I got a new, extra photo album for my Seattle Pride 2025 collection yesterday! It's only 14 shots and that will likely make it the smallest album of the collection this year (even less than the 18 shots I got for the Indigiqueer Festival on Friday), but that's okay—whatever works!

This was for the annual Pancake Breakfast at GenPride Center. It's free—if you want it to be, anyway—and Shobhit was the one who expressed interest in going, before I was like: free pancakes? Hell yes! Also, I did not expect the pancakes to be so great. I mean, how often is a free meal a high-quality one? Anyway, it wasn't exactly free, in the end: Shobhit actually gave them a $25 donation on behalf of both of us when we went in.

GenPride, the organization focuses on "LGBTQ+ affirming senior housing," uses the GenPride Center as a "community hub," in a space just inside the entrance to Pride Place—where Laney lives. Laney's twisted ankle from her fall on Friday prevented her from being able to join for any of the Pride events at all this weekend; her swollen ankle kept her awake most of the night Friday night and she said she only got about three hours of sleep. She texted me at one point that she'd text again if she felt like going out to PrideFest Capitol Hill later, but I pretty much knew as of that text that it wasn't going to happen.

It was a bummer not getting to do anything with Laney for Pride this year, but certainly not the end of the world. And it was especially nice that Shobhit is no longer beholden to random work shifts, which has left him freed up to go with me to basically all the Pride events—we have the entire weekend together, and we've gone to all the events together. I did exchange several texts with Laney while we were at the GenPride Center, though, so she still felt a little bit part of Pride: I started by texting her a photo of the space and saying, We're right below you 🙂.

Laney had suggested we get there by 10:00 when the doors would open—breakfast was at 10:30—because it would likely get very crowded. I imagined a line out the door, which was not the case at all. We did get there right after 10:00, and were a little confused as to how to get inside, as the space is just inside the secured entry to the building. (I should ask Laney how this is handled on an everyday basis.) A lady saw us from inside and gestured that someone would let us in, and a second later a guy who happened to be by the front door opened it for us. "You don't look too dangerous!" he quipped.

And once inside, we were hardly the first people there, but there were still empty tables. We found some seats at the end of a table near the back of the room. A couple of people introduced themselves to me, and Judy, who I later learned was the Executive Director of GenPride, greeted me warmly as soon as I came in the door, almost as though she knew me. She later came by our seats while we were eating, and even said something like, "Sorry if I was too forward." I had to say, "Not at all!" At one point she said, "I feel like I really know you, from all of Laney's Facebook posts." Ha!

At another point, Shobhit and Judy were chatting standing together about halfway up the room, and I snapped a photo. It unfortunately kind of looks like she's scolding him with a pointed finger, but the conversation was very friendly.

Shobhit and I were not the youngest people there, but I'd say we were close. I did not get the sense that there was any age limit to this particular event, but it's still for an organization for queer seniors so it makes sense that the crowd skewed older. (And Shobhit and I are only young by comparison; he's been getting AARP shit in the mail since before he turned 50—which I am starting to get now too.I believe the cutoff for actually living in the Pride Place building is 55.) A couple of older gay men sat right next to Shobhit and me: next to me, a guy named Jerry who wore hearing aids; and next to Shobhit, an older Asian-American man named Leo, who talked about how he just got back from a 350-mile bike ride across South Korea. They both spent a lot of time knocking their hands against the table while they talked, making the whole table—one of those portable, long white tables with collapsible legs—shake. It was a little bit annoying, and made me think of the random annoying habits that happen with people as they get older. But I lived with it!

Shobhit and I had arrived at about 10:15, and we left at 11:00. So, we were there for about 45 minutes, and we spent half an hour there after the pancakes started getting passed out. A lot about that breakfast surprised me. I kind of expected it to be more buffet style, but they had volunteers who came around setting the plates in front of us—two 6" pancakes, a cup of maple syrup, and a cup of fresh fruit (amazingly, all of the fruits being fruits I like, which is unheard of:blueberries, which I put on top of my pancakes; pineapple; grapes; and watermelon)—and before that, they came around with rolling carts of cups of apple juice for everyone. When I texted Laney that the pancakes were surprisingly good, she replied, We have a professional chef! And I think she donates her time on Pride weekend.

Anyway, I'm really glad we went. And god knows, $25 for two is still kind of a steal: had we actually gone out for brunch at a restaurant, it would have been potentially double that, or at the very least one and a half times that price, or both of us. And the key difference here is that the money goes to a really good and important cause.

Shobhit and I walked home from there, and I spent some time writing my blog post about Friday evening's events, the Indigiqueer Festival and Trans Pride Seattle. After that, Shobhit wanted to go for a walk, down to the Franz Bakery outlet, to give him some extra steps. That's about a three-mile walk round trip, so it would have taken us around an hour. We did also stop at Amazon Fresh for a few things on the way. The Franz Bakery outlet is very close to there. Their selection varies, so I was disappointed to find no fruit pie snacks available this time.

Even though GenPride Center is only about half a mile from home, walking there and back added another mile to our cumulative walking for the day. Add that to the walk down to Franz Bakery Outlet and back, and then walking twice to the north end of Broadway and back through PrideFest Capitol Hill, I got in an unusually large amount of walking yesterday: my Health app indicates 21,730 steps for yesterday, or a cumulative distance of nearly 10 miles (okay, it was 9.7 miles). I haven't had that kind of daily walking since we were in Washington, D.C.

I actually made a note of this in the header section of my photo album for this year's PrideFest Capitol Hill: the first walk through was 3:30 to 5:15 and I took 47 shots that time (48 if you count the photo I took at home of the cocktails we made to go); the second walk through was between 7:00 and 8:00 and I took another 18 photos that time. It's just because of that second walk that this year's photo album is by a fair margin my largest photo album ever for Capitol Hill PrideFest. Side note: I have officially lost interest in the distinction between this and the ostensibly separate "Capitol Hill Pride March & Rally," which as of last year was moved to the previous weekend—at which I got only two photos last year, just passing through Cal Anderson Park, and it was kind of stunningly pathetic. They did the same thing this year, but I didn't see any of it. Once again it was on the same day as the Fremont Solstice Parade, which I went to last year; and also the same day as Georgetown Pride, which Shobhit and I went to this year. (That, the Indigiqueer Festival, and the Pancake Feed are all unprecedented Seattle Pride photo albums for me this year, helping make up for having to miss both Pride in the Park and Alki Beach Pride this year.)

I should note that I have done the walk up Broadway and back twice in other years too, sometimes first with Laney and then later with Shobhit. This time it was just twice with Shobhit, and I took a lot of photos both times. After I posted several photos of it at the end of the day yesterday, one was the video clip you see in the middle of this post. On Facebook, Laney posted a comment about how that singer was a guy who sang in the Seattle Men's Chorus's ensemble group Captain Smartypants at the same time Laney was in Seattle Women's Chorus's ensemble group Sensible Shoes. "And now Chris had done amazingly well in many karaoke competitions all over the country and also overseas!" She tagged him her comment, which made him share the video to his own page. I then felt a little bad that I didn't record a longer clip of him singing Erasure's "Respect." I just recorded 16 seconds of him while Shobhit and I were walking past.

There was a time when that other, "Capitol Hill Pride March & Rally" took up the space at Cal Anderson Park and on Denny just east of Broadway, but now PrideFest Capitol Hill uses up all of that space, in addition to Broadway between Olive/John and Roy. They kind of just took it all over, and I don't care that much about the stupid history anymore—although I'd still love to see someone do a story accounting it all in detail, as it's full of drama. (Maybe I should?) So, Shobhit and I walked through a lot of the booths in Cal Anderson Park too, although we bypassed them on our second walk out, opting instead to go all the way down to Broadway on Pine first. As a result, quite by accident, we ran into the Dyke March. I often forget that happens traditionally the night before the Pride Parade. We then walked to Roy again, and back again—but on the way back, we did go through Cal Anderson.

It was on our way back the first time, actually, that I decided I wanted a good photo record of my outfit for the day, which included my "GAY PURRIDE" cat T-shirt I bought in 2017, plus my dangling rainbow chain earrings, which I can't remember when I got—if I bought them or they were a gift, or when. Dammit! That's annoying. Oh well. No, wait! I got them in 2022—and they were a gift from Tracy, along with the rainbow rain cloud earrings (which I wore last Thursday). I've been very conscientious about coordinating "Pride outfits" all weekend, and wore my disco ball earrings on Friday—the first time I wore those ones to work, actually, and I got multiple compliments on them that day, both at and away from work—with my rainbow unicorn T-shirt I got at PrideFest Capitol Hill just last year.

Anyway. Otherwise, we spent time yesterday binging The Bear season 4 at home, in between our walking or Pride outings. Now I need to get this posted so I can get ready for today's Pride Parade!

[posted 8:47am]