Pride™ Festival Friends

With a crowd estimated to be about 800,000 people, I'm utterly amazed that I can find so many people I know. Here are a few highlights from this year's findings...

Finding Friends in the Crowd

My little Belgian friend Wim and I watched the parade for a while and got to the festival around 1:30. We hung out for a while until he wanted to wander off. By the time I found him again, he was dancing on the hitch of the generator that powered the dance area. You can see him in the picture at left, clowning around with my pal Irwin. The three of us spent the rest of the festival hanging out, finding people, eating and then when it was all over, we walked through the arctic winds to go on a bit of a SOMA bar crawl

The Usual Suspects

For some reason it wouldn't be much of a celebration if I didn't see my pal Happy Kat. Like last year, she was with her flatmate Mike (far right in the photo) and her boyfriend Ben (wearing the hat). The four of us checked out a few booths and beverages and then like last year, we met up with my pal Puppy (far left in the photo) he was waiting for Roger (his BF) to turn up.

Finally!

I looked for Lindsey and her clique in all the usual places all weekend long and obviously I kept missing them. I was so elated when I turned a corner and found her sprawled on the grass just round the corner from the SLO posse picnic.

I was so bummed I didn't see her at the gas station during Pink Saturday like I did last year.

SLO Posse Picnic

This year, I found the SLO Posse. Their balloons had flown away, but the description of their location was a lot better than last year (second grassy bit away from the Lincoln Statue to the left of the Main Stage). I snapped these photos when I first found them because I didn't know when / if I'd get that way again. Turns out Irwin and I did stumble back by there and I totally forgot I had a camera when Coleman, Kelley and Josh turned up... but I probably have enough photos of them on here somewhere.

V-Ness & Otis

James

Loren

My token STR8 Friends

Ggreg Taylor introduced me to his old high school friend Sean a few years ago and we've been friends ever since. I know quite a few guys called Sean so I use qualifiers to differentiate them. My little STR8 friend Sean, seen here with his wife, works for Bluewater Network. If you roll the cursor over the picture you can see the close up. They're such a cute couple. Sean told me they had a booth at Pride, but I never thought I'd find it. Lucky for me, it was up the row from the Breast Cancer booth where Happy Kat volunteered.

Potty Pair

Not that it happened all that frequently, but it seemed like every time I had to queue up for the loo, I'd run into one of these two. Actually the first time I saw them, Scott and Steven were both waiting together. So I had captive subjects for the photo at left.

Blast From The Past

I went backstage at the Fag Friday's Dance Stage to see Dave and Jose, the promoters of Fag Fridays. I didn't expect to see so many old friends like Pete Avila, Jody, Alicia, Mike, Santiago, Gary, Greg, Jennifer and more... far too many friends to photograph and far too much fun to be contained in these pages.