The Day After

It's the morning after the Pride parade in Perth.  Well, for the next few minutes it's morning.  Things actually went better than I had hoped.  On the train going in, I realised that there was an Elton John concert being held simultaneously [good one, City of Perth!] and was further concerned that it would mean less support for us.  Not so, it appeared, Northbridge was as crowded with fabulousness as always on Pride night!

I met my friend SD getting off the train - had seen him get on but there was a lot of noise and he didn't hear me sing out - so we walked over together to find the Swancon group.  Swancon is the Perth science fiction convention that's held here every year since...when was it.....1970 something?  I think it fits to have science fiction fans celebrate diversity in all ways. 

chaosmanor  had brought flags, so I had the Trans flag, somebody else had the ACE flag, the rainbow flag and the bisexual flag, I think it was, and so there we were, nine of us squeezed in behind the BHP contingent and after the White Pointers gay surf club group.  So we had a gay shark dancing around behind us, which may have distracted folks somewhat.  As it would.

I got one of the vilified wristbands from chaosmanor  and promised to treasure it forever, or at least for the next couple of hours.   Checking was not rigorous;  a security type came past us, greeted us, looked at a clipboard and moved on, but as folk said, it would have been obvious that we were way below the official quota for our group.   C said and I think it's correct, that the more anarchic the group, the less they'd have been able to predict their numbers.  He had flat out guessed, or so I conclude from what he said to me.

The corporates, of course, were well organised and knew precisely what they were doing.  That's certainly how it looked from the back end of the BHP legion.   That, I think, is something the folk on the Pride committee should have realised, being who they were, but did not.  This should have been prepared further ahead of time and discussed with folk.  Nobody liked having it sprung on them and one group, the appropriately named Rainbow Rebellion, had loudly announced a free-for-all on their float, all welcome. 

How that went down, I have no idea, as I never saw them.  I was told there were "hate banners"  around about corporates having no place in the parade.   Since they're sponsors, this was not well thought out either, but they should have been as limited as the community groups.  Transfolk were not the only ones to suffer from this sudden new policy.

Being the venerable dude that I am, I toddled on home after the parade [as did the rest, I think] finding myself abruptly exhausted after the euphoria of being the focus of cheering crowds (g) and went to bed early.   Today it's hot again so there are inside jobs and at some point close to evening, I must do something about the feral state of the lawn.


Note:  BHP is Broken Hill Propriety, one of Australia's BIG mining companies.