In my ever arching quest to do experience everything NYC has to offer, I decided it was time to finally see an entire Gay Pride parade, and what better location than the gayest street in America: Christopher Street. I just followed the people with the rainbow flag "recruiter" T-shirt off the train and eventually looped around the block enough times to get a spot to watch the spectacle. And, as an aside, the NYPD really has figured out how to manage huge crowds and block streets and basically all that. The main side effect is that you cannot cross the parade route, which makes life tricky if you're trying to meet people on the other side, but that was an old story from Halloween... anyway.
I sideled myself into a spot amongst a flock murder coven group of Puerto Rican lesbians. That turned out to be a great decision first because they were hilarious and crazy, and second because they were all 5'4" and I could totally see over their heads.
Opening the show was the NYPD, as always, but right behind them were the bikers, and they were a great opening act. Lots of noise and hooting and whistling. Then came the active duty officers and other official people, followed by the politicians. Hillary was in the house. I bet her SS officers really loved all the craziness. The costumes of some of the participants were really outrageous. Others were almost non-existant. Some didn't make any sense, like the guy who was go-go dancing for Jesus.
They had so many ethnic group marching groups, too. I didn't really expect that, but places like Peru and Columbia really put on a good showing. Nothing compared to Brazil, though, especially in number of people. There were marching bands, color guards, twirlers, cheerleaders. Oh, the cheerleaders were blasting Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" to do a routine. It was worth the whole trip just to hear a whole street full of people, at least 5 blocks ahead of the speakers, unsolicited, start shouting "The shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!" Love it.
Lots of companies had floats, like Altoids, Delta Airlines, HSBC Bank, Starbucks (who were throwing out purple Lance Armstrong bracelets that said Starbucks on them - shameless). The common theme among corporate floats were muscled guys in speedos shaking their business. You get what you pay for, apparnetly.
Towards the end the costumes seemed to shrink. Tops started coming off. Leather men in straps not much else were everywhere. And then the most outrageous costume ever walks by. Dude is tattooed, and is wearing one sock, and flip flops. And that's it. And he had a flag stuck in his butt. If you need a visual image you'll have to go all the way to the end of my posted photos and gawk.
After the parade I was getting some food in the marketplace and carnival food section and just walking about. Oh yeah, I was wearing my Utilikit, and wearing a shirt saying "God of Biscuits". So I'm hanging out on a side street, relaxing and finishing off my meal when I get approached about the meaning of my shirt. Apparently its meaning was unclear, and they had postulated that I wanted to either fart on someone, or be farted on (something about air biscuits being a name for farts?). One other random guy (I think he was drunk or high or something) comes up out of the blue with a big finger pointed at me and says, "Pauline's Biscuits, right? You know Pauline? Oh my Gawd." To which I legitimately cannot respond. I'm then berrated about some show on Food Network and how Pauline makes the best biscuits.
Luckily that passed, and I spent the rest of the afternoon chatting, explaining to people about the shirt. If you're still clueless, go listen to Eddie Izzard in "Dress to Kill". After standing on pavement for over 5 hours, my back was screaming at me, so I decided it was time to head home. Met some fun new people, and got a lot of photos with my new camera.
For one, another bejewelled item in a store window caught my eye. I can't remember which store we were near, but this little watermellon purse would go well with the bejewelled iPod Shuffle from a few weeks ago. Don't you think? Like, Totally, for sure.
Everybody needs a bedazzled iPod Shuffle, don't you think?