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toronto knows a thing or two about throwing a party. pride week is one of the largest pride events and is apparently ranked in the top three prides in north america (which is impressive, considering it has to compete with new york, san francisco... and edmonton?). i missed it last year, so i was gonna be hanged to miss it twice (thrice if you include my missing it when i was here in 2002). of course, all week long there have been parties, events, runs, shows, festivals and all manner of collaborative efforts to educate, celebrate, in some cases demonstrate, and generally acclimate the world to the gay lifestyle, but for many, the culminating event is what it's all about - when half of the downtown core is sealed off, and the streets become jam-packed with onlookers, gawkers, perverts, and freaks alike, all sharing in the unstoppable reverie.
[blogger's note: i don't know if you all know this, but i spend a lot of time editing these photos on the left - most of the time, they are links to larger versions of the photos... you should REALLY click them this webisode... since the whole scope of the picture for this entry, more than most, can't possibly be captured in a little thumbnail!]
the only real difficulty about the event was getting to it. i left about 45 minutes early by subway, which should have been plenty of time in my own ridiculous mind. since i've never been to one of these, i had no sense of its proportion (being accustomed to the loseriffic klondike days parades back home - which i understand are no longer called "klondike days"). i take the subway most everyday during the rush-to-and-away-from-work commute - but i've never seen a subway car as jam-packed as this one by the time we got to st.george station.
and once i got outside, the magnitude of my underestimation became very suddenly apparent. i emerged from bloor station to a sea of people like i've never seen assembled in one place before. never. the toronto star is reporting that there were "thousands" of people out for the parade - bullocks - there were tens upon tens of thousands of people out for the parade. they were 20 deep along the parade path; they were on the rooftops; they were everywhere... an entire city worth of people all out to celebrate pride... fantastic!
i won't bother narrating each of the float photos... they are all fantastic!!! like this one to the left here... the house of lords (WTF!? no website that i can link to??) float had a retro WHAM!-whore theme that was awesome and has convinced me to abandon my neighbourhood barber to go and visit the "name dropping label whore". the polar ice vodka float reminded me of the intimate and sometimes tragic relationship that i have with that label, and as the only vodka label in the parade, makes me comfortable concluding that polar ice is the gayest of the vodkas available in canada.
but it wasn't all dancing float bodies and disco music at the parade. not five feet from where i was standing, some idiot watching the parade from a third storey apartment shattered his window sending shards of glass to the sidewalk below. miraculously, no one was standing underneath... everyone around was just stunned... and then kept walking on!! i went back and started collecting the shards of glass and swept them to the side and eventually, i had some helpers... oh so nice to be able to keep the citizens safe - my primal instinct was satisfied!
i was also amazed at how much more fit and attractive gay torontonians are than straight ones! at least a couple of floats had 40+ and 50+ celebrants that made me feel terrible about my present fitness state! sincerely - these people have an awful lot to be proud of indeed! i should look so good in my 40s... which alarmingly enough, are rapidly approaching.
watching the parade, watching the people watching the parade, i got the distinct impression that pride was not really about gay pride at all anymore - well, at least not in toronto. toronto seems to be more alright with its inner-gay than any other city i've been to. pride here seems to be about life and love and peace and happiness... surely these are things that anyone can appreciate, heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, and my own personal category, post-sexual.
i got none of the sense of defiance of the norm that was so prevalent maybe 10 or 15 years ago. i wasn't overwhelmed with what might be regarded by the public at large as the manifest ownership and responsibility of the aids epidemic. i didn't feel at all that any of my personal attitudes mattered one jot - only that we were all there to celebrate and have a great time and learn that everyone loves love and that love makes people into happier people than strife. when's the last time anyone went to church or watched the news and got such a wonderful take-away?
i wandered along the parade route on yonge street during the start of the parade, trying to find a good vantage point... and finally i did come upon a spot that was a little thinner than the others. after a couple of minutes, i realized that it was raining or something... water was coming from overhead. mind you, everyone had water rifles and water guns and everyone was spraying people with streams of water everywhere. but some of the rooftop watchers were taking BUCKETS of water and splashing it on the ground where i was standing. people standing around were getting so pissed because the water was ruining their hair or getting on their clothes or whatever - i thought it was great!! with the temperature around 30 degrees, the water was glorious and i was thankful every 10 or 15 minutes for the showers that would cool me down. and mostly, i was just happy that no one was peeing on me from the rooftop!
now, i realize that some of you who know me well will wonder about all the photos i've included here of hot guys. and maybe at some of the not-so-hot guys who went "full monty" along the parade path here to prove that nudism and pride can co-exist outside of the adult film industry. while it's true that hot guys and superheroes do share a sort of common form, i'm pretty solidly rooted on the heterosexual/post-sexual firmament. and there was plenty of eye-candy for the heterosexual male/lesbian/bisexual audience as well...
like this nice vegan girl with the black hair who looks a little like someone i know... i managed to smile at her big and long enough to get a big and long enough smile back from her to snap this nice picture... there might be a reason there to return to veganism! or how about the naked news team who sponsored a float... pretty overt sexuality there no matter what your preference. and then there was the woman in the wheel - or "wheel woman" as i call her. she rolled along the parade route in a giant wheel that looked like loads of acrobatic fun!!! no - there was something for everyone here at this pride parade!
but as with all good things, after like two and a half hours, the parade came to an end. the seemingly endless line of over-the-top entertainment and excitement ended and crews came along to remove the banners and take down the parade barricades.
i got to hop the gate and walk straight down the parade path to wellesley street, marvelling at the million or so people who were crammed into and along the street all flooding into the gaybourhood of church street. as busy and crowded as yonge street was, church was even worse. there was human gridlock for 10 straight (i couldn't think of a better word) blocks as people crammed into dance clubs, bars, restaurants, beer gardens, event stages... every conceivable target of congregation was packed to the rafters.
i left the parade area and headed south to find some shawarma. yonge street looked like a tornado had hit it with loot and necklaces and flyers and empty water bottles literally carpeting the road. what a trip! i was just elated with the energy of the parade and wandered along to ironically less densely-packed areas like the entertainment and theatre districts around richmond and king.
i didn't find any shawarma that looked appealing, so i decided to exercise my freedom of love by hitting my all-time favourite toronto find, burrito boyz.
when i got back to my apartment, i was waiting for the elevator with an older gentleman who was coming from grocery shopping. he asked me if i'd been downtown, and i told him i had - that it had been my first pride parade and that it was totally insane. he said that he went years ago, and that he'd come to realize that he was proud 365 days of the year and didn't need to deal with the nutty crowds anymore. he told me, "i'll go to woody's tomorrow, it'll be way easier." and that to me was a perfect denouement. all of the noise and brouhaha made for an exciting adventure, and even though part of me wishes that we could have a pride parade every weekend, we can't always live in a perpetual state of celebration. it's so like that with life, don't you think? celebrating life and love and happiness should be the most valuable thing a person can do and it's fantastic to be reminded of it from time to time with a huge blowout. but the more important enterprise, the one that leads to a bigger and better happiness, is the calmer appreciation of love and life that one can celebrate every single day.
unless you're post-sexual like me. then you're mostly happy every day that no one is peeing on you from a rooftop!
love,
- g
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