Street fairs and summer go together like
60 Minutes and the employed aged, but I'd never lived three doors from one until I moved to Park Slope. In D.C., I worked on the block that hosted Adams Morgan Day, and like everyone else who had to deal with the detritus the next day, I thought of it as Adams Morgan Trash-Generation Day and moaned about it. A lot.
It was Brooklyn Pride yesterday, and I had every intention of cheering for my peeps--all I had to do was step outside, walk about 50 yards to the street that it happens on, and yell a bit. Since it's a night parade, I wouldn't even have had to dig out a suitably gay T-shirt. But we had a monster thunderstorm (actually a series of thunderstorms that lasted for four or five hours), and despite having grown up in Manchester and having spent 15 years in Seattle, I really don't care for rain, so I, erm, stayed in and complained when I had to pause an ancient episode of Foyle's War because the brave and no-doubt completely drenched marchers were making a lot of noise as they passed by.
So, there was no way that I could skip "Seventh Heaven," the absurdly named street fare that happens on that same ever-so-close thoroughfare. Still, I figured I'd check out one block, grab some food, and scurry home. Ten minutes and it'd be done. In fact, R and I spent perhaps an hour checking out stalls, finding some bargains, and buying a few things we actually liked. Thanks to those thunderstorms (which returned this morning, much to the chagrin of our upstairs neighbor who was having a stoop sale), the humidity was tolerable.
The highlight, though, was the openness of the high-schoolers who were providing entertainment outside the church opposite T Thai. I heard them perform a pretty good version of "Fantasy" and a very spirited rendition of "The Time Warp," and it looked like they were there for the rest of the afternoon. I can't imagine a group of English high-schoolers standing in front of thousands of passers-by in that spirit--they'd be too afraid of looking uncool or of friends or enemies taking the piss, but I found it quite touching and very American.
Labels: brooklyn, brooklyn pride, gay pride, park slope, seventh avenue, seventh heaven, street fair
Brooklyn Pride was a sweet shambles of an event. (Actually, though, we only saw the parade; it was
waaaay too hot to schlep down to the stalls/performances/carb fest.)
It was my first ever night parade, and I must say I don’t quite get it (the fact that it was the first pride I’d attended where I could buy the next day’s paper on my way home didn’t quite justify it).
The best part was watching all the drama. The march was supposed to set off at 8, but by 9 there were no signs of anything (other than traffic disruption) about 10 blocks past the stepping-off point. Then the dykes on bikes showed up (the usual no-helmet rule seemed even more perilous in the dark), followed by some mounted police who may or may not have been gay (if they were gay, surely there’d’ve been more women—and they were in uniform, unlike the [chubby-looking] PBA group that marched). After that came an old drag queen (my dear, the only one of the night—a record, but who wants to be strutting their fabulousness when no one can see you?) with a dog in a pram—as a lesbian mother standing next to me remarked, "Now we know why men don’t have babies," after all, he kept walking off and abandoning the poor pooch in its carriage. Then came three guys holding up a Brooklyn Pride banner. They marched by us, and then they had to stand around for a while waiting, then waiting a little more, then getting aggravated with each other. After a few minutes they were just full-on fighting, arguing over what had gone wrong with the parade, the right way to hold a five-feet-tall banner, and, from the looks of things, why the guy on the left was cruising the crowd (though quite what he could cruise was hard to see—true to Park Slope’s reputation, it was mostly women lining the street). By the time they actually started moving (and it was an inexplicable age), they were barely speaking, and the queen on the right was passively-aggressively holding the banner so that "Brooklyn Pride" was folded over and illegible from the front.
There were no marching bands or twirlers or even any floats from local gay bars (just one dyke bar, geared to the older set, judging from the folks on the float), but naturally there were a brace of campaigning politicians—
Anthony Weiner and
Gifford Miller, who are both running for mayor. There was also a lovely lesson in how to be a pol: Brooklyn Borough President
Marty Markowitz was very well-amplified (very important), had his chants down pat ("LGBT Spells Brooklyn"), and was reciting the names of candidates who were sharing his well-lit float.
The parade finally passed our street (just a few blocks from the break-up point—and I bet there were some tonight) around 10 p.m. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that pretty much every other city has its pride parade during the day!
Labels: brooklyn, gay pride, park slope, pride
