…never having to be in the city for it.
I loved Pride. I mean I love what it stands for (sans most corporate sponsorship) and I love how it’s a huge party and such, but as I grow older I’m getting pretty crotchety.
I remember the exact moment Pride became a burden for me:
When I use to do bar work at the Black Eagle I would get home around 6am during Pride week due to the sheer volume of clients, not because I was partying after hours (which I would have loved to do). One Pride Saturday morning I failed to notice the “Lesbian” stage that was set up yards from my apartment. At 6am I wasn’t very observant, I thought it was a beer garden. At 9am there came a roar of horridly bad, amplified Dyke poetry through my window. Menzies! Earth Mother! Blood! Rebirth! Yadda yadda all in a nasally voice that welcomed the dawn of a new sapphic day. The morning prayer was followed by accoustic guitar hooting, like Hee Haw had been overrun by Xena.
I realized from that moment on that Pride serves not it’s immediate community, but a concept.
Slowly, over the years, my rosey optimistic glasses slipped from my face and I started to see Pride in a harsher light. The thudding disco music from 9am to whenever; drunken straight “tourists” (sorry, AP! You can stay!) come to look at the “freaks” or open-minded thirds to spice up their lovelife; drunken gay “tourists” vomiting on my doorstep; friends and residents so wrapped up in getting laid by fresh meat they’re unable to hold a conversation with you due to their head scanning the crowd. And the crowds. The crowds trying to get past each other while a poorly laid out “drag stage” blocks the through-fare, forcing frottage fanatics to frollic freely.
Don’t get me wrong, I support Pride. I’ve done my time volunteering and being on either side of the parade baracade. I value it’s contribution to our visibility. But as a resident of the Village (and in speaking to others who live there too, straight and gay), Pride is like an 800 pound drag queen gorrilla that sits in the corner, demanding bananas, poppers and a DJ.
Maybe it’s time to move the celebrations to another part of the city? Sharkboy once commented that Riverdale Park would be ideal. I’ve been to Vancouver’s pride and it ends up in a large park. Why do we have to stay in the Village?
Regardless, I’m off camping. Be good, don’t puke in my doorstep and have a great Pride.
9 thoughts on “Pride Means…”
trampling small children used to be a fundamental ritual of queer pride before everything got all corporate and we were supposed to start pretending to be just like all the drones, but a tad more ‘fabulous’.
i liked life better when being a social deviant was fait accompli.
Ssso, I rode the company sponsored Pride float this year, like a good little faggot workerbee. We were handing out rainbow swirly pride wristbands embossed with the company logo.
You’d have thought I was handing out crack rock wrapped in hundred dollar bills.
Get some damn perspective people. It’s a cheap piece of plastic. You do not need to 1. Trample small children to get one or b) Trigger my claustrophobic “fight or flight” mechanism by rushing the float.
But I did get a couple offers of marriage, many “woof”s and 1 phone number thrown at me, so the day wasn’t a total loss.
Oh, I am a straight tourist in the worst way. I go out drinking for Pride (what? my friends would be offended if I didn’t!) but I can’t handle that fucking parade. One million people smushed together, combined with every company imaginable being all faux gay friendly makes me want to die.
by the way, i hope you wore your new gloves.
pride, for me, involved meeting my niece for a beer and walking her up church street so she could flash her tits and try and shock me, then over to the subway so she could get home. on my way home, i found some poor slob’s wristband wallet with fifty bucks and a couple of hits of ecstasy in it in the parkette north of gloucester.
you can, if you like, spend pride in the city for as long as you live in cabbageville. the sunday of pride is quiet around here, as everyone’s either downtown or in a disco-induced coma.
Where does an 800lb Gorilla sleep? Any where she wants!
While we took our visiting-for-the-day lesbians over for the more gentle Dyke March, today is going to be chaos as usual. So, this morning we jumped on our bikes early and vacated the neighbourhood leaving it for folks of all inclination with their whistles, glitter, thongs and water guns. We’ll come home and sweep up the confetti, condoms and empty beer cups later.
They said “fierce” in the 80s? I thought it was “gag me!”
As for the East Pride: that’s pretty cool! Thanks D!
speaking of pride festivities spreading out….eastendnoise.com
“An 800 pound drag queen gorrilla that sits in the corner, demanding bananas, poppers and a DJ?”
I’m pretty sure I dated him in the early 80’s – entire vocabulary consists of the words “fierce” and “savage”?