-
Photos
Archives
Categories
- Beginnings (6)
- Development (6)
- Diary (9)
- Family (3)
- HTML/CSS (1)
- Human Being (1)
- Implications (2)
- Industry (3)
- Life (60)
- Philosophy (27)
- Politics (6)
- Pop culture (7)
- Thoughts (8)
- Travel (48)
- Web (6)
-
Gay Pride
- del.ico.us
- digg this!
- Last edited: 4:03, Jul 01 2007
- Skip to comments (6)
Gay pride for the masses and the mainstream - 5 hours of rainbow mottled merriment and mayhem!
I have never seen so many gay people in my life until living in the gay district of New York on Gay Pride week. I moved hostels from the YHI on Central Park to The Chelsea International Backpackers, and Chelsea as it turns out is the gay area of Manhattan. For the previous week rainbow coloured flags adorned shop fronts, cafes and bars throughout the entire suburb. It took me exactly 20 minutes to work out what the flags meant when Yogi, Adam and I went to breakfast at a cafe. The parade was on Sunday 24th of June, but the boys were travelling to Toronto to see it there, seeing as they were Canadian and all.
The parade kicked off at around 12.15 and I made sure I had both my rainbow flag and a decent spot early. I perched up on a U.S. mailbox at an intersection which I thought would be a prime location but turned out to be a curse. The paraders kept getting held up on the other side, and when they were let across would then run to fill up the empty space.
The first ‘floats’ were two squadrons of muscled bikers, one gay and the other lesbian. Off to a flying start. Then came a gay Christian (christian Gay?) float with a group of religious people waving and smiling - not exactly what I had expected. And another Christian float. And another. And another. No wait they are Buddhists for gayness. Catholics, Quakers, Gospel, every protestant denomination. Strangely there were no Seventh Day Adventists. 
They were probably the 3 anti-gay protesters politely telling everyone that homosexuality was a sin and that they would burn for eternity. It was a whole pick-and-mix of religions and went on for nearly an hour. Sex and religion I thought - this was a very un-gay gay parade and my butt was getting sore (from sitting on the mailbox). As it turned out the organisers were shrewder than I thought. They were softening the New York crowd up with the moralisers in front, followed by the political, community and sporting(!) groups, and finally the naked boys in g-strings and hot pants rubbing each other.
New Yorkers are very open minded about lifestyle, in New York it is possible to live any way you choose. There is the gay district with bars, cafes and laundromats to suit. There are organic supermarkets, fair-trade stores, and large farmers markets for the lefty at heart. The Meatpackers district with $400 bar entry fees, 5th Avenue with Abercrombie & Fitch, and the entire suburb of Soho for the Paris Hiltons of the world.
BROOKLYN! must be shouted at the top of your lungs if you love hip-hop and don’t think it is dead. Given the freedom of lifestyle choice I was very surprised at how tame the parade was, even though it was midday family Sunday. There were very few floats of raunchy costumed same-sex groups compared to the 5 hour length of the parade, and the costumes overall were poor. The occasional gem would float past, a transgender wo/man with duct tape on their nipples, a green cartoon Spiderman with a giant penis and three busty scantily clad side kicks, a yellow school bus of mischievous ‘workmen’ and the scariest of all - a woman (man?) who looked just like Lolo Ferrari (she was in the Guinness Book of records as the woman with the largest breasts, for those who want to know how I know about her ;) ).
And on one final note. Mum, Dad. I have something to tell you…
