I meant to update about Sunday, the Seattle Pride Parade and PrideFest at Seattle Center, yesterday evening. That wound up getting preempted by my post about having to put Guru down.

I did already have the full draft of the Seattle Pride 2024 "travelogue," or in this case photo digest, email that I had intended to send out to the requisite recipient list. After taking some time at home once we brought the cat carrier, sadly now empty, home—and I later went through washing the cat food dishes and litter boxes and temporarily storing them in the guest room—I went ahead and still sent out the email, in which I said nothing about Guru (there was too much joy in the email and I did not want to bring down the mood), at 7:40 p.m.

The email covers all of the month's Pride events, thus including events I already posted dedicated blog posts to: Seattle Pride in the Park 2024; Seattle Pride Art Walk 2024; Seattle Pride Flag Raising Ceremony; Fleurs de Villes Seattle Pride 2024; Trans Pride Seattle 2024; and PrideFest Capitol Hill 2024.

The email contained 18 photos overall, which is historically pretty standard for these emails. It's the final eight of these photos, from the Pride Parade and PrideFest on Sunday, that I am now adapting from the photo digest email, mostly in the interest of time.

Now I will ask you to indulge me for a moment as I make an observation about the Seattle Pride Parade: It has finally happened, I have become an old crank. The parade has become too long and dull! How many queer groups from huge corporations do we need to see, doing nothing more than walking by? An equal number of activist or social organizations isn't as irritating—it is far more essential that they continue existing—but they could take a page from the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade and do something besides just walking. Even the simplest choreography at least engages the crowd a little.

None of the gay clubs from Capitol Hill participate in the Parade anymore, because they chose to keep the Pride economy on the Hill when organizers rightly moved the Parade downtown in 2006, so they all get city permits and put on ticketed weekend-long block parties right at their own venue locations. This means no more dancing gogo boys on floats, because they're all still dancing at the clubs. It also means far fewer actual floats. Which begs these questions at the Parade itself: Where's the creativity? Where's the uninhibited sex appeal? Most importantly, where's the camp? Come on, step it up, people!

This feels rather similar to an arc of "progress" at PCC, where I have spent years defending against criticism that is increasingly legitimate—PCC really has inevitably turned to more corporate practices, and the Pride Parade has become boringly corporatized. I saw a Netflix documentary recently about the history of openly queer comedians, and one of them said something along the lines of, "When we become boring, then we've won." Bring out the confetti, then! We've won!

Now. Don't misunderstand me. I legitimately had a good time on Sunday. And to be fair, there were a few deliciously campy moments, such as when this guy rushed up to the perennial "Christian" protesters marching down the middle of the street while we waited for the parade to start. The more salient point, I suppose, is that this was easily the best "camp moment"—made even greater by the effectiveness of uniquely executated humor as ammunition against hatred—and it was before the parade, which lasts four hours, even started.

At least there was this person, in the actual parade: a point of view, camp execution. More of this please!

Additionally, I should stress that I certainly don't think more serious contingents should not be in the parade. It's all about balance! As it happens, this year was the 50th anniversary of Seattle Pride, which is two years older than I am! In this case, the guy still injected a bit of fun into his presence in the parade: wearing the same outfit now that it appears he wore when organizing and participating in Seattle's first Pride in 1974. Side note: this guy was hardly the only ones there who had been at Seattle Pride(s) in the seventies.

Here is Shobhit with Joy Hollingsworth, our current District 3 Seattle City Council member—the one who beat all but one of the seven others in the primary last year (including Shobhit), and then went on to beat the one other who went on to run against her in November. Joy appeared to be marching with a combined parade contingent of Pride groups from all of Seattle's professional sports teams—and that was very cool, and to their credit they were very entertaining: they included multiple super fun marching bands (play the video above for an example). She handed me one of those Pride themed Seattle Kraken keychains, which someone else had already handed me, so now I have two. I need to find some queer hockey enthusiasts to give them to.

Shobhit also jumped up and gave hugs to two other primary candidates he had run against last year: Andrew Ashiofu and Ry Armstrong.

Gabriel and Lea marched in the parade this year with Brooks Running, where Lea works as a "Consumer Research Quantitative Researcher" (let's all just nod our heads and pretend we know what that means). They marched in the same contingent last year as well, but we didn't see them because Shobhit and I were marching in our own contingent for his Seattle City Council campaign. We had the opportunity to march again this year, with local SAG-AFTRA alongside MLK Labor, but when I said I'd much rather just watch the parade again this year, Shobhit was apparently fine with that. So, when Brooks Running passed us—amusingly, right behind a queer South Asian contingent—Shobhit took this amazing photo of the three of us together.

The parade began at 11 a.m. and Shobhit and I watched it clear until 3:00, although we did grow a bit impatient with its glacial pace and packed up our stuff to walk against its flow starting at about 2:30. We got all the way down to Westlake Center at 4th and Pine—0.6 miles south of where we had been sitting at Wall St—and, deciding we were close enough to the end of it, I said I was fine with turning around and heading back up to Seattle Center again. I still got a few more photos as we then walked with the flow of the parade, passing several contingents by again, then about a mile back to PrideFest.

Side note: I was downtown to secure a spot to watch the parade by 10:00. Shobhit met up with me later. But I was downtown on the parade route for five hours, which is basically what happens every year, when we aren't marching at least (and last year was the first year I actually marched in the Seattle parade since 2005—and thus the first time I had marched in it downtown). We reached Seattle Center at about a quarter after 3:00, and spent about an hour and 45 minutes braving the throngs there, including a brief stint hanging out with Gabriel and Lea and a friend of Lea's in the beer garden, where, amazingly, I did not take any photos.

Shobhit's goal at Seattle PrideFest is always the International Fountain, where he can strip down to his rainbow briefs and frolic in the streams of water that shoot out of the metal dome at its center—some drops of which are seen in the lower left corner of the above shot, which is also my requisite annual shot of my beloved Space Needle, the Progress Pride flag flying at its tip.

I made no mention of this in the email (aside from linking to the full gallery of photo albums for Seattle Pride 2024)—so now we're back to new content for this post—but there were, of course, also the "Random Hot Guys" I took photos of, of which there were plenty in spite of my above complaints about how dull the parade has gotten. This year's so far 39 shots include examples from most of the events through the month, 25 from Sunday alone, and eight of those from PrideFest at Seattle Center, after the parade. There was one particularly hot young man in nothing but a jockstrap getting wet in the International Fountain. Young is an increasingly operative word here, as I am pushing 50 and becoming just a dusty, lusty old man.

I will say that, during the parade and one of the five times I had to go pee—I was so thankful we found a spot across the street from a group of honey buckets (it was about a block south of where we usually sit, but the bushes where we used to sit between them and the curb at 4th and Vine are now gone; and there is a flat concrete barrier for the new two-way bike lane on that side of the street where there was too much chance other people would stand or sit and block our view, so I found a spot on the curb on the east side of 4th at Wall; I am noting this for posterity and reference for next year)—Shobhit took a video with his phone of a guy in sweats shorts twirling a baton. I think Shobhit was trying to capture his bouncing package, which didn't really show that well on the video anyway. I was just genuinely impressed by his baton twirling!

As has become customary, the more salacious contingents were relegated toward the end of the parade, which we passed a few of when Shobhit and I walked against the parade at 2:30, including the "pup play" group; some people cracking whips; and the requisite nude "Body Pride Ride" people. You really have to be patient before contingents like these come around anymore. I'd be less eager to wait just for the more interesting groups like these if at the very least we got more creative floats than we tend to get these days.

Ironically, I took—and kept—by far more photos at the Seattle Pride Parade this year than ever before; it seems my photographic eye is more refined and I just take and am happy with more pictures than I used to be, no matter what event I'm at. The previous record number of photos I had for the Pride Parade photo album was 113 shots in 2007; this year the album contains 148 shots—and that excludes the 17 "Random Hot Guys" from the Parade that are separated into that specific photo album. I realize in retrospect that this is maybe a little much, and should perhaps slow my roll (ha! so to speak) a little, be a bit more judicious with my photography, when we return to Pride next year.

The PrideFest at Seattle Center was a little bit more of a mixed bag than the Parade, only because of the tension of spending time with Gabriel and Lea in the beer garden versus Shobhit's desire to go straight to the International Fountain and into the water. He wanted curly fries first, though—and we should probably also make note for next year that they were too greasy and did not sit with him well—so I figured he could eat them while we went to meet up with Gabriel and Lea in the beer garden for a few minutes.

Nothing is ever brief with Gabriel, though, to be fair. But also to be fair, Shobhit really had to bring up his problem with all the pro-Palestine groups he disagrees with, only because they are an anti-queer society—the implication that such a thing justifies genocide being something that really bothers me. Taking Shobhit individually out of the equation, though, there is understandable resistance among queer people to defending those who would also happily destroy them; it's a complex issue, as is everything having to do with Palestine, Gaza, Isreal, an the Middle East. Still, it felt very much like Shobhit was just trying to incite a "debate" that there was no need whatsoever to have at the moment, and I have to give Gabriel credit here: he responded to everything Shobhit said with diplomacy and good faith, dare I say even empathy.

That said, I had also made it clear that we would only be able to hang out for a bit, and even I was intent on going back to the International Fountain with Shobhit. Gabriel was waiting for some young coworkers to meet up with him, and his own characteristic obstinacy cut through a bit when he said I could "wait for just a second" for them to arrive. When they did, Gabriel walked several feet away to meet up with them, a group of four and half of whom I later learned Gabriel did not realize would be part of the group, and just chatted with them, away from us. Shobhit was getting hot in the sun and actually sat down in the grass; Lea was left to somewhat awkwardly sustain small talk between us as I kind of decided what I wanted to do.

I was on the phone with Gabriel later in the evening and he said, "You just peaced out!" And yes, this is true: when Lea and her other friend who I met at the wedding also started to break off to say hi to someone they knew, I was like, "We're going to the fountain." Had I went to say goodbye to Gabriel in that moment, there would have been forced introductions and further unnecessary delay when he was already fully occupied anyway. Thankfully Gabriel wasn't all that irritated by it, almost more amused by it than anything, in our later conversation, so as far as I was concerned it was fine. Shobhit and I could get back to our own thing.

Shobhit's mood had darkened slightly on our walk back over to the fountain, but I'm glad we still did it: he stripped down to his rainbow underwear and got into the fountain water a couple of times himself. With his tank top off, I was surprised to notice actual tan lines in mirrored arcs on his upper back. I don't think I had ever noticed anything like that on him before.

After this, Shobhit's mood noticeably improved. But, by about 4:45, he was still ready to go home, mostly because he was worried about Guru being home alone without us and clearly not doing very well. We had no idea then that we would be putting him down less than 24 hours later, so it's just as well that we went home a bit earlier than we might have otherwise, giving us some extra time with him.

The one silver lining, and it's a thin one indeed, to Guru now being gone is that we no longer have either cat to spend our days worrying and fretting about anymore, which was a pretty constant thing with one or the other of them for about the past two and a half months. Who knows when we will get another cat; Shobhit is eager to stress we should take a long break but I figure I can renegotiate that eventually. I'm good with a break for at least some months this time, probably until at least sometime next year, during which we can also engage in travel without having to worry about securing a pet sitter. Shobhit had already started fretting about how Guru would fare without us for the three days we'll be gone to the coast for the Family Vacation in August. Now we don't have to worry about that. Far more important than that, though, both Shanti and Guru are relieved of any discomfort or pain that, in both cases, clearly was not going away.

Anyway. I don't want to end on that. Pride overall was not as exciting as I wish it was, and maybe I'll have a better attitude next year, but I still had a lot of fun, I think I should stress that. I certainly don't regret any part of it—and I'm happy I got to see Gabriel and Lea, even for just a little bit. We ran into a lot more people we know than usual, between candidates Shobhit once ran against and other friends, including running into Cavin while we were in line for the curly fries at PrideFest. I may be becoming an old crank about some of it, but I still had a great time. [posted 12:35 pm]