Happy Pride, How's It Going?
PRIDE WEEKEND WOO! Lots of photos in this post. I love Pride. It was a gorgeous, hot hot HOT and sunny weekend, just perfect. HAPPY PRIDE. :)
Saturday July 3rd
I took the bus in to Toronto, and got there super-early so I sat and wrote while I was waiting for trillingstar, aka Jess, and seriously, trillingstar takes way too long to type, and it's HOT, and my brain is fried, so she is Jess from now on in this post. So yeah, this is Pride, right, when I should be thinking of rainbows and puppies and sparkles. And instead I wrote this horrible dark awful kill-fic that should be, like, burned or something.
Aaaanyway, Jess and I headed off to Church Street for the usual Pride shenanigans.
Above: Jess got a henna tattoo...
Above: Here's the final result. Now, okay, I've seen people sitting in the chairs getting henna tattoos before, but I don't know anything about them. So I thought they were supposed to STAY like that. It was a couple hours of Jess saying "it's supposed to dry and flake off" before I realized that the 'tattoo' part of the henna tattoo was *underneath* the brown stuff. Sometimes I'm not too bright. I'm gonna blame the heat. ::nods::
After wandering around and going in to some shops and checking out some of the street fair, I was STARVING so it was time for food and daiquiris. DAIQUIRIS WOO!
Above: Two thumbs up from Jess!
Above: Jess at The Village Rainbow. This is the place that in the past has the super-thick, super-strong daiquiris that Krystle can't even drink. This year? THEY WERE PERFECTION. We each had two. :D
Above: What the heck is up with my bangs? I don't even know. THAT is the reason I now have a strip of sunburn across that middle part of my forehead. URGH.
After lunch and our daiquiris, we wandered back out into the streets. Let's see... Jess got groped by either a lesbian or a random cracked out passerby who was very excited that she came from Parkdale. I bought a very cute cloth bag ("If you don't talk to your cat about catnip... who will?" accompanied by a stoned looking cat drawing. Heh) from an animal charity. We both rubbed the ass of a bronze plaque for luck.
Above: I loved the little Mr Smileys here...
Above: And the giant flag at the 519 Centre was cool
Above: And HI THERE MR. TD CANADA TRUST MAN. Hello.
Above: No really, don't turn around. This is just fine.
Also, it was very hot and sunny and hot. So we wanted to sit, and Jess spotted this little grassy area in front of an apartment building. We sat. We relaxed. We had a smoke. THEN JESS FELL ASLEEP.
Above: My view, lounging on the grass
I let her nap for about half an hour, and if I'd been able to think of something to write I would've let her sleep longer. As if was, I woke her up and off we went for MORE DRINKS. DRINKS YAY DRINKS. (Seriously, sometimes I think my Pride revolves around where to find the best alcohol. Not that this is a bad thing...)
Above: On our way we came across the tale end of one of the drag shows. They were gooood.
Above: Then it was off to O'Grady's for more food and more liquor. Alas, O'Grady's no longer serves daiquiris, but they did have some yummy alternatives. I had a vodka concoction called a Killer Koolaid, while Jess had something called a Fat Frog. We both made 'em doubles, and had two each. HAPPY PRIDE! *hic*
Above: Me with the first Killer Koolaid. :)
By the time we were finishing eating and drinking, it was after 8pm. We paid up and headed over to Queen's Park, where Cyndi FREAKIN' Lauper was giving a free concert. Now, it's at a PARK. So we figured, you know, you just walk in, find a spot on the grass, sit your ass down, listen and watch the big screen.
But noooo. Apparently there was a BEER GARDEN, and because there was a beer garden the area had to be fenced. Which means to actually get in to the SEE the stage, you had to join a line. A line that literally stretched HALFWAY around the entire park.
Above: I snorfled this pic from somewhere online. This is just the front of the line. We didn't even SEE that. We were like, miles, from there.
So once we realized that we could just go into the other part of the park, that's what we did. We found a spot at the side of the stage where we could hear, got off our feet, stretched out on the grass and relaxed.
Above: CYNDI WOOOO! LOL *ahem* My view of the concert. ;)
Actually, if we had gotten up and moved closer, we would have been able to see at least sometimes. As it was, I could see Cyndi when she came to the front of the stage. One funny thing was that I spent the whole concert thinking she was still blonde, and then looked up some photos today and found that she was a redhead! The lighting where I was standing always made her look blonde, heh! The setlist was badly arranged, IMO, front-loaded with all the songs from her new album, instead of mixing it up with old and new throughout. At the end we did move closer for "True Colours", which was incredibly moving for many reasons: Cyndi's beautiful voice, the crowds voices raised along to sing with her, and one gentleman at the front who completely broke down during the song and almost had me in tears.
Above: CYNDI WOOO! (Snorfled from someone named Will-W.)
After the show, Jess's hubby/my BFF came to pick us up, and I got to stay over at Jess's place and meet Bossy!!!!! I was very happy and excited to meet Bossy. Bossy was less than thrilled with me. Oh, she would let me pet her. But she wasn't necessarily happy about it. And she'd be all "meow mewo love me pet me meow" with my BFF, but I'd say a word and she'd stop and go completely silent and stare at me. Oh Bossy.
Above: BOSSY! The best shot I could get. She probably also wasn't impressed with me popping a flash off in her face every ten seconds. ;)
After that? SLEEEEP GLORIOUS SLEEEEEP.
The Parade
Happy Birthday, USA!
After breakfast of a muffin and a banana, we headed straight out to get good spots at the front of the barricades. YAY PARADE.
Above: This is the guy that always leads off the parade. Usually he's scantily clad in leather, but I really liked this years ensemble!
Above: A fetish group, I think? Posting this because the guy on the right? REALLY reminds me of one of the dudes from "Mythbusters"! LOL
Above: Okay, I could only get a back shot of this guy, but you can kind of see the giant flower on his head. Well, as soon as he saw Jess in the crowd he RAN over to her and gave her a big kiss and told her he loved her hat! Why, you ask? Well....
Above: ... Here's Jess! You gotta have fun at Pride! (She got soooo many compliments throughout the day, including some guy who wanted to trade her for it and then offered to buy it!)
Above: HELLO THERE. I don't know what you're marching for and I really don't care. HI.
Above: Pretty.
Above: And Pretty. This guy two people away from me would call out to all the marchers and ask them to pose and tell them how great/gorgeous/incredible they were. I got some fantastic posed photos thanks to that guy. :)
Above: Men in sarongs make me happy. I don't know why. ;)
Above: HEY, how did THIS get in here?
Above: Love love love this marcher.
Above: Awesome, right? You can read about it at www.fagbug.com!
Above: ALERT! ALERT! OVERT BRUCE WILLIS CONNECTION! The Diva from The Fifth Element. YAY! She usually gets inside the ball and rotates, but didn't when we saw her. END OVERT BRUCE WILLIS CONNECTION!
Above: This dude was just walking along, saw Jess, stalked over, planted a big kiss on her, and walked off. Aloof all the while. HEE!
Above: FRUITYLICIOUS.
Above: WELL HI THERE VIA RAIL BOY. HELLO.
Above: WHO'S YOUR FRIEND?
Above: OH, THOSE VIA RAILS BOYS? THEY'RE NOTHING TO ME. HI THERE. HOWDY. ROWR.
Above: Totally adored this couple.
Above: Hmmm. Do I have a new kink?
Above: That's right, boys, look right over here. :D
Above: And these guys just started randomly making out, in the "I am grabbing you and you are kissing me NOW" kind of way, which, well, FITTING.
Above: I was cheering a LOT for these cops, because they had the misfortune of marching practically right behind this small group that had signs like "Fuck Off Police" and "Police Out Of Parade". This guy seemed pleased.
Above: I put a helpful little arrow on this one. See those people? They are climbing down from the flat roof to the peaked roof. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that drugs and/or alcohol were a factor there.
Above: ME! I am wearing my tiara, but I got smashed in the face with the equivalent of a bucketful of water during the Parade, AT ONCE, so it's basically smushed back on my head! I did get approached by several marchers too, though. One guy ran up to me and said "We're related!" and I just looked at him blankly and TOTALLY did not get it (because I *forget* I'm wearing a tiara, you see) until he said "We're both princesses!" One other guy ran up and said something like, "Another queen! Like there aren't enough of us in this parade!" *happy smiles* I love Pride.
Pride Puppies get their own section this year!
True Colours - Cyndi Lauper, July 3, 2010
The video isn't great, but the sound is excellent.
HAPPY PRIDE, EVERYONE!
.
Saturday July 3rd
I took the bus in to Toronto, and got there super-early so I sat and wrote while I was waiting for trillingstar, aka Jess, and seriously, trillingstar takes way too long to type, and it's HOT, and my brain is fried, so she is Jess from now on in this post. So yeah, this is Pride, right, when I should be thinking of rainbows and puppies and sparkles. And instead I wrote this horrible dark awful kill-fic that should be, like, burned or something.
Aaaanyway, Jess and I headed off to Church Street for the usual Pride shenanigans.
Above: Jess got a henna tattoo...
Above: Here's the final result. Now, okay, I've seen people sitting in the chairs getting henna tattoos before, but I don't know anything about them. So I thought they were supposed to STAY like that. It was a couple hours of Jess saying "it's supposed to dry and flake off" before I realized that the 'tattoo' part of the henna tattoo was *underneath* the brown stuff. Sometimes I'm not too bright. I'm gonna blame the heat. ::nods::
After wandering around and going in to some shops and checking out some of the street fair, I was STARVING so it was time for food and daiquiris. DAIQUIRIS WOO!
Above: Two thumbs up from Jess!
Above: Jess at The Village Rainbow. This is the place that in the past has the super-thick, super-strong daiquiris that Krystle can't even drink. This year? THEY WERE PERFECTION. We each had two. :D
Above: What the heck is up with my bangs? I don't even know. THAT is the reason I now have a strip of sunburn across that middle part of my forehead. URGH.
After lunch and our daiquiris, we wandered back out into the streets. Let's see... Jess got groped by either a lesbian or a random cracked out passerby who was very excited that she came from Parkdale. I bought a very cute cloth bag ("If you don't talk to your cat about catnip... who will?" accompanied by a stoned looking cat drawing. Heh) from an animal charity. We both rubbed the ass of a bronze plaque for luck.
Above: I loved the little Mr Smileys here...
Above: And the giant flag at the 519 Centre was cool
Above: And HI THERE MR. TD CANADA TRUST MAN. Hello.
Above: No really, don't turn around. This is just fine.
Also, it was very hot and sunny and hot. So we wanted to sit, and Jess spotted this little grassy area in front of an apartment building. We sat. We relaxed. We had a smoke. THEN JESS FELL ASLEEP.
Above: My view, lounging on the grass
I let her nap for about half an hour, and if I'd been able to think of something to write I would've let her sleep longer. As if was, I woke her up and off we went for MORE DRINKS. DRINKS YAY DRINKS. (Seriously, sometimes I think my Pride revolves around where to find the best alcohol. Not that this is a bad thing...)
Above: On our way we came across the tale end of one of the drag shows. They were gooood.
Above: Then it was off to O'Grady's for more food and more liquor. Alas, O'Grady's no longer serves daiquiris, but they did have some yummy alternatives. I had a vodka concoction called a Killer Koolaid, while Jess had something called a Fat Frog. We both made 'em doubles, and had two each. HAPPY PRIDE! *hic*
Above: Me with the first Killer Koolaid. :)
By the time we were finishing eating and drinking, it was after 8pm. We paid up and headed over to Queen's Park, where Cyndi FREAKIN' Lauper was giving a free concert. Now, it's at a PARK. So we figured, you know, you just walk in, find a spot on the grass, sit your ass down, listen and watch the big screen.
But noooo. Apparently there was a BEER GARDEN, and because there was a beer garden the area had to be fenced. Which means to actually get in to the SEE the stage, you had to join a line. A line that literally stretched HALFWAY around the entire park.
Above: I snorfled this pic from somewhere online. This is just the front of the line. We didn't even SEE that. We were like, miles, from there.
So once we realized that we could just go into the other part of the park, that's what we did. We found a spot at the side of the stage where we could hear, got off our feet, stretched out on the grass and relaxed.
Above: CYNDI WOOOO! LOL *ahem* My view of the concert. ;)
Actually, if we had gotten up and moved closer, we would have been able to see at least sometimes. As it was, I could see Cyndi when she came to the front of the stage. One funny thing was that I spent the whole concert thinking she was still blonde, and then looked up some photos today and found that she was a redhead! The lighting where I was standing always made her look blonde, heh! The setlist was badly arranged, IMO, front-loaded with all the songs from her new album, instead of mixing it up with old and new throughout. At the end we did move closer for "True Colours", which was incredibly moving for many reasons: Cyndi's beautiful voice, the crowds voices raised along to sing with her, and one gentleman at the front who completely broke down during the song and almost had me in tears.
Above: CYNDI WOOO! (Snorfled from someone named Will-W.)
After the show, Jess's hubby/my BFF came to pick us up, and I got to stay over at Jess's place and meet Bossy!!!!! I was very happy and excited to meet Bossy. Bossy was less than thrilled with me. Oh, she would let me pet her. But she wasn't necessarily happy about it. And she'd be all "meow mewo love me pet me meow" with my BFF, but I'd say a word and she'd stop and go completely silent and stare at me. Oh Bossy.
Above: BOSSY! The best shot I could get. She probably also wasn't impressed with me popping a flash off in her face every ten seconds. ;)
After that? SLEEEEP GLORIOUS SLEEEEEP.
The Parade
Happy Birthday, USA!
After breakfast of a muffin and a banana, we headed straight out to get good spots at the front of the barricades. YAY PARADE.
Above: This is the guy that always leads off the parade. Usually he's scantily clad in leather, but I really liked this years ensemble!
Above: A fetish group, I think? Posting this because the guy on the right? REALLY reminds me of one of the dudes from "Mythbusters"! LOL
Above: Okay, I could only get a back shot of this guy, but you can kind of see the giant flower on his head. Well, as soon as he saw Jess in the crowd he RAN over to her and gave her a big kiss and told her he loved her hat! Why, you ask? Well....
Above: ... Here's Jess! You gotta have fun at Pride! (She got soooo many compliments throughout the day, including some guy who wanted to trade her for it and then offered to buy it!)
Above: HELLO THERE. I don't know what you're marching for and I really don't care. HI.
Above: Pretty.
Above: And Pretty. This guy two people away from me would call out to all the marchers and ask them to pose and tell them how great/gorgeous/incredible they were. I got some fantastic posed photos thanks to that guy. :)
Above: Men in sarongs make me happy. I don't know why. ;)
Above: HEY, how did THIS get in here?
Above: Love love love this marcher.
Above: Awesome, right? You can read about it at www.fagbug.com!
Above: ALERT! ALERT! OVERT BRUCE WILLIS CONNECTION! The Diva from The Fifth Element. YAY! She usually gets inside the ball and rotates, but didn't when we saw her. END OVERT BRUCE WILLIS CONNECTION!
Above: This dude was just walking along, saw Jess, stalked over, planted a big kiss on her, and walked off. Aloof all the while. HEE!
Above: FRUITYLICIOUS.
Above: WELL HI THERE VIA RAIL BOY. HELLO.
Above: WHO'S YOUR FRIEND?
Above: OH, THOSE VIA RAILS BOYS? THEY'RE NOTHING TO ME. HI THERE. HOWDY. ROWR.
Above: Totally adored this couple.
Above: Hmmm. Do I have a new kink?
Above: That's right, boys, look right over here. :D
Above: And these guys just started randomly making out, in the "I am grabbing you and you are kissing me NOW" kind of way, which, well, FITTING.
Above: I was cheering a LOT for these cops, because they had the misfortune of marching practically right behind this small group that had signs like "Fuck Off Police" and "Police Out Of Parade". This guy seemed pleased.
Above: I put a helpful little arrow on this one. See those people? They are climbing down from the flat roof to the peaked roof. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that drugs and/or alcohol were a factor there.
Above: ME! I am wearing my tiara, but I got smashed in the face with the equivalent of a bucketful of water during the Parade, AT ONCE, so it's basically smushed back on my head! I did get approached by several marchers too, though. One guy ran up to me and said "We're related!" and I just looked at him blankly and TOTALLY did not get it (because I *forget* I'm wearing a tiara, you see) until he said "We're both princesses!" One other guy ran up and said something like, "Another queen! Like there aren't enough of us in this parade!" *happy smiles* I love Pride.
Pride Puppies get their own section this year!
True Colours - Cyndi Lauper, July 3, 2010
The video isn't great, but the sound is excellent.
Click to viewHAPPY PRIDE, EVERYONE!
.