Laney and I went to Trans Pride last night. She has joined me or several other Pride events over the years since, but she hasn't joined me specifically for Trans Pride since 2015.

Shobhit and I also went to Trans Pride, much later—sort of. It was much more of just a walk around Capitol Hill, on the first night of Pride Weekend, and we stopped at Volunteer Park and saw all the booths getting broken down. I'll get to that later.

Here's what I need to say about Trans Pride in 2024: I don't think I have ever been so impressed by how comprehensive an organized a production it was, and that very much includes the years pre-covid, back when it was hosted at Cal Anderson Park and included a march on the streets around it. Last year I had noted that the absence of the march was addressed in the FAQ section of the Trans Pride Seattle website, and it was again this year, with a very similar note to last year's:

Between 2013 – 2019, Trans Pride Seattle (TPS) has held a march as part of our event, honoring our legacy of resistence and mobilizing community members to continue the fight against the oppressions our community faces.
In 2022, after making the difficult decision to not hold a march as part of TPS that year, we were reminded of the benefits of (1) not having a police presence at our event (as is required by city law to hold a march) or (2) having to navigate the red-tape of securing the necessary permits (which has at times been challenging for our small organizing committee).
For these reasons, we have chosen to continue hosting TPS solely in the park, without a march component.

This all seems perfectly fair to me.

There was the other element, though, of this being "a mask-required event," the only such outdoor event I am aware to be still stating such a mandate. Gabriel would have loved this, I'm sure, and to the crowd's credit, easily 90% of the people there were wearing masks. It felt like it was still 2020, in that aspect at least. The thing is, even as people who still wear masks in movie theaters and public transit, Laney and I both found this fairly ridiculous: risk of viral transmission in outdoor spaces is so minimal as to be functionally zero, with the possible exception of being within inches of an unmasked infected person for an extended period of time. For a short while, neither of us wore masks even though most of the people there did.

Laney and I had gone through the shockingly large number of booths—way more than there had been at Pride in the Park at the beginning of the month—and sat in the grass to watch the live performances at the Volunteer Park Amphitheater for a little while. I drank about half the tequila-spiked strawberry lemonade I had brought. Then, at Laney's suggestion after a few performances, we started meandering our way around the booths.

At the end of the first line of booths furthest to the west, we found a line to Honey Buckets. Laney had to use the bathroom, and I figured I might as well since I was there. Shortly after we were done, I actually looked up the Trans Pride Seattle website on my phone, because Laney was saying "I kind of feel like an asshole" not wearing a mask, making her feel like the jerks in the early covid days who refused to wear masks indoors even when they were mandated. I actually think this is a little different.

Anyway, I honestly think the text about this on the website goes a little overboard:

Masks are Required
Respecting others’ bodily autonomy—including the desire not to be exposed to virus/illness—is a basic agreement we expect everyone at Trans Pride Seattle to honor. We recognize there will always be some risk to gathering, and we aim to reduce potential harm as much as possible with the following agreements that we expect all attendees to honor:
Trans Pride Seattle is a mask-required event (KN95/N95+ or equivalent). This means that we ask all attendees—including tablers, sponsors, volunteers, and organizers—to consistently stay masked while not actively eating/drinking in the designated eating/drinking area(s).
All attendees are asked to test before attending and to stay home if they test positive or are experiencing symptoms. We will have a limited supply of rapid tests available for attendees with limited access to them. We also recognize the limitations of rapid testing and encourage participants to get PCR tests beforehand if possible.

. . . Okay. Asking everyone there to take a covid test before coming? To an outdoor event? What kind of pipe dream world is this? Laney and I actually do still have tests, of course—because that's who we are—but it never would have occurred to us to test before going to this, not at this point. Even Gabriel only asks me to test if we'll be hanging out indoors. (I still test before visiting his house, and am happy to do so; I'm willing to bet I was one of few who tested before coming to the wedding, though perhaps most of the wedding party did.) Besides people like Laney or Gabriel or me, who the hell even still has covid tests laying around? Certainly not the—okay admittedly there is some irony here—surprisingly large crowd at this event.

Note that the website even asks people to get PCR tests if possible. No one is doing that anymore, with the possible exceptions of people already at a hospital or something. It kind of feels like whoever designed the website just did a large amount of copy-and-pasting from previous years.

Still, Laney was feeling bad about being one of the few people without a mask on, and so she put one on. So, so did I. Eventually, because of Laney's tendency to overheat in warm and especially humid weather, and it was rather humid yesterday, there was a moment when she said she couldn't breathe and she took the mask off again. I kept mine on, and after several minutes she put hers back on again. But it kind of amuses me that, after all that, I actually had my mask on the longest. I win!

I still maintain that there was no pressing need for masking at last night's event at all. If this had been in some banquet hall or something, that would be another matter. But we were all outside, and if that doesn't eliminate risk, it gets close. I'm not aware of any super spreader event where the spread occurred exclusively outdoors.

Okay, I've bitched about this enough. The fact is, it didn't hurt us to wear masks while browsing the booths, and we took them off when we found a patch on the grass to watch the stage performances (when we were consuming our drinks anyway). I'm just rubbed the wrong way by the implication that a perceived need to make this event mask-mandatory is based on science, and it kind of isn't.

Besides, I'm spending a disproportionate amount of time on this topic, when we otherwise still had a lovely time.

The mask policy aside, as I already noted, I was very impressed by how well organized Trans Pride Seattle was this year—so far as I could tell, better than ever before. Back in 2021, when Seattle Pride went all-virtual for the second year in a row, Trans Pride didn't even happen at all, which was disappointing. The event is organized by Gender Justice League and always has been, but I don't know if they've gotten new people working with them on the event or what. It's entirely possible that it's the same people before and they've just gotten better at it. Either way, I was impressed.

Whenever Shobhit comes to these things, he's all about the free things often passed out at booths, and there actually wasn't as much of that this year. I was also a little surprised not to see any food trucks at all, the one thing I might have expected that wasn't there. I saw multiple people walking around with boxes of pizza in their hands, but they appeared to have brought them in from somewhere outside of the park. Cupcake Royake did have a booth, just as they did last year, and just like last year, I just had to get one of their Trans Pride cupcakes. This might become an annual tradition for me, and god damn was that cupcake tasty. Anyway, their cupcakes were already prepared and brought to a regular booth, so it wasn't like a standard food truck in that case.

I suppose you could say that, whatever might have been missed from food trucks, they more than made up for with their stage program at the Volunteer Park Amphitheater. I took four different video clips of the performances, including a lip sync to Madonna's "Like a Prayer" in its entirety.

I did see Mitch, who Laney and I used to sing with in the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus, just as I had last year—he was at the Seattle Men's Chorus & Seattle Women's Chorus booth. And then we happened upon the Seattle Gay News booth, where Renee Raketty was sitting, still riding a wave of press coverage of her recent purchase of the company, the same year it celebrates its 50th year (as is Seattle Pride itself). There was actually a reception for Seattle Gay News at the Central Library on Thursday to mark this occasion, which I might have gone to had I not already had other plans with Tracy. Renee told me about it, and that Mike B had been there, which I should have thought to expect. There was apparently a photo taken of huge group of people there who had been in any way part of SGN's history, and had I gone I'm sure I would have been in the picture—even though I only ever worked there for one year. It sure was a huge part of my early years in Seattle, though. I kind of wish now that I had gone, although it would be interesting to see Mike M again, assuming he was also there. I saw him leaving a comment on one of Renee's Facebook posts the other day, and I remembered that the last time I saw him, walking past him at Pride 2001 the year after Mike B and I left the SGN on very bad terms (some of which are honestly a bit embarassing to me now), and Mike M said "Fuck off, Matthew!" as he walked past. I cracked up at the time and it cracks me up to remember it now. I told Renee about it last night.

Anyway, predictably there were several other people who came around to chat with Renee, who seems to have settled relatively comfortably in the position George Bakan had been in, kind of holding court in local gay activist and journalist circles. Even though what I went through with George is ancient history, I still feel far more positive about the paper knowing Renee is at the helm. We were ready to meander further along the rest of the booths though and so finally we moved on. I'm glad I chatted with her last night, though; I had seen her from a bit more distance at Pride in the Park but she was engaged in conversation and I did not stop and say hi that time.

Soon enough Laney and I were back to the grassy area to watch the performances for a bit. But then Laney asked if I was ready to head back, because she didn't want to be walking home in the dark. We walked out of the park and down to Broadway, and because she's joining me again at PrideFest Capitol Hill on Broadway today, she wanted to conserve energy for that last mile, and we waited eight minutes for an oncoming #49 bus that would get her back to her intersection at Broadway and Pine. I walked the six blocks home from there.

Shobhit would have already gotten off work by that point, and he wanted to go for a walk once he got home. He was home shortly after I got home, and then I was headed right back out again, and we went right back to Volunteer Park. The stage performances were only scheduled from 6 to 9:30, so when we were back to the park shortly after 10:00, the event was officially over. Most of the booths were still standing, just with nobody staffing them anymore. It was just nearing the end of dusk, though, so I actually got a few pretty cool nighttime pictures to cap off my Trans Pride Seattle 2024 photo album, ultimately giving it 37 shots total (including 4 video clips). This was actually a record number for this event, albeit only by a single shot; I only managed that by taking the three nighttime photos I took at the park when I returned with Shobhit.

Shobhit and I then walked up Broadway—the very route Laney and I had taken the bus back—and then back home up through the Pike/Pine Corridor. This was where "Trans Pride" gave way to general "Seattle Pride" all over Capitol Hill, as it was Friday night of Pride Weekend. A lot of bars have permitted Pride Block Parties blocking off sections of streets outside their doors: the new Massive club that used to be R Place; Queer/Bar; The Wildrose; Unicorn; and of course The Cuff. I may even have missed one or two.

I was really happy to get back home when I did. Walking up Pike Street through thick crowds of Pride revelers in narrow spaces between block parties was not my favorite. Of course Broadway will be super crowded again today, but at least that won't be at the end of a tiring evening. We're going to that this afternoon.

[posted 11:18 pm]