The parade's gone by
The Fremont Solstice Parade is a genuinely odd duck. It's a hodgepodge of neopaganism, goofball DIY performance art, leftist agit prop, nudism, exhibitionism, and genderfuck, with a smattering of community or other social and performance clubs thrown in. I'm not sure there's a unifying concept, unless it's Let Your Freak Flag Fly. Perhaps it's a bit of Burning Man in our backyard, come to think of it. Counterculture in the American West circa 2008.
The things that most caught my attention this year, for whatever reason, were the guy in an orange jumpsuit and black hood dragging a cross, Christlike, while two guards in camo walked behind him; the pirate cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster offering the blessing of His noodly appendages and a clamor of religious rants; and a small, uncoordinated, unshowy group that included at least two transexuals, including a very tall one who strode along uncostumed, but naked to the waist, and another whose breasts were displayed in a fetishistic way that made them look plastic. Perhaps they were plastic, it was hard to tell, and that seemed to be the point. The young woman behind me told her girlfriend, in a surprisingly aggressive tone, "My tits are better than that."
There were a couple of other good political performances -- one with a guy in a Dick Cheney mask swigging oil, and a group carrying a papier mache Statue of Liberty (shades of Across the Universe) and singing "God Bless America" as a funeral dirge. "Do you miss your civil liberties?" they asked. There was a martial arts club of some kind, showing off their moves, like dancers, and a huge contingent of belly dancers dressed in colors ranging around fuchsia and magenta and just plain pink. There was a separate group of maybe twenty Middle Eastern-looking guys in white garments and turbans playing cymbals and drums chanting while dancing in a swaying V-formation, with a single female bellydancer looking like an absolute badass in the mouth of the V. There were many papier mache solar designs, oh yeah, and the women who sang "Do your boobs hang low, do they wobble to and fro," as they waggled theirs. That group included a young boy, maybe five or six, with slinky, springy things dangling from his chest where his boobs would be. One of the stranger bits of genderfuck in a parade rife with it. Made me wonder what he thought of it. He seemed to be having fun, and was really into shaking his ta-tas along with the rest of them at the climax of the song. Some of the women were wearing the same slinky, springy things on their chests.
This parade has been going on for a couple of decades now, if I'm not misremembering. Fremont has gentrified quite a bit in that period. It's nice that the parade still gets its freak on, and in fact it does so more than ever in some ways. There was a period when the city was threatening to arrest the nude bikers, and now there's an endless train of nude bikers and nude rollerskaters and nude strollers and half-naked dancers, not just streaking at the start of the parade, but now in the parade itself. There was a guy on a bike with a heart painted on the tip of his cock. I think it's good for the community to see something like that now and again, don't you?
The things that most caught my attention this year, for whatever reason, were the guy in an orange jumpsuit and black hood dragging a cross, Christlike, while two guards in camo walked behind him; the pirate cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster offering the blessing of His noodly appendages and a clamor of religious rants; and a small, uncoordinated, unshowy group that included at least two transexuals, including a very tall one who strode along uncostumed, but naked to the waist, and another whose breasts were displayed in a fetishistic way that made them look plastic. Perhaps they were plastic, it was hard to tell, and that seemed to be the point. The young woman behind me told her girlfriend, in a surprisingly aggressive tone, "My tits are better than that."
There were a couple of other good political performances -- one with a guy in a Dick Cheney mask swigging oil, and a group carrying a papier mache Statue of Liberty (shades of Across the Universe) and singing "God Bless America" as a funeral dirge. "Do you miss your civil liberties?" they asked. There was a martial arts club of some kind, showing off their moves, like dancers, and a huge contingent of belly dancers dressed in colors ranging around fuchsia and magenta and just plain pink. There was a separate group of maybe twenty Middle Eastern-looking guys in white garments and turbans playing cymbals and drums chanting while dancing in a swaying V-formation, with a single female bellydancer looking like an absolute badass in the mouth of the V. There were many papier mache solar designs, oh yeah, and the women who sang "Do your boobs hang low, do they wobble to and fro," as they waggled theirs. That group included a young boy, maybe five or six, with slinky, springy things dangling from his chest where his boobs would be. One of the stranger bits of genderfuck in a parade rife with it. Made me wonder what he thought of it. He seemed to be having fun, and was really into shaking his ta-tas along with the rest of them at the climax of the song. Some of the women were wearing the same slinky, springy things on their chests.
This parade has been going on for a couple of decades now, if I'm not misremembering. Fremont has gentrified quite a bit in that period. It's nice that the parade still gets its freak on, and in fact it does so more than ever in some ways. There was a period when the city was threatening to arrest the nude bikers, and now there's an endless train of nude bikers and nude rollerskaters and nude strollers and half-naked dancers, not just streaking at the start of the parade, but now in the parade itself. There was a guy on a bike with a heart painted on the tip of his cock. I think it's good for the community to see something like that now and again, don't you?