The husband (aka CawfeeMate) and i recently marched in the annual Heritage of Pride Parade, under the banner of my (extremely pro-diversity) company. this was our second march down fifth, flaunting our faggotry and, once again, we had a blast! The music! The outfits! The myriad personalities co-mingling in a sea of mutual acceptance (and occasional bitchiness). All of it was spectacular and i'm so, wonderfully proud to be able to have taken part, especially in light of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots; after having watched the parade from the sidelines it felt great to participate (even though we completely missed out on the swag). i would like to applaud everyone who was involved with getting the whole thing off the ground! a couple of suggestions, though...
- placement: when deciding the line up of which group goes where, how about a little more rationale? last year my group was in-between a couple of banks (which makes perfect sense since we are, for all intents and purposes a bank). this year, though, we were sandwiched in between the Universal Unitarian Church and Flaming for Christ: Gay Presbyterians. WTF? while i love people who love the lord (the way i love all stupid people), it was odd, to say the least; i mean, surely we were not the only financial institution present!
- let's talk punctuality, people. now, i know that the riots were kicked off by drag queen, but that is no excuse to have the whole parade run on "drag time". my "group leader" was told that we'd be marching at 11:30 and, knowing his faggots, he told the flock to get there at 10:30. do you know what time we actually started marching? 2:30. don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful day, with the sun shining (i got the most gorgeous tan), but not everyone is blessed with my olive complexion; some people (CawfeeMate, for one) tend to crisp in the sun and standing motionless like a tree for 3 hours is not a good idea. also, think of the afformentioned drag queens: would you want to stand around waiting, in full face, wig, platforms and skin tight vinyl? i don't think so.nobody wants to see Anne Tique or Virginia Hamm melting in the sunshine like a Rocket-pop. do it for the drag queens and the fair skinned queers.
- music: maybe it's because we were sandwiched between holy-rollers, but it seemed like all the other floats before us and after us (we, sadly, did not get a float; it was not in our budget) had better music (the UU sang a gospel version of the Indigo Girls' Closer to Fine every third song and the Presby-queer-ians played the strangest assortment of Michael Jackson, disco and 70's TV show themes); again very strange. Music being something very near and dear to my heart, it always surprises me that there isn't more cohesion or uniformity to the parade floats' choices. CawfeeMate made a suggestion 1/4 of the way through: Choose 20 "pride related" songs/themes and have the DJ's play them on an endless loop/rotation. there are countless versions of I'm Coming Out and I Am What I Am, and the floats should make the crowd want to cheer and get happy. down with the dirges!
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