Gay Pride 2010

This past weekend was Gay Pride 2010, the 40th anniversary of the first parade in the City. One of my friends, NV, came up from Miami Beach for his first NYC Gay Pride, which turned out to be a fun-filled weekend with the boys. On Friday night, we ate dinner with AR & JM at a new Thai restaurant in Chelsea. NV & I then headed to Splash, where we met up with more friends for a few hours of high-tech dancing and “acrobatically inclined” go-go boys (don’t ask, you had to be there). I had the dance remix version of Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” playing in my head for most of the next day (see below).

On Saturday, NV & I headed to the Brooklyn Museum for two queer-themed exhibits, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade and American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection. (We also wound up going to The Metropolitan Museum of Art today with MP & CF to see the other half of the same fashion exhibition, American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity; both exhibitions are beautiful, but the Met’s installation is a stunning visual feast for the eyes.) Following the Brooklyn Museum visit, we did some obligatory clothes shopping at Brooklyn Industries. After a mandatory disco nap, we headed out for the night to another friend’s place where 10 of us met up and had cocktails (vodka & cranberry seems to be the gay drink these days) along with pizza and salad for dinner. Afterwards we all went to Eastern Bloc in the East Village for some classic 80s music, where we met up with yet more friends. I was under some ridiculous notion that this bar would have a dance floor, but that was not the case, so we basically squished ourselves into a long stretch of people, sweat our asses off, ordered more drinks, and created our own dancing zone, including on boxes overlooking the crowd.

Sunday was the official Gay Pride Parade. My friends and I were a little disappointed in it this year. It may have been because the theme was more about social action such as the legalization of gay marriage, and as a result the parade was less the over-the-top, sexy, flamboyant craziness as it had been in the past. As bklynbiblio readers know (including from my more detailed explanatory post on last year’s parade), I purposely avoid politics on this blog. I do of course have great respect for the long history of activists who have helped make a difference in civil rights (including, for instance, the lesbian activist Storme DeLarverie, one of the original Stonewall protesters, who according to this recent article in The New York Times sadly now has dementia and lives in a nursing home in Brooklyn). However, when it comes to the parade, people really just want to be entertained. Yes, we admit it, we want more floats with hot go-go boys dancing on them. We got a few, but not enough. (One of the lesbian clubs had a float with sexy dancing girls on it!) It was also surprising that no one threw out beads (a la Mardi Gras) as they always have in the past. I’m not sure if that’s a product of the suffering economy or a desire to keep the City cleaner. All that said, don’t be completely misled by our disappointment, because there were some festive floats with outlandish figures (Latinos know how to party). You can see a great photo stream of pictures by Tom Giebel on his Flickr group. The picture above is by him as well, and it shows just one of the gay groups marching. Who knew there was a group that brought together queer bloggers in NYC?! After the parade, we went to Barracuda for drinks, Rafaella’s for dinner, and then home to crash. Needless to say, I slept well last night.

In the spirit of Gay Pride, here’s Lady Gaga’s provocatively queer video for “Alejandro.” I feel so privileged that my own name gets vocal prominence after those of Alejandro and Fernando.