Seattle Pride Weekend was one for the history books this year . . . and not for being anything great. I won't call it terrible either, given the circumstances; I'd still say organizers did the best they could with what they had to work with. In some instances, they did even better than you might expect, although there weren't enough people viewing to notice it: online participation was clearly so low in comparison to the crowds we usually get on the streets for festivals and marches and the Pride Parade, the whole weekend was effectively a shell of local Pride's past self—and, hopefully, god help us all, something that was just a blip for this year and we can return to something closer to normal next year. That almost certainly depends on the status of any COVID-19 vaccine development twelve months from now.

I was really the only person I knew, to my knowledge, who even bothered to participate—and I did so on all three days: Virtual Trans Pride on Friday evening; Capitol Hill Pride Festival on Saturday; Seattle Pride on Sunday. What compelled me the most about the weekend overall this year was that, although I barely eked out more photos yesterday than I did on Saturday (39 shots vs 37—that being the fewest shots I got on Pride Sunday since 2004), when it came to the online content, Saturday actually won out, with better programming and certainly better live-feed content rather than stuff that was clearly pre-recorded.

I did still continue my nostalgia trip over the weekend, though, having little else to cling to for Pride this year: after walking to Cal Anderson Park on Friday evening to take in the area that should have been Trans Pride; and walking up Broadway and back on Saturday to take in what should have been the Capitol Hill Pride Festival, yesterday I took a walk too. Not to Seattle Center, were PrideFest should have happened; I did not go that far as I did not need to walk to the office since Shobhit and I drove there Saturday evening after he got off work instead. I still walked with Alexia, and we walked up to Volunteer Park and back—and even further throwback in terms of Pride memories: the Pride Parade used to work its way north on Broadway every year, culminating in a festival the rest of the afternoon at Volunteer Park, the Volunteer Park Amphitheater being the mainstage. This happened every year until 2005, before Pride got too big for Capitol Hill and they moved all Sunday events downtown, the Pride Parade on 4th Avenue and PrideFest at Seattle Center.

I took a couple of the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies Alexia made and gave me several days ago with me, and took off my mask only long enough to pose for this picture and then stuff them into my face.

Broadly speaking, I sure am happy I participated in online Pride events this year if for no other reason than all the screenshots I took, so I could make sure my succession of annual Pride photos was unbroken, and I still had fully three Pride-related photo albums to share on Flickr this year. I've actually managed a collection of 4-6 albums every year since 2015, what with things like my usual "Random Hot Guys" album, separate sets for the Sunday parade versus the PrideFest at Seattle Center afterward; and newer events like the Volunteer Park Pride Festival earlier in June which just had to be canceled outright this year. In fact, I managed to increase this year's collection to 4 albums, even a number that low being a first since 2016, and I kind of cheated to do it: I placed the "Random Hot Guys" album from February's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras into the Seattle Pride 2020 collection, for two reasons: 1) to keep it consistent and allow for seeing some of that hotness alongside the rest of Pride, even if the hotness could not be local this year; and 2) that album from Sydney was of record size and covered enough for two Prides as it was.

After PrideFest offered pretty impressive programming online on Saturday from noon clear until midnight, yesterday's online programming was confined to noon to 6pm, none of it any kind of approximation of the Pride Parade that should have been happening. That's really the key difference, I think, because Saturday's usual Capitol Hill Pride Festival consists mostly of street booths, speakers and performances, which is a lot easier to translate to virtual events than a parade. Of course, post-Parade PrideFests also feature performances, and usually the better ones; they had some yesterday online, but the programming wasn't as good. I kind of wish the stuff they did on Saturday had been done on Sunday. The best I got out of Pride Sunday this year was wearing my "GAY PURRIDE" T-shirt, and getting complimented on it twice while Alexia and I walked over to CHOP so I could get a photo of a great new, Pride-related mural outside the wall of the East Precinct building, which I had already seen posted online. I was a little self-conscious getting a photo of myself in front of it, at Alexia's suggestion, considering the context of the space I was in at CHOP, but, oh well.

I decided I wanted to watch a gay-related movie yesterday evening, after I made bread pizza for dinner. I deliberately started it just before Shobhit got home from work so he would wind up watching it too. You know what? I'm going to call that a Pride activity Shobhit did with me, and give him a Social Review point for it. I'll throw him a bone! Anyway, I first went looking for The Birdcage, but discovered it's no longer streaming on any of the platforms I subscribe to. Dammit! Then I considered A Serious Man, a great movie in my Netflix queue I have been meaning to re-watch for some time, but decided it would be too much of a downer for Pride Sunday. So, I searched the "LGBT" genre category on Netflix, and finally settled on the 2013 documentary I Am Divine, about Divine, the cross-dressing star of many John Waters movies. It was pretty great, and Shobhit was into it too, except for the horrifically disgusting part of Pink Flamingos (which I have still never seen, for this very reason) in which Divine eats a dog turd.

Anyway. I got a requisite Pride shot of Shobhit and me together; tacked it to the end of my Pride Weekend photo digest email I sent out to subscrbers; we watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and then I went to bed.

[posted 12:26 pm]

Sun, 11:08: Happy #Pride, worldwide!

In the absence of any major in-person Pride Parades in the U.S. this year, why not just watch this one from Sydney Australia, earlier this year? The video contains the whole thing and it goes on for way too long, over four hours, so it'll be just like the ones at home! Except with a bit more international flavor. (The video is date stamped March 5, but that would have just been when it was uploaded; the parade occurred on February 29, roughly 6:30-11pm Sydney time, which would have been concurrent with 1:30-6am February 29 PST in Seattle.)

Shobhit and I were there—only a couple of blocks down from where this footage was taken. Of course a video doesn't do justice at all to what it was like to be there in person, but at least it's still a bona fide Pride Parade to watch, and one that still actually occurred in 2020, right before worldwide lockdowns (including in Australia), before anyone had any idea what was coming. It actually was amazing, probably the best and most fun parade of queer celebration I had seen in twenty years.

It never ceases to amaze me how unfortunate I tend to be even in times that aren't the best. It's a bummer not to get a Seattle Pride Parade in 2020 but I still got to see one this year! And one that was in many ways superior anyway, as evidenced once again by the many photos and video clips I took myself (shorturl.at/aqCW6)

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 2020 | FULL PARADE

Sun, 24:49: Claudia told me a while ago she wanted to see me in a fun outfit for Pride, so this one’s for her! (At the Volunteer Park stage, where post-Pride Parade performances used to happen every year, until festivities got too big and they had to move them downtown in 2006.) https://t.co/AWzro5wKFB