2024 is shaping up to be a banner year for Seattle Pride—which, already in retrospect (even though Pride Weekend isn't for another three weeks), kind of makes sense as this year marks the 50th anniversary of
the first Seattle Pride.
Last year and the year before both
tied for the record number of Pride-related photo albums in the year's Pride "collection" of albums, at eight each. After Laney and I attended our first "Pride Art Walk" this past Thursday, I already knew that, as long as everything goes as planned between now and the end of August, this year's collection would beat that, with nine. As of Friday, though, that projected number went up to
ten: because Shobhit went to the Seattle Pride Flag Raising Ceremony, and he texted me enough shots he took there for me to create
a dedicated photo album.
The album has a total of 29 shots in it. Shobhit texted me 27 of them, 20 of those actally of the flag raising ceremony. One of them was a great shot of the American flag and the Progress Pride flag waving beneath it, and as it was an iOS "Live Photo," I saved it as a
three-second video clip. Then, there was the
36-minute Seattle Channel video of the event that I found, which allowed me to download it, and thus I could edit out the 46-second clip of the actual flag raising—which, in the end, Shobhit participated in. Referring to a currently serving Seattle City Council member, Shobhit texted me on Friday while he was sending me all those photos:
Rob Saka pushed me forward to crank the flag up at the end.
I was just working at the PCC office while all of this was happening, on Friday morning, but it was really fun having Shobhit send me all that stuff. Among other things, he also texted me that
They are saying it is the biggest crowd in ten years. This also kind of made sense to me, given the import of the 50th anniversary of our city's first Pride.
Shobhit had actually gone to City Hall for reasons having nothing at all to do with Pride or the Flag Raising Ceremony: he went to attend a City Council committee meeting and speak to the need for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, something that was one of his major issues he campaigned on when running in the primary for City Council District 3 last year. He also emailed a written version of his speech to City Council just this morning.
He only learned while he was there for that, that there would be the Pride Flag Raising Ceremony at 10:30. He had arrived shortly before 9:00, but when he heard about that, he decided to stick around for it, and I'm really glad he did. In the meantime, that was where the extra seven photos he sent me were from: just his time there at City Hall for the committee meeting. In fact, the
first photo he texted me was just of the view from outside the front entrance to City Hall, already fairly high above street level, with a partial view of Elliott Bay. He included with the text:
Wish this was my office. :( (Incidentally, I already have a better view than that from my office. Ha!)
Anyway, a lot of notable city people were there, including all but two of the current City Council; ttwo retired City Council members who had been the first out queer members to serve on it,
Sherry Harris (served 1992-1995) and
Tom Rassmussen (served 2004-2015); and Mayor Bruce Harrell. A few of the photos Shobhit took also featured Joy Hollingsworth, the out lesbian who went on to run the District 3 council position election last year (and, I believe, she's only the second Black lesbian on the Council since Sherry Harris). She's wearing a solid blue dress shirt that makes her pretty easy to notice.
—Oh wait, THIS JUST IN: Literally while I was writing this post, and I was asking Shobhit questions about which city officials were at the event, Shobhit asked if I had watched the entire video at the Seattle Channel of the event. Admittedly, I had not: I simply scanned it for any actual shot of Shobhit, and found the one of him cranking up the flag (which is in the video clip at the very bottom of this post). But then Shobhit told me while Joy Hollingsworth was speaking and acknowledging people, she mentioned Shobhit because "I don't want you to get mad at me." Ha! That cracked us both up, and I immediately went back to my downloaded copy of the full video, was indeed able to find that clip, and so I edited out that as a clip to add to the photo album as well. So, forget everything I said about the album having 29 shots. It has 30!
[posted 2:00 pm]
