As the sun heats the air, and the sweat rolls down your back, you can smell the stale stench of cheap beer in the air, and the occasional whiff of weed casually wafts past your nose. The ground is sticky with the syrupy mess of spilled soda and beer, and for the next five minutes all you can hear (and feel) is a sticky crinkle every time you take a step. All around you are people, but not every day dressed people. Some are wearing rainbow tie-dye shirts and others are in modern-day (what amounts to little more than) polyester loincloths, leaving little to the imagination. Yet some people are cross-dressed, wearing elaborate and glittery dresses with thick make-up over their faces, and others emphasize the ambiguity of their gender with great pride.

This… is the San Francisco PRIDE celebration. The theme this year was “Color Our World with Pride”, meaning of course that the setting was very colorful (though with the international symbol being a rainbow, I’m guessing this was not particularly unique this year).

I don’t have too much more to say about the celebration, my description above says just about everything that I saw. The parade was cool, but it was too long for me to be able to stand and watch the entire thing (I think it was more than 3 hours long). Personally my favorite crowd of people were the rainbow balloons. The first wave was people who wore long stringy balloons on their backs (all of the same color), which made them look like a colorful group of medusas. The next wave in this group was people carrying balloon people with torsos, hands and faces (smiley faces, granted) but the arms had mechanisms for the people to make them move. There were other exciting groups too, such as the motorcyclists who opened the parade, and certain political figures, such as Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

While it may not be glamorous, (nor at times seem classy), this celebration is the root of all LGBTQ community pride internationally. It is the birth place of the international movement, and it’s history runs deep. It was interesting to see how people went all-out for the celebration, and to observe the pride and the willingness for public display, but I will be sure to bring a friend, next time I go.

Until Next Time,

Joe