This past Sunday, my wife and I attended a much talked about and very colorful event. We attended the Chicago Gay Pride Parade.
The parade as surpassed its simple, noble purpose and has intensified into an event for all kinds of people to flock to. You have to assume that these people are in support of LGBT rights, etc. but the real reason most people go to PRIDE, is to dress ridiculous, dance and party. Fuckin' hard.
Let's start with the setting. It was nearly impossible to catch a cab to Boystown. We waited for 30 minutes, being turned down and ignored as potential customers, probably because we were young and were facing that direction at the right time. Not for the normal reasons of smelling bad and being drunk. When we finally did get a cab, the driver admitted that our suspicions were correct, and that drivers were terrified of getting too close to the madness that was the parade. When we got there, I discovered I couldn't blame them.
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| The least slutty group there. |
It's about 89 degrees and sunny, prime weather for the absence of clothing. This allowed for everything from colorful rainbow wedding dresses, to nothing. Nothing at all. In the madness, I thought I caught a fleeting boobie, but I'll never know for sure. Most attendees fit somewhere in between. I get why a LGBT person may want to celebrate their sexuality by dressing in a bold, revealing and expressive way. Hell, they may have had to subdue their sexual interests and fashion sense for a long time, so they let it pop now, like bottled up anger. I couldn't help but think however, that most of the young women in the crowd were straight, and dressed the same as they do to electronic music concerts. The parade is also another good excuse to dress slutty, like a warm-up to Halloween sluttery. These are the same groups of highschoolers that dress like a slut for all three days of Lollapalooza, as well. The streets are packed with a river of these types. Some of them are clearly already really drunk, some just plain yelling nonsensically. A guy starts taking video with a small hand-held, and swarms of people rush him to be on film, like this guy is making a movie or something.
Most storefronts appear closed, which stands to reason. I can't imagine someone pushing their way through rank after rank of sweaty painted flesh to get into H&R Block today. There were many roads closed-off, and the river of spectators crashed into and piled against the police barriers. A few of the sober people (myself and my wife included) wandered around until we found a terrific spot, a block down from the barrier, in a bank parking lot. We were able to get a clear vantage point of the parade turning off of Halsted, better than probably 80% of the people there. Most people gave up on actually seeing the parade, and were content to smoke weed in the bank's parking lot, in tight circles. A few of the people behind us became openly curious about why we didn't jump the parking lot fence, which separated us from the police barrier, 15 feet in front of it. The idea being that the police hadn't put up the bank fence, so why can't we just hop over it and stay behind their fence, closer to the action? One boy suggested we all climb the fence. I gladly got out of his way and let him go first. Once on the other side, he faced us and said, "Oh, yeah, this is where you wanna be." Right as a cop got up behind him and retorted, "Your choice, hop back over the fence or spend the night in jail." Humbled, the boy jumped back over to join the masses.
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| Hot, dehydrated LGBT lovers. |
The cops, by the way, were out in force. People kept complaining about it, saying ignorant things like, "why are there so many cops here? What are they going to do with a helicopter? Do they expect us to riot or something?" I had to remind these idiots about terrorism, and that helicopters can fly, and are therefore very useful to pursuing suspected criminals. Truly, if someone really had it out for the LGBT community, this has to be the largest gathering of that sort possible. It is probably a good time to say that there is absolutely no shortage of stupid, stupid people at the pride parade. It's not unlike any of the above-mentioned events in that regard. Stupid people in large numbers = lots of cops. The cops carried about twenty zip-ties each, which we got to see in action plenty. You come to see the costumes and the spectacle, but you stay to see people in those costumes being zip-tied and arrested. A few notables included: a woman that looked exactly like Boo from Orange Is The New Black (in batman boxers and a sports bra), a fat black woman that made a scene, the guy that thought he could drink six bottles of beer in public, and the guy in the see-though hosiery. You'd see a shirtless guy get pulled from the crowd and cuffed. He's bleeding, so you assume he got in a fight. You see a drunk woman slurring her words and trying to high-five the cops while they cuff her, and sure, she's super drunk. Then you see a few curiosities. A normally-clothed black woman is very politely being arrested and "taken downtown" and you really want to know what she did, but can't figure it out. We were also right behind the CPD temporary HQ, so I got to overhear conversations that made me wish The Wire had been filmed in Chicago. At some point, someone pulled-open a barrier, and like a crack in the dam, a colorful stream of youth poured out. The crack was sealed by the cops, and another reveler got zip-tied away into the cop trailer.
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| "Emilio!" |
The floats ranged from boring groups of politicians, desperate for it to be known that they are OK with gay marriage, to truly extravagant. Some of the latter were so full of gyrating oiled-up gay men, that they looked like they would collapse at any moment, spilling the gay dancers onto the street. Chester Cheeto and Benny The Bull made appearances, to sweat their balls off in support of LGBT rights, bless 'em. Around this time, a young gay buck and his caped lover wiggled themselves to the fence, and practically smashed my wife with their barely-covered junk, as she sat on the ground. I thought I was going to have to head butt an almost naked man for the second time that week. Luckily, they were easily spooked and pranced off to meet their friend Kelsey. I guess.
On our way out from the parade route, we passed blocks and blocks of people, dancing and shouting. It took 15 minutes of steady walking in one direction before the technicolored crowd began to thin, and the smell of pot smoke faded. We passed an old man, headed in the same direction. What did he think of all of this? Probably the same thing he thought about any of the young, free and loud generations he witnessed in his life: "These kids call this a party?"
