I really, really love the above photo. Laney and I had just barely walked into the official area of Alki Beach Pride yesterday, and saw another group of people getting their photo taken in front of this LOVE sculpture. A young Black woman had taken their picture for them, and then she went up to take a couple of selfies. I said, "Would you like me to take a photo from further away?" and she said, "Yes!" So I said, "As long as you also take a photo of us!" and she said "Of course!" So, that young lady took the above shot.
After she took
our photo, immediately another couple of gay men asked me to take their picture, which of course I was happy to do. Then, halfway facetiously, I said to Laney, "Hurry let's go before people ask us to take their picture!" Someone else can take a turn!
Suddenly I am curious about the history of this "LOVE" image, because it now gets seen in so many places in so many variations—there is
another version of it at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden that Shobhit and I saw just earlier this month, on August 6. Checking
Wikipedia, I had no idea that this did not originate as a sculpture, but rather a "pop art image" created in 1964 by artist Robert Indiana for homemade cards sent to "friends and acquaintances in the art world." A year later it was used by the Museun of Modern Art for their annual Christmas card.
So when did it become a sculpture, then?
In 1970, apparently, when it was erected at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Shit, I wish I had known that when Barbara and I took our day trip to Indianapolis last year!
I had no idea there were so very many reproductions of this thing, even though obviously I have seen several versions of it in many places myself. There's even
a comprehensive list of versions of it worldwide on Wikipedia, which is no doubt incomplete. There's a list of 36 in the U.S. alone, although a few are noted as "no longer there." Nothing in Washington State is noted.
I have no clue what materials were used for the one there at Alki Beach Pride, but it should come as no surprise that it's my favorite version I have seen to date—I love this "gay version" that features white lettering and rainbow accents. I'd love to see this installed permanently somewhere.
And, as I said, I also love this photo of Laney and me with it. We deliberately mirrored each other's poses, one hand on hip. I should have paid more attention to the position of her legs, as only I have my ankles cross. Dammit! Also, it's a nice angle for me, where I finally feel like I look good in a photo in spite of having gotten slightly chunkier in recent years (I know it's ridiculous to think in such a reductive way, especially at how I look in this photo, nowhere close to "fat"—so sue me, I'm a product of my time and culture).
Another thing I love is how perfectly framed this photo is as the preview photo in my
albums feed. Ditto the smaller-icon preview photo for the album in the "
Seattle Pride 2023" collection—now, with yesterday's event, numbering eight separate albums, which matches the record number I also managed
last year. (All the event albums are the same between the two years, with one exception: last year I did the "Seattle Queer History Tour" but didn't make it to the Tacoma Pride Festival; this year it was the other way around. Otherwise, it features what will probably continue as annual events for me: Pride in the Park; Trans Pride; PrideFest Capitol Hill; Seattle Pride Parade; Seattle PrideFest; Alki Beach Pride; and the perennial "Random Hot Guys" album—which got
one addition from yesterday.)
So, this was my
second year going to Alki Beach Pride, Shobhit and I having gone, or at least having attempted to go, last year when they billed it as a two-day weekend event but when Shobhit and I came on Sunday (the only day we had free that weekend) there was very little Pride-releated actually going on. We did see a couple of rainbows and, like, two booths along Alki Beach, but it seemed clear that most of whatever happened last year was something we missed on Saturday.
In the end, it was actually a very pleasant day out on Alki Beach last year, but it hardly felt much like a "Pride event" experience.
I really wondered how this year would compare. This time, the event was only billed for one day, on Sunday, and Laney and I made plans to meet at the water taxi ferry dock on the West Seattle side, her waiting in her van after I crossed the water from downtown. I'm certain Shobhit would have been interested too but he had a work shift from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Laney and I were combining this with one of our August "Happy Hours," so it also involved just chilling out in her collapsible chairs on the beach, which itself was quite lovely.
I mean . . . except for the fucking
wildfire smoke. I've actually taken to creating small albums for each year, of photos I took featuring the city covered in smoke. Laney and I talked about how much we hate using the phrase "the new normal," even though I use it nearly every year this happens now, and unfortunately it's true. It doesn't mean we have to regard it as acceptable. In any case, I had been taking some small, kind of bent comfort in my
wildfire smoke photo albums historically only being necessitated every other year: 2018; 2020; 2022. Well, that pattern breaks this year. Now it's two years in a row with a horrible wildfire smoke event.
As I write this, the AQI in Seattle is 80, in the "Moderate" range. That's a significant improvement from yesterday, when it quickly moved through "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups" (101-150) and got well into straight up "Unhealthy" (151-200), which was where it stayed most of the time Laney and I were actually on the beach. The forecast yesterday was for it to get worse today, but maybe wind direction is more difficult to forecast in terms of wildfire smoke, I have no idea. I just know that, so far today, the air is better than yesterday. Still, it was so bad when I got back home yesterday, I closed the windows in the condo for the first time in weeks.
I was glad to know that the smoke was coming, at least. Gabby told me about it in our 1:1 at work on Friday. That did help mitigate disappointment.
Laney parked her van maybe half a mile up the road from the Pride event, since there was a space available there. She was very careful about taking her time on the walk down there, as overexurtion in that smoke would be a bad idea. I did my best to stay on pace with her and think I was pretty successful. Eventually we made it to that inflatable rainbow "gate" to the north end of the line of booths along the sidewalk next to the beach. We strolled down the whole length of it, me looking for photo opportunities here and there—this alone yielded about 14 photos. I got another 10 photos later, which means out of the 39 photos I took yesterday, 24 of them were of actual Alki Beach Pride stuff.
The album starts with a solid 10 shots of just the new Colman Dock at the Seattle Ferry Terminal. A huge section of it is open just since the last time I was there, when it was constructed but not yet open. Within the next year or so, the new stuff all along the Seattle Waterfront will be open and completely transformed from before the Alaskan Way Viaduct was demolished in 2019. I wanted these photos yesterday because some stuff is still unfinished and not yet open—like the
new pedestrian bridge across Alaskan Way—and I knew some of the photos I took would be of things looking as they did for only a brief time. Eventually I may put those shots into a dedicated album just for the new, completely finished Colman Dock.
Anyway, having walked once along all the booths, Laney and I found a spot on the beach where, somewhat surprisingly, almost no people were actually gathered, as attendees generally were concentrated
around the booths along the sidewalk. We opened up the chairs we each carried from her van, sat and ate our lunches. I brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; the last half of a bag of Louisville Veggie Jerky Co. veggie jerky I got at Convergence in Saint Paul; and a thermos margarita. We sat there, eating and drinking and chatting, for a good three hours. Some of what we discussed was our mutual excitement about the news that she's accepted as a tennant at Pride Place on Broadway on Capitol Hill—six blocks from me—and is slated to move in on Thursday, November 16.
We got up to meander back up the van at about 4:30, and when we passed the Seattle Pops booth I bought myself a
Cookies n' Cream flavored one, which was no doubt a part of my weight being up yet again this morning, but damn, that one was worth the calories.
Laney offered to drive me home, which was incredibly generous of her as it's pretty far out of her way going back home to Renton, but I wasn't about to decline the offer. I was probably home sometime between 5:15 and 5:30. I closed the windows and then set about writing
my post about going to the Theo Chocolates Factory Tour with Alexia on Saturday.
I've almost forgotten what the hell I did on Friday. Oh, that's right: I took myself to a movie, at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown on Lower Queen Anne right after work. It was called
The Unknown Country and
I really liked it.
[posted 1:02 pm]
