— पांच हजार दो सौ उनतालीस —

I already felt this way after taking the "buffer day" as an extra day off after the trip to Denver two weeks ago, but after yesterday, I feel even more strongly that this was a godsend. By the end of the day yesterday, I not only had all my Vancouver Pride Weekend photos properly tagged every way I wanted, but the travelogue email was written and sent yesterday morning; that email adapted for yesterday's post (identical to the email, but with a few video clips added); and I even had every photo from the weekend captioned on Flickr! I haven't managed that very last part for a trip out of town, or a holiday season or my Birth Week or whatever, in I don't even know how long.

Granted, in spite of a record 188 photos for this trip to Vancouver, a lot of the captioning went more quickly than it would for other trips, because the caption Vancouver Pride Parade 2022 could be repeated on a whole lot of the Pride Parade photos, the photos themselves otherwise self-explanatory and in no need of further detail.

So. Let's talk for a minute about how I've got these photos organized on Flickr, where you can go to browse the captions on every photo—and thus get even more detail about our trip than I could put into yesterday's travelogue. Because of the nature of Vancouver trips combined with a Pride weekend, these photos are organized into five different photo albums, a majority of them cross-posted between one set of two (focused on Vancouver travel broadly) and one set of three (focused specifically on Pride), those albums themselves organized into album collections three different ways, or four if you count a quasi-outlier.

Should I just count them off?

#1: Vancouver 2022, separated by Day 1 and Day 2, this being part of my "Vancouver B.C. Trips: Separated Sets" collection, here indicating that this trip yielded the record 188 photos. The previous record was 159 photos, five years ago when Shobhit and I made our anniversary trip to Vancouver in 2017—the last time he went there, but I went one year more recently, to visit Ivan in 2018.

#2: Vancouver 2022, Day 1 is the only album from this trip included in the collection of single photo albums from each of my thus-far twelve trips to Vancouver, B.C., thus allowing this collection to be part of the parent collection "Weekend/Extended Trips & Visits, an older collection I still like to maintain and keep updated, and include all trips that account for just a weekend excursion, up to maybe four days on average; most trips to Vancouver are only two days. This collection includes the same data as the one above, numbering each trip and indicating the number of shots per trip, only this time with links to the two-photo set where all the photos from any given trip can be found.

#3: Vancouver Pride 2022, here separated into three sets: for the Parade; for the Sunset Beach Festival; and for the requisite "Random Hot Guys" photo album. Every one of the photos here are cross-posted into the albums indicated in #s 1 and 2, but limited only to Pride-related shots, so the total shots organized here number 90, rather than the 188 shots I took over the entire weekend trip.

sort-of #4: my overall "Random Hot Guys collection of photo albums includes those albums from every Pride I've been to in every city, including a ton of years in Seattle; now-six trips to Vancouver specifically for Pride; two times to L.A. Pride (2012 and 2014); and one-offs for Pride in San Francisco (2006); New York City (2010); and Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (2020). Also included in this collection are the "Random Hot Guys" seen at the four years of WeHo Halloween Carnaval we attended, between 2012 and 2016. Thus, I've got a lot of "Random Hot Guys" photo albums now, 25 of them, dating between 2005 and 2022.

I only got 12 shots of "Random Hot Guys" over Vancouver Pride this weekend, the smallest such photo album since 2007, although I've had ones as small as 13 shots as recently as 2008 (also Vancouver Pride, the last one I attended) and 17 as recently as WeHo Hollywood Carnaval in 2016. I did notice a kind of curious thing about Vancouver Pride this weekend, and I'm not entirely certain what accounts for it: nowhere near as many buff young men just hanging out in briefs or underwear, as has been historically the case. It was almost as though the crowd was more modest than usual, if not more conservative in their attire—there were many, many hot guys with their shirts off, but the vast majority of them wore pretty standard shorts. I wondered if there was an element of society up there being generally more accepting of queerness creating less of a need for people to do anything pointedly subversive (the overt sexuality of people at Pride historically being a big, big part of that), or if even the two-year break from in-person Pride events had anything to do with it. Just like in Seattle, in-person Pride had been canceled in both 2020 and 2021, this year being the first in three years.

It's almost ironic that, this year, Seattle Pride's "Random Hot Guys" photo album was much larger, not quite as large but still close to what it had been in 2018 and 2019; but still featuring a whole lot more revealing outfits and skin than Vancouver Pride did this year. I found it odd. But, maybe there is something to the trend toward attacking our rights by minority-rule conservatives in the U.S. continues to fuel defiantly sexual joy. I really don't know how the state of politics broadly compares in Canada, except to say that, much like when we were in Sydney for Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 2020, the businesses and neighborhoods in Vancouver were all about declaring their support for Pride in a way you never see outside the gay neighborhoods in the U.S. Grocery stores as common as Safeway were selling floral arrangements and balloons the way they do any major holiday.

Whatever the reason, I'd still have liked to see more skin than I got at Vancouver Pride this year. That's the closest thing I have to a complaint. I really enjoyed everything we did and saw in Vancouver over the weekend.

— पांच हजार दो सौ उनतालीस —

— पांच हजार दो सौ उनतालीस —

So, we left our hotel in Vancouver Monday morning at around 9 a.m., getting a head start on our trip home. We actually managed to cut maybe as much as an hour off of our wait time going through the border check point, due to a tricky maneuver on Shobhit's part, a quasi-cut in line. Once again we stopped at the Duty Free shop, and when you exit that shop's parking lot after purchasing items, there's a right-turn for both the Nexus lane and the two regular-people lanes. On Monday, though, when we got to that point, the non-Nexus lanes were backed up far further than the exit from the Duty Free shop, which meant, theoretically, waiting ages for that line to both move forward and create a space for us to merge. Well, guess what? These southbound lanes have a red light about halfway down to the border checkpoint, after which there are no Nexus lane dividers to keep cars from changing lanes until the end of the next line closer to the stalls. Shobhit just turned out of the parking lot onto the Nexus lane, drove past that first stop light, and got into the back of the section of lined cars closer to the stalls. He effectively bypassed a bunch of cars, and maybe an hour or so of waiting in line, by doing that. Protip! (Until they put barriers between the Nexus and other lanes the entire distance on approach to the border checkpoint, this will continue to be an easy trick.)

Apparently, technically we have to declare our purchases and pay a small tax on them if we get more than two bottles of liquor at the Duty Free shop. We got a ton after our trip to Victoria in June, but this time we got four bottles. The border agent deemed that too few to make waiting to declare and pay a negligible amount of tax to be worth the time, so he just waived us through. Nice.

We stopped in Bellingham again for gas at Costco, then drove the couple of hours or so from there to the Shoreline Costco, and then to the somewhat nearby Amazon Fresh store south of there, to do some grocery shopping on our way home. It was probably around 2:30 or so when we reached the house again, leaving me a lot of time, even after we had unloaded the groceries and settled in.

I spent quite a lot of time on Monday afternoon and evening, just tagging all the photos on Flickr once I had their file names renamed and I had them uploaded. Every skyscraper focused on in any photo was properly tagged; every contingent I could identify in the Pride Parade as well. I even found time to get through about half the travelogue email Monday night, which was how I managed to mail it out by 9:36 yesterday morning.

It was after I had showered and gotten ready yesterday morning that I whipped up the html version of the travelogue so I could post it to this blog. I then spent maybe two or three hours yesterday getting through all the photos from the weekend on Flickr, and adding captions to each of them. It was heaven, honestly, to have the time to do all of that before officially returning to work, and not have that as something that still needed to get done after work hours thereafter.

— पांच हजार दो सौ उनतालीस —

Plus, because I took yesterday off, I took a break from the photos work to have Laney over in the afternoon, to watch the fifth and final Scream movie, the one that was released earlier this year. Laney was going to come at 1:00 and then she texted to ask if we could move it to 2:00; that's when Shobhit got off work so we waited for him to get home so he could watch it too.

Laney and I agreed that this one was okay, but was the first in the entire series not to exceed our expectations. This one has its meta elements but is far less concerned with that, spending a lot more time taking itself surprisingly seriously, which was honestly kind of disappointing. Even Scream 4 really leaned into the meta stuff, that one commenting on long-running franchises and reboots, and was really entertaining. I had been led to believe this new one also commented on reboots, but it has a new sort of clarification, instead commenting on "re-quels," when a new sequel is released that ignores the events of lesser, more recent installments. Except in this case Scream 4 from 2011 was a better movie, more fun and more thrilling to watch. Also, this movie fully acknowledges the events of all the previous Scream movies, and instead the "Stab" franchise that exists in the movie's universe is the series that has recently done the "re-quel" thing. The only things the most recent "Stab" movie and this Scream have in common is that they are titled just Stab and Scream again respectively, with no accompanying number this time. Otherwise, apparently, they would have been Stab 8 versus Scream 5.

There is already a sixth Scream movie in production, apparently as-yet untitled. It'll probably be something like Scream Louder or whatever. Both David Arquette and Neve Campbell are reportedly not to be in it (totally expected on Arquette's part after this movie; IMDb says the issue with Campbell was a pay dispute), but I guess Courtney Cox will be. How many fucking movies do we need in this franchise, anyway? Four was more than enough, as I said all of them exceeding expectations. This new one was the first to fail on that front, so I have pretty low expectations for a fifth one.

When Laney and I get together again on the 21st for our next movie watch, she'll finally get to see Knives Out, which is a better movie than all the Screams put together. So, we have that to look forward to. In the meantime, we have our next Happy Hour first, which will be this Friday—thus a very eventful day for me, as it's also my 20th anniversary at PCC and Eric is clearly planning something kind of major for it. Shobhit got a text from Tracy M, the Tracy who still works here, inviting him to it.

— पांच हजार दो सौ उनतालीस —

[posted 12:36 pm]

[Adapted from email sent 9:36 a.m.]

Saturday, July 30

The last time I went to Vancouver, B.C., it was 2018—four years ago, when I traveled by myself to visit my friend Ivan for the weekend during the three months he was living there. Wildfire smoke was rampant that weekend, so when Ivan and I took a bus from his neighborhood to Queen Elizabeth Park, which I had recently learned has these stunning panoramic views of the city, I was disappointed to find the views significantly obscured by smoke.

The view this time was . . . not perfect. But a lot better!

When I last went to Vancouver, B.C. with Shobhit, it was 2017—five years ago, for our anniversary trip that year.

I suggested we stop at Queen Elizabeth Park on the way to Downtown Vancouver where our hotel was, as I figured he would enjoy the park in its own right, and the air quality would be better than when I was there with Ivan. I was mostly right on both counts! Plus, we started our visit to the park with a packed lunch at Dancing Waters Fountain, which is right by the Bloedel Conservatory, which I still haven't explored inside because there's an entry fee and I'm cheap.

And here I am getting in on the action at Queen Elizabeth Park's Love in the Rain sculpture. Like the many bridge railings around the world where lovers lock padlocks with their initials, often to the chagrin of local officials, this piece was designed expressly for people to lock their padlocks to it—complete with a key receptacle.

Queen Elizabeth Park also has carefully landscaped "Quarry Gardens," smaller in scale but similar to Butchart Gardens in Victoria.

Sunset at English Bay Beach, location of the Spain submission for the annual "Celebration of Light," a competition between three nations for the best fireworks show. Canada is always one of the participants, but each year the other two nations change; this year, they had Japan on Saturday, July 23; Canada on Wednesday, July 27; and then Spain on Saturday, July 30.

I only this year figured out that the timing of both this festival and Vancouver Pride are dependent on "B.C. Day," an official provincial holiday celebrating local heritage. This holiday always lands on the first Monday of August, with the Vancouver Pride Parade always occuring the Sunday prior, the day before; and with the final Celebration of Light fireworks display occuring the previous Saturday. This means that, most years, the Saturday and Sunday events are on the first Saturday and Sunday of August—with the occasional exception of when the first Monday of August is August 1, as it was in this year, in which case the Celebration of Light and the Pride Parade are on the last Saturday and Sunday of July, respectively. Anyway, the simple way to remember the timing of all these events is, just to know when the first Monday of August is.

English Bay Beach was already closed off to any more people, having filled to capacity, when Shobhit and I found a viewing spot behind a fence at around 8:40, eighty minutes before the 10:00 start time. We did get a view of a beautiful sunset in the meantime, and somewhat to my shock, I managed to get this shot with the crescent moon fairly well visible using just my phone's camera.

Trigger warning! This was the shape of the crowd at the moment the spectacular fireworks display ended—after going on for fully 25 minutes, and featuring at least four different moments like what we're used to being the "finale" at our Fourth of July fireworks shows. I have never seen better fireworks shows anywhere, and even walking back to our hotel in this crowd was festive and fun.

Sunday, July 31

The last time we went to Vancouver specifically four Vancouver Pride, it was 2008—fourteen years ago. This was actually my twelfth visit to Vancouver overall, and Shobhit's eighth. I had come for Pride once before meeting Shobhit, in 1999, so I've now been there for Vancouver Pride six times, and Shobhit five times: we went together for Vancouver Pride in 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008.

This was the first time we stayed at a hotel that was right on the parade route—something we didn't even realize when we booked the place. It was kind of a steal, because the place is the opposite of fancy, with three floors, no elevators, and on Hotels.com we were told our room had a bathtub but not a shower. The room was quite small, but we were delighted to discover upon arrival that the bathroom had a shower after all.

Shobhit and I staked our spot on the curb right in front of our hotel's entrance nearly two hours before the parade was scheduled to start at noon. And I must say, having a spot where you can go right inside to use a private bathroom or make yourself a drink whenever you want is something I highly recommend. I did wait to take this shot until around 11:40, so there would be more of a crowd present for the photo, close to what there was for the duration of the parade. That empty lawn chair near the center was my seat, and Shobhit is there sitting right next to it to the left.

There were some elements of Vancouver Pride that gave it a similar feel to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade we saw in early 2020, although this parade is much smaller—most notably, the tendency to put queer Indigenous or First Nations contingents at the front. I'm finding that, while the practice of acknowledging whose land we are on is increasingly common everywhere, including in the U.S., it seems that outside the U.S., activist groups seem to be more inclined to put Indigenous peoples in front. In the instance of this particular photo: Tsliel-Waututh Nation, "People of the Inlet," whose territory includes Burrard Inlet and the waters draining into it. Burrard Inlet is a fjord that comprises an eastern arm of the Strait of Georgia, which is the body of water between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia; the inlet itself is surprisingly long, beginning with the north shore of Vancouver proper and stretching a maximum length of 27 miles inland. It actually stretches nearly twenty miles due east, but at about 15 miles in, another arm of it stretches a further 12 miles or so north.

I loved seeing new uses for the "Progress Pride" flag, such as on this fire engine for Vancouver Fire Rescue Services.

This may have been my favorite float in the Pride Parade—by the Canadian Coast Guard. Is it possible to have a queer lighthouse? I think it is!

Okay, so let's take a moment to compare Vancouver Pride to Seattle Pride. First of all, Seattle's Pride Parade is massive by comparison—which is not really that big a surprise if you get into the details of city comparisons: Vancouver may be much more densely populated (especially downtown) and far more cosmopolitan, not to mention far better at urban planning, which gives it a feeling of greater sophistication. But! Seattle proper is 15% larger in population than Vancouver proper, but far more importantly—by global standards this is the only comparison that matters—metropolitan Seattle is 54% larger than metropolitan Vancouver (roughly 4 million versus 2.6 million). Given the concentric circles of regional areas from which people come to a given city center, these numbers explain the size differences in Pride Parades and festivals.

But, you know what? Vancouver's Pride Parade is far more manageable. I will always love Seatte Pride to the ends of the earth, but four hours is a bit much. Vancouver limits its contingent number to about 150, which is smart. Not only that, but the Barclay Hotel, where we stayed, is conveniently located right next to the staging area, meaning we were literally on the first block the parade route marches down. Their parade starts at noon, and you know what time it was when the parade ended? 1:40! What bliss! Granted, I already mentioned that we staked our spot on the sidewalk two hours early so we were still there technically for three and a half hours but whatever. (I do the same at Seattle Pride which means I'm typically on the sidewalk for that between five and six hours.)

Okay so should I say something about the above photo? Shobhit and I went back into the hotel to rest for a bit after the parade, then walked over to the Sunset Beach Festival, passing this art installation, Engagement, along the way. No doubt there's a shit ton of engagement photos taken there.

Side note! We also discovered at this festival that they were giving out free monkeypox vaccines, and our not being Canadian citizens did not disqualify us! We kind of barely met the qualification criteria otherwise, but we both got the shot, which made us very happy. It felt like an incredibly lucky break for us, something that happens to me a lot. I lead a charmed life!

Later in the evening we ventured out again to get some dinner, and wound up at a place on Davie Street—Vancouver's main drag for queer and queer-friendly businesses, restaurants and clubs—called Davie Dosa Company. Shobhit, ever on-brand, complained about it not being salty or spicy enough (the owner, who was a handsome Indian man, said he couldn't make the food spicy "for this neighborhood"), but I thought all of it was excellent. Go there if you're ever in Vancouver! Also, I loved this stencil in the window behind Shobhit's seat, of which I was finally able to get a full photo when he got up to use the bathroom.

A delightful discovery: the floral display organization Fleurs de Villes ("Flowers of Cities"), which had done a holiday display in Seattle last December at Pacific Place, had several of their so-called "floral chandeliers" scattered around downtown for Vancouver Pride. If we'd had more time, I'd have gone out of my way to find more of them. Instead, I only got shots of four of the roughly fifteen displays they apparently had around town; this shot above was my favorite shot I got, just happening to see it atop a local bus stop shelter as we walked past.

Shobhit and I did a lot of walking on Sunday, three different times taking on average around two-mile walks. After dinner at Davie Dosa Company, we meandered across town generally in the direction of our hotel, and then we saw the water on the north side of the Downtown Peninsula (itself just over two square miles in area—that's not counting Stanley Park at the north end of it, which is itself just over 1.5 square miles) so we decided, what the hell, we'll walk all the way over to that side. That's how we found ourselves at Jack Poole Plaza at dusk, right next to the Vancouver Convention Center. The site also includes this "Olympic Legacy," with its Cauldron that had been lit during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Walking from Jack Poole Plaza over to Bute Street, I just thought this view over Coal Harbour Park at dusk made a nice shot.

Monday, August 1

My new favorite Vancouver skyscraper! Originally slated to be finished in 2018, I got my first photo of it under construction that year (with that apocalyptically smoky background), but it wasn't finished in the end until 2020. I was eager to get photos of it finished during this visit, and wound up taking another eight shots of it this past weekend alone (that I kept, anyway)—because its shape changes depending on which side you're looking at. It's called Vancouver House, and its triangular base is shaped to accommodate the constraints of space on the plot of land right next to the Granville Street Bridge, then twists up 510 feet and 52 floors to a more conventional square shape at its top, creating an overall shape that appears to defy gravity. It's easily now one of the most distinctive buildings in the Vancouver skyline.

I had already taken three shots of it when walking right past the building on Sunday, but this is one of the five shots I took from the car as we drove across Granville Bridge on our way back out of town Monday morning,