Prideful
Well! It’s frankly astonishing that I’ve spent so much time in San Francisco over the years and never been here for Pride before, but it’s true.
That sad ommission has now been rectified with a fabulous day of Parade-watching and event-going in brilliant sunshine and wonderfully high spirits.
The Parade, I have to say, is long. It does an old queer’s heart good to see so many and diverse groups, businesses, causes and politicians all parading through the city, led off, of course, by Dykes on Bikes (visiting friend Rebecca had heard of this phenomenon but had somehow concluded the bikes were bicyles…). The rampant commercialism that’s been a feature of the London equivalent the last few years was toned right down, and even where a business did parade it was mostly an opportunity for its LGBT employees to show off and have fun, rather than a blatant “give us your money” tout.
San Francisco/the Bay Area is a unique case of course - the LGBT community here is woven into every stratum of the city, from public service to commercial, to voluntary sector to government, so the sheer numbers are not so surprising. But still, loads of LGBT police officers, straight politicos as well as queer ones (Mayor Gavin Newsom is rightly popular and came within a metre of us, shaking hands and clearly loving the whole thing), schools and colleges, and BIG business proudly showing off its diverse employee base all come as a little bit of a shock to a visitor, even one as frequent and long term as I.
Possibly my highlight was seeing 1st Lieutenant Daniel Choi, a founder of Knights Out and currently the ‘face’ of the anti-Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell campaign, leaping off his car, grabbing a rainbow flag and running crazy circles around part of the parade. It was sad that a little crowd near me read the sign on the car and didn’t know who he was.
The ‘celebration’ event around Civic Center afterward was huge, packed, slightly crazy and just massive fun.
Took some photos, which I’ll attempt to get online asap.