I was at the Tacoma Pride Festival a fair amount later than initially expected yesterday, probably mostly because of how much time Tracy and Cindy and Crystal and I spent at The Office Bar & Grill, which was rather busy and service was slow, though most of the time we were there we barely noticed as it was air conditioned and we were happily chatting away the afternoon—we were there from around 3:15 to at least 5:45, giver or take a few minutes, so, roughly two and a half hours. It was about 6:15 when I went to catch a #594 bus back to Seattle from Commerce St Station, and there was a bus scheduled to leave within minutes but only arrived and the departed 23 minutes delayed, at about 6:38. That bus takes a couple minutes more than an hour to get back to Seattle; I walked from the stop on 9th & Howell up to the Trader Joe's about three blocks past our condo; I bought some galic naan and plain yogurt for Shobhit; and by the time I was actually back in the condo it was well past 8:00.

I had gone downtown in the late morning to catch a bus at 11:45. That one was also 20 minutes delayed. I had already postponed by departure from the 11:15 bus, which would have gotten me to downtown Tacoma by 12:21, when Tracy texted me that they were (somewhat predictably) running late. This was no big deal to me, as I could just catch the next scheduled bus—which, as I said, was 20 minutes delayed. I figured this would work out well for Tracy and her group, and I was right: I got off the bus and reached the entrance to the Tacoma Pride Festival on Pacific & 9th at 1:15, and at virtually that very moment, Tracy texted me that they had reached the Park & Ride and were taking the light rail from there into downtown.

This gave me a bit of time to do a solo run-through of the festival, which covered the perimeters of maybe three square blocks. I first went up Pacific to 8th, where the main stage with really great hired live bands had played—I even downloaded the EP of one of them on Apple Music—and was slightly disappointed to discover it was just a "DJ Stage." It was fun, don't get me wrong—and even featured a huge rainbow mat for dancing—but, it's still not the same as live performances. I walked on up to 7th, cut through a grassy area over to Court A and then over A St which is right by the water, and once I walked another block or so further east on that street I was discovered there was an actual main stage there. All I saw there this year, though, were drag queen lip sync performances, which were indeed largely pretty great in their own right. I even recorded some video of one performance of Madonna's "Burning Up," which of course I loved. I still missed the live singers and bands, which I had actually been surprised they even had last year—I don't know if their absence this year was a deliberate choice, or a product of not getting organized early enough, or lack of funds, or what.

Soon enough, Tracy texted again that they were downtown, and I told her I would come back to 9th & Pacific to meet them there.

In the above photo, left to right: myself; Tracy; her sister Cindy; and their cousin Crystal. I was introduced as soon as we met up, and within minutes I already forgot the cousin's name. She said, "Crystal, like the rock." This led to Tracy joking about how she could say, "Like the drug." I said, "You could say, 'Crystal, as in meth." In spite of all this, I still found myself blanking on her name, so I texted Tracy for a reminder. She responded with just one word: Meth. Ha! I replied, Okay I will never forget it now. This, I presume, will be similar to how I remember the phrase "nutritional yeast" by thinking, at Gabriel's suggestion many years ago, of the phrase vagina powder. Side note: I hate vagina powder on my popcorn. No thank you!

Anyway. This entry block had four cool big boxes each with a solid color of the rainbow on one side, with rainbow streamers flying in the wind atop them. I thought this would make a great backdrop for a group selfie, and I think I was right. I kind of love the shot I got out of it.

One of the first things Tracy said when she got to the festival—and she had never come to the Tacoma Pride Festival before—was, "It's like a gay farmers market!" Ha! This was essentially true. Tacoma does not do a Pride Parade, evidently leaving that to Seattle Pride on the last Sunday of June. And, aside from the two performance stages, the whole thing is just vendor booths and food trucks. I still got a fair number of photos and video clips out of it (40 total, somewhat ironically 7 fewer than last year when I actually went by myself.) Tracy also almost immediately commented on her respect for the people really committed to elaborate costuming, from the drag queens and the goths, in the very hot weather. It wasn't as miserably hot as the week prior, but it still got into the mid-eighties, and bouncing off concrete it was a very hot place to be.

We kind of meandered through the festival together, at a somewhat unexpectedly slow pace, but that was okay. Tracy bought a few funny magnets at one booth. Crystal kept stopping at medical booths, apparently because she's looking for a new Primary Care Physician. And much like Shobhit, they stopped at several booths with prize wheels or other ways to win swag, like the velcro toy axe throwing at the Amazon "Glamazon" booth, which we all went to just in the hopes of getting one of their hand fans. Tracy didn't win, but I did when I went after her, so I just took a fan and gave it to her. I am such a good friend. I later went to another booth and did a prize wheel, and when I was visibly disappointed to have won a tin of mints, they let me take what I wanted, and I got what I hoped to get to begin with: a plastic water bottle, which I just wanted to fill from a free water bottle station three booths over. I later forgot that at The Office Bar & Grill. I have way too many water bottles anyway, and I should have known to bring one of my own full of water to begin with.

We actually spent about ninety minutes walking around the booths, and once we had done a full round, I made the suggestion that we find some place that was air conditioned to get a drink, a we were all really hot. Even Tracy and Cindy basically deferred to Crystal for suggestions, and we just walked back up to Pacific Avenue. I figured bars and restaurants there would be packed, but when we wound up walking into The Office Bar & Grill (after the guy checking IDs said I had to dump out my water), it was busy but not crazy packed. It was quite loud in there, but still we spent the next two and a half hours there. It might have been less time, but our server only came by every once in a while, and in the end I had to flag her down to get our checks.

I had a text exchange with Gabriel while I was on the bus later, and learned that he and Lea and Tess had all also been there! We may very well have already been at The Office before they went in to check out the festival; otherwise there'd have been more of a chance of us running into each other. Gabriel thought The Office was an odd choice when there were gay bars to choose from, apparently one of which even did a Pride Block Party, but we weren't familiar with where the gay bars were, and apparently the block party one was several blocks outside of where the actual Pride Festival was. The Office was right there on Pacific Avenue, opening right out onto the festival, was packed with queer people anyway, and even had a "Pride Special"—one of which I ordered. It was a tequila cocktail that came with a "glitter bomb" that both Crystal and I recorded video of so-called "bombing." I thought it would be edible glitter that poured out of the little packet the cocktail came in, but it actually looked more like a slab of cotton candy. (Tracy later said it looked like I was putting a maxi-pad in my drink.) Later last night I spent way too much time and effort on the two video clips, splicing them together into one video, with mostly only the audio track from my video because the sound on my phone was much better.

Most of the time at The Office was spent talking about the other three women and their family history, although at one point Tracy launched into "fun facts" about me, which she capped off with, "And . . . he's a total ho." When she's right, she's right.

I later skipped dinner, because at The Office I also ordered the mushroom and goat cheese quesadilla, even though I had already eaten the last of the leftover pasta salad we brought to Action Movie Night on Wednesday (which I still haven't even mentioned on this blog, having forgotten after Thursday was spent on the Styger Family Dairy Farm visit), which I ate on the bus ride down. Cindy ordered an appetizer sampler and she shared some of that with me as well; I wanted to try one of the mac & cheese balls, which was excessively smoky in flavor; and I took the very last mozzarella stick, which no one was eating. I couldn't let it go to waste!

Once we finally got out checks and cashed out, it was nearly 6:00 and booth vendors outsider were starting to break down. The others headed back to the light rail station, but I took one more loop around the festival, just in case I could find anything more to take photos of. This garnered only two more photos, but one of them was one of my favorites, so there's that.

I wound up waiting for quite a while for the bus, as I said. There were seats that were weirdly designed like they could fit one and a half people, but a rando lady asked if she could sit next to me and I said okay. She went on and on, and I responded to her here and there but quickly grew tired of her babbling. When she heard I was from Seattle she said, "How do you like our downtown? It ain't shit, huh?" I mean, it's not bad. "It's all right," I said. I also later learned from her babbling that apparently she got out of jail a few days ago. I didn't ask what she was in for. I was really afraid she would follow me onto the bus and then sit next to me and babble for the next hour, but much to my relief, when the bus finally came and I got up, she did not follow.

I was texting with Gabriel shortly after that. This inevitably turned to the assassination attempt on Former President Fuckwit yesterday in Pennsylvania, which for me was deeply frustrating in that it can only help his campaign, and god knows he's going to milk it for all it's worth. Gabriel then called me and we actually spoke for a few minutes, and he was utterly convinced that Trump had this election win in the bag even before this event. The whole conversation was deeply depressing and dispiriting, and I find myself grasping for straws of hope. I don't even want to talk about this anymore.

I spent a lot of the ride home actually making use of the time to do preliminary editing of photos on my phone. By the time I was actually home, after the walk up the Hill from downtown and then the visit to Trader Joe's, I spent most of the evening on the photos and videos. A big chunk of that was the spliced video clip of the "glitter bomb" cocktail.

Shobhit was out most of the day yesterday, not at work, but participating as both an actor and a Production Assistant for a piece being made for the 48-Hour Film Project. He got back shortly before 10:00, and as I was miraculously not tired, I decided to finally take up Alexia's suggestion of Slow Horses on Apple TV+ while I have my three months free subscription. We were instantly hooked and watched two episodes, keeping me up quite unusually late, until nearly 1 a.m. I actually slept in this morning until 7:45; Shobhit made us pancakes for breakfast; I finally have this post written and now I really should go start getting ready for my day. It's almost 11 a.m.!

[posted 10:50 am]