shannon_a | Pride Parade

Went to the Pride Parade today in San Francisco. Kimberly used to go quite often but hasn't been up to it for as long as we've been together, so when she felt up to going today, I told her I'd be happy to go with her.

It was the first parade of any note that I'd been to. No, not the first Pride Parade, but the first parade, period (well, if you exclude the nightly "parade" at Disneyland and doubtless something I did while in the second grade). Kimberly asked me what I thought of it later, and I told her there was less spectacle but more happy people than I'd seen in parades on TV.

One of the reasons I was happy to go was because I know that the GBLT community has traditionally been oppressed within our lifetimes, and I'm happy to show some support for it as a result. I want to show my support for equal rights, even if it's something that doesn't directly impact my life. I was also brought to tears a couple of times during the parade — such as when I saw police officers walking down the street in uniform with their (same-sex) partners and when I saw a group of people wearing Harvey Milk t-shirts. They made me reflect how far we've come.

Beyond the emotional content, the Parade was fun to watch as there was lots of exciting stuff in it, such as: a "Cheer" squad that did human pyramids and threw folks up in the air; bunches of people with huge plumages of orange, red, yellow, green, blue, and purple balloons; and dancers of all sort. It felt good to see so many politicians in the parade. There were also a couple of celebrities such as the woman who plays "Beast" in Glee and Sarah Silverman. There was a woman in the crowd very near us who was totally overcome by Silverman being in attendance. She kept screaming, "Oh My God! IT'S SARAH SILVERMAN!!!!" and other such. Amusingly, Silverman never even turned to look at our side of the street, so it could have been anyone wearing a black wig for all excited-lady and I knew.

(By the by: I totally thumbs-up the south side of street for the Parade. I was expecting to get roasted by the sun, and had sunscreen on and a hat to be ready, but instead we stayed in shade the whole time.)

I was also amused by the crowd. For one thing, no one told me that there'd be lots of attractive & scantily clad women. But it was also amusing to see people crouching atop traffic signals and on lamp posts and everywhere to get a better view of the parade. Market Street was totally transformed.

About an hour and a half after the parade started, marchers started getting erratic. Amusingly, the first time there was a really big gap, it was the police who showed up next and Kimberly suggested that it was their way of saying they always showed up late. At the next big gap, we decided we were tired of standing and so left the parade behind to eat.

This turned out to be a bit of a trick. I'd planned to use my iPhone to look up somewhere nearby, but off the parade route. I had great reception ... but I was getting almost no throughput. I had to assume that the jammed throngs were beating the hell out of the local 3G network. Fortunately, as we wandered down Market, against the rush of people, I did finally find a nearby Jack in the Box. It was about 3 blocks off of Market, and not crazy at all.

After that, we were ready to go home (though the Parade still continued with its 200 floats, cars, and marching bands). As any knowledgeable Bay Area person would, we headed up to Civic Center to get better seats on BART (rather than trying to board at the other 3 stations closer to the Bay). What we neglected was the fact that there are festivities at the Civic Center following the Parade. We got down to Market and pushed up it, and kept going slower and slower. Meanwhile, as we hit the poorer areas of Market, an increasing number of "street vendors" were trying to sell us "edibles". Based upon the wares displayed, this was code for pot brownies and doobies.

We eventually cut off Market for the last few blocks, but then we had to make a final push for the BART station it was hellaciously difficult. Even when we got to the stairs I wasn't sure we were going to make it down because the GENIUSES (TM) at BART had decided to close one of the escalators at Civic Center right in the middle of Pride. So we fought people coming up out of BART for the narrow stairs and advanced one hard-fought step at a time.

It was exhausting.

When we finally got down to the platform, we found that BART was running a train to the northern East Bay ever 10 minutes, as they had yesterday. (I hadn't even realized that I had Pride to thank for a quick train when I got stuck in Downtown Oakland yesterday afternoon.) A train arrived just two minutes later, and we collapsed into seats and had a nice ride back.

Fun event, but tiring. Both Kimberly and I ended up napping upon our return home.