Reflections on the Long Beach Pride Parade

 

This weekend, it was LB Pride and my street was mostly shut down, so it was a weekend of partying.

I kicked it off on Saturday by being invited up to my neighbor’s party, where I walked in to the back patio and was greeted by his mother immediately shoving her hand rather violently down into my cleavage. Guess I can cross that one off the list in life? I found it amusing. Alright then. moving on….

This morning, I almost wasn’t going to drag myself to the parade due to a little too much partying the night before with my friends for my friend Silver’s birthday, but since I’m a very strong supporter of equal marriage rights, and the parade happened within walking distance of my house, I figured I’d drag my butt out of bed to check out the festivities. My friend , Colleen, has been talking about how it is her favorite day of the year here ever since I’ve known her, and now I know why! I’ve never seen such an outpouring of love at any public event  ever.

 I walked over to Colleen’s  house and when I arrived, I was promptly handed a rainbow colored jello shot:

I was expecting huge crowds and extremely flamboyant costumes like the West Hollywood Halloween party I went to last year, but what I got instead was a very peaceful & loving experience of watching people come together to support each other. There were people in costume, but mostly it was just people smiling, hugging, and being supportive of each other.It was amazing how many large companies (Wells Fargo, Jet Blue, etc) came out to show their support, as well as churches, local dog rescue groups, police, veterans, high school kids, and even parents of gay kids:

This veteran was kind of riding by himself, and a woman came up to hug him and it almost brought me to tears. You can’t see very well in this photograph, but his left leg is missing.

In the wake of all of the crap that goes on with Westboro Baptist Church, it was really refreshing to see so many churches marching in support. The signs they were holding made me regain a little bit of respect for organized religion. These people are true Christians.

In addition to the religious groups, there were other  political and health related messages peppered throughout the parade:

 

Obviously there were a lot of rainbows and some flamboyancy:

 

 

There was a lot of love:

And there were definitely a few good looking and/or really interesting people there:

 

It was really just a feel good event. I have a lot more photos to post, I’ll put them in a gallery at some point soon.