So I'm leaving tonight (on a red-eye flight *groan*) for New York, where I'll be for Pride. I just wanted to post that because I need to start getting excited about it!
w00t! I love New York! :eusa_danc I'm usually there twice a month or so... but I just got back from there! Well, have fun! I love that city... I'm a Washingtonian at heart, but NYC's definitely my second home.
Ahh, now i'm the confused kid. I see that you love new york, but you are a washingtonian at heart, and you live in maryland. lol. I love Wisconsin, and i am a Wisconsinite at heart. Ehh, I'll probably move anyways. I have my sights set on Boston.
LOL! Yeah, maybe I should clarify that. Few Washingtonians really "live" in the District of Columbia, it's only about 400,000 residents or so; and even most of those people live in very poor sections on the outskirts of the city limits and a handful in an extremely wealthy area of the city. So out of the 6 million people that live in the DC area, the vast majority of people live in one of the 4 counties that surround DC (two in MD, two in VA). I happen to live in one of the counties in Maryland, although just 2 miles from the DC city line. I was born in the District and raised a few years of my life there before my parents moved out of the city because the District's public school system is piss poor but I'm plannin on moving back into the city after college. So yeah, I may physically reside in Maryland, but I'm definitely a Washingtonian! -CK PS: Boston's a great city too.
Hmmn... well I think the highlight was seeing Hillary Clinton march in the parade. The other New York senator had about 2 Secret Service agents and Hillary had about a dozen, which I thought was funny. The weather in New York is AWFUL, at least compared to Vancouver. It was super-hot and super-humid--like trying to breathe water. The subways are still cool, as is the NYPL, which I still say is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. (I was really disappointed I couldn't go inside it because it was closed the day I was there [Monday].) I don't know why everyone is so gah-gah over The Producers because it was kinda dumb. I couldn't get tickets for Wicked, which kinda sucked. How much do I love Jamba Juice? I wish we had them in Canada. Saw the film Mysterious Skin while in NYC, although it's also playing in Vancouver. Highly recommend it and it start Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, who is a great actor on top of being pretty hot. Uhm... other gay stuff... PFLAG had a great float/campaign called "Stay Close," with celebrities like Cyndi Lauper and Ben Affleck photographed with their queer relatives. That was neat. The buildings in New York are just awesome. My friend dragged me to go shopping at Barney's. I know I'm gay in a lot of typical ways but I will never understand the "gay" salivation over ridiculously over-priced shopping, or shopping in general. Me and my friend were nearly run over by a tide of gay lemmings leaving the Pride Day fireworks at around 10:30pm on the Sunday (the 26th I think). Fire Island was... expensive. Everyone there was at least 30something unless they were there with their family, mainly because it's so bloody expensive. And that's about it. In brief. Hope everyone else had fun at Pride if their Pride was the last weekend in June. Ours is July 31st this year, so I can still look forward to it.
Oh my goodness... I couldn't agree more. Thanks for the synopsis! Fun to read! I almost feel like I went myself. Out of curiosity, was this your first Pride Festival?
It was my first New York Pride. Overall, it would be my... at least 15th Pride. I can't remember how many times I've been to Victoria's.
Oh, okay, cool. So the reason I asked was b/c I thought we might be able to share our thoughts about our first Pride Fests. I went to my first one a couple weeks ago in Lansing, MI. I felt strangely uncomfortable there, and I can't quite put my finger on why. I loved seeing men being so openly affectionate w/ men and women being so openly affectionate w/ women, as I don't get to see that very often where I live. I have to say that I thought the protesters holding up quotes from the Bible were sort of entertaining in their silly insolence. And the atmosphere was really upbeat and exciting. So I don't know what it was. Maybe it was just the newness of it all. Anybody else have similar feelings at their first Pride Fest?
Yes. I attended my first (and only) pride in London several years ago. It all just seemed too extreme and in-your-face. I'm sure to many that over-the-top, highly visible thing is the whole point, but to me then (and probably now to) it was all too much.
It sounds like you experienced something akin to what I felt the first few times I went clubbing: it's cool to see queer people be so open but at the same time one can't help but feel it's improper. I tend to think this is just a result of what we're brought up to believe. Unfortunately, in rebelling against the rigid controls of a heterosexist society, some gay people seem to feel going over the top is the only way to be and they end up clashing with the more reserved members of our pretty diverse minority. While I think the Pride Parade should be maintained as a place for over-the-top, I definitely am not in favour of over-the-top as a regular way of being in the world for anyone--gay, straight, or wherever inbetween. But yeah, I think it's normal to feel uncomfortable the first few times you're around people who are being very very open about something you've probably spent a lot of time trying to be extremely closed about. And some people are simply not extroverts by nature, so openness to that extent can be off-putting. And then there's the fact of the double-whammy: queer people whooping it up at a Pride Parade are not only whooping it up about queerness, they're whooping it up about sexuality in general, which is something most of us have grown up being taught is hardly something to celebrate. So yeah, when you see an intense display of homosexuality, you're not only dealing with the ingrained notion that homosexuality is bad but that sexuality in general is bad/dirty/wrong/perverted/etc. It ends up being who you think the parade is for: is it for queer people and their allies or is it an exercise in presenting ourselves to the world and trying to gain mainstream acceptance? Personally I've never felt it should be anything but a party for us, the queerest of the queer, but there's no denying that certain people try to portray it as an example of how queer people normally act. Perhaps it's the radical in me but I'm quite happy to view it as one day a year we can say, "Screw you... we don't care how 'morally wrong' you think we are..." Intelligent people, I figure, can understand the difference between parade hijinks and how queer people live their lives day-to-day. If some people out there are going to judge all queer people's lives based on Pride parades, then those people are already quite invested in stereotypes in general and that's the actual issue, not whether we should second-guess ourselves to death just on the off-chance we might confirm a stereotype or two. That is to say, I'm not going to stop watching "chick flicks" because somehow that makes me "more" gay and might confirm someone's belief that gay guys are just masculine women.
