close to the numerical concept.
The numbers game is a little more muddied with Christopher's video, which is fine. It's also far longer in run time, at present clocking in at over 15 minutes. It was difficult to get out of in this instance, though, for two reasons: I have audio clips from every year between 1990 and 1998, and video clips from 15 of the years between 1992 and 2022; there are
nineteen years from which I have one, or the other, or both. I made a strict rule in my mind to include one video clip from every year in which I have video footage of my brother, as well as one audio clip from which I have audio recordings of him; there are five years from which I have both, and I included both. The audio clips were handy for playing over still photos, although I am not entirely satisfied with the visual result but I can live with it.
I do have one full song that plays, in this instance for about a third of the entire video run time: the 1993 cover of "Saturday Night" by Ned's Atomic Dustbin, from the soundtrack to
So I Married an Axe Murderer from the same year. I'm sure I'll have to explain this to Christopher because I can't imagine him being able to glean it on its own, but I chose that track because it was included on a mixtape I recorded in 1992 called "Cruisin'," which I would play in his car when we "went cruising" a couple of weekend nights in downtown Seattle. It would alternate between current favorites of his and current favorites of mine. I wanted to include something more grunge oriented to be closer to his musical tastes of the time, but the lyrics were way too depressing; this track, at least, was more appropriately celebratory in tone for a tribute video celebrating my brother. Plus, he has an established history of depression now, and I didn't want to include a song with lyrics that hit too close to home in a way that could make it awkward.
There's also the fact that he has five children, and I felt it also important to include video footage of all of them as babies or infants, or at least as many as I could: I have fantastic video footage of Nikki as a toddler in early 1994; Becca as a toddler at Mom and Bill's wedding in 1997; Tristen as a newborn baby in 2000; and Christian as a toddler in 2004. The only one I have no video footage of that young is Braeden, but I do have a still photo of Christopher holding him as a baby in 2006. All of this, if course, also contributes significantly to the run time (the clips in question are much better as a minute or two showing them doing adorable things than if it were just a passing second in service of keeping the run time down), and naturally I also had to include the brief video clip of his and Nikki's father-daughter dance at her wedding in 2014.
In any case, including footage of the kids seemed critical to me because they are critical to the story of Christopher's 50 years of life thus far. Combine that with including both video and audio clips, and you wind up with a 15-minute video. I'd love to get it down to 10 just so I can upload it unbroken to Flickr, but I don't want to have to cut a full third of what I've got in there now in order to make that happen. I'll have to upload it to either OneDrive or DropBox in order to share it, probably, just like I did the tribute video to Mom after she died. I may see if I can get away with uploading it to YouTube; that one track might just be obscure enough not to get dinged for copyright by YouTube—who seems to allow other user accounts to have it uploaded, after all. It would be great if I can do that, because the link will work far better from there than from a file storage account. At least I'll have it done early enough to load it and test it well before I share the link on my socials the morning of Christopher's birthday, on September 24.
Anyway! I could have sworn Shobhit and I did something "social" on Saturday, but neither of us can remember doing anything after he got home from work that day besides going shopping at PCC, coming home and watching TV. We watched
Cliffhanger on Hulu, which I became interested in rewatching because of a recent "Sylvester Stallone Hall of Fame" podcast episode I listened to (it's very dumb and also very, very entertaining); and we watched several episodes of
What We Do in the Shadows.
— पांच हजार दो सौ इकहत्तर —
On Sunday, Shobhit got his "Social Review point" by suggesting we take a walk downtown to Pike Place Market. It just gave us something to do. We had expected to hang out with Danielle either on Saturday, while she was still hanging out with her visiting friend Jeanna, or on Sunday, after she dropped Jeanna off at the airport. I never heard from her, but figured I would just give them their quality time together on Saturday and wait until Sunday. But, when I texted her on Sunday, she replied,
Oh shit! I'm in Bremerton with tasty snack. The "tasty snack" being the guy she's seeing, very casually, currently. And although normally I might be annoyed by her total spacing what I thought was an actual plan to get together, having a new person in your life who's got your hormones going is something I can cut her some slack for—naturally if she's got a new "horny outlet" that's going to be what her mind is on. And in spite of the fact that I haven't seen her since May, spending that time in Bremerton on Sunday was going to be far more fun for her than hanging out with us. I get it.
So, Shobhit and I went for a walk. He often wants a "point" when we just go out shopping or run errands and I am forever telling him that doesn't count as "socializing." We did walk into some stores on Sunday, both inside and around Pike Place, but we never bought anything. None of it was running errands, although I did look for open toed sandals to buy because the ones I am wearing are about to fall apart at the seams, but, of course, coming on fall, no one is selling them. I'm just hoping these will hold out long enough for the trip to Idaho and Leavenworth later this month.
In any case, we walked down Pike to the Market; a few blocks north, stopping at Victor Steinbrueck Park (not as much his favorite spot as long as there is a fence up keeping people from getting to the actual ledge over where the Alaskan Way Viaduct use to be; hopefully once the new road they are constructing is done they will finally remove that fucking fence); then back home via Pine Street. And again, we watched more
What We Do in the Shadows after we got home. I think we got caught up that day, in fact. We had no idea what great timing it was for binging that show until we were up to date: all that's left of the current season, season four, is its finale, and that airs tonight! Nice.
— पांच हजार दो सौ इकहत्तर —
And that brings us to yesterday, when Shobhit and I went on our own separate excursions. He went to spend time with his older gay-couple friends Louie and Steve, while I took the Water Taxi across Elliott Bay, once again, for Happy Hour with Laney at Don Armeni Park, the spectacular view of the Seattle skyline right across the water from there. This was actually our third Happy Hour at that very park this year alone, just because West Seattle is where Laney keeps getting pet sitting gigs. The one we did yesterday was a "bonus" to the September one already scheduled for this Friday, as we decided to do two while she was doing this one pet sitting gig. We decided that on Friday, though, we would shift back to Marination Ma Kai, the bar right at the water taxi dock, which has for is for Laney critical outdoor seating. It was also the location of
our first-ever Happy Hour in West Seattle, back in 2017. We didn't have Happy Hours out there again until this year. By Friday, we'll have met for Happy Hours out there four times this year alone.
It was striking how noticeably different the sunset was this time from our last time there, only two and a half weeks ago. On August 19, even after three hours there and my taking the 8pm taxi back, the sun still shone on us that entire time. This time, however, I took the 7:00 ferry back (the last one on holiday/Sunday schedule) and the sun was behind the West Seattle hill behind us a good half an hour even before that, putting us in shadow as early as 6:30. The difference was stark; we both had brought hoodies to wear knowing it would get chilly, but I regretted wearing shorts rather than pants. I'll be remedying that mistake this Friday.
On the upside, although it made it much cooler than it would be otherwise, I had no need to use the bug spray I thought to bring this time, because the breeze kept bugs from ever getting to me. That and the company, as usual, made it a very pleasant evening, spent having a pack dinner and a cocktail. It was a actually a margarita that I drank, brought in a tumbler bottle. On Friday though I'll have a drink at the bar.
[posted 12:30 pm]
