Raining on our parade

[bigmacbear]

Yesterday Rochester had its annual Pride Parade. While the parade itself got by with a light sprinkling of rain, the festival which was to follow in Highland Bowl amphitheater was effectively ruined by a heavy downpour with thunder and lightning, requiring cancellation of the RGMC's performance.

More pictures here.

After the performance was canceled, gmjambear and I went to Old Country Buffet for dinner. A number of tables were filled with Boy Scouts from California on their way to or from camp; we'd seen their buses in the parking lot. Many of the Scouts had patches on their neckerchiefs with a picture of a bear on them. Gary was wearing his "Big Bear Inc." T-shirt from San Francisco, and one of the Scouts happened to notice it, as I overheard him muttering "Bears?" as we passed him on the way to the buffet. Of course, there were a few other bearish men there as well, as can be expected. ;-)

Comments

[cincycub.livejournal.com]

Cool... is Rochester's parade always this late?

MMM... I'd like to meet with my councilman and his cronies please ;)

[gmjambear]

It has always been two weeks after most of the major pride celebrations.

For what it's worth, Montreal's is the end of July, early August!

[vicvmichael.livejournal.com]

Not to sound like a schmuck (I know, too late), but I never understood (philosophically) why Pride is celbrated on so many different date. I understand from an attendence reason - it gives folks the chance to attend multiple Prides (and harvest exponentially more tricks). In my understanding, Pride is supposed to commemorate the Stonewall riots which took place the last weekend in June. This early August stuff is like celebrating Christmas in March or the 4th of July in September.

I'm off my soapbox now.

[bigmacbear]

I think the reason Montreal does theirs in early August is there is a provincial holiday then (as is also the case in Ontario and most of the other provinces in eastern Canada). So they can have the parade and party on Sunday and have all day Monday to recover.

Toronto, however, sticks to the traditional last weekend in June. They use the provincial holiday for their Caribbean Festival.