I told Tracy yesterday that we should make it our own tradition to go to the Tacoma Pride Festival every year together. She was into the idea. Tracy isn't always able to keep plans, so we'll see how that shakes out over time, but, so far so good: even though I just went by myself in 2023, I've met up with Tracy there both last year and this year now. I started off suggesting Laney ride the bus down there with me, but she's never felt super up for it and still hasn't gone with me; Tracy grew up in nearby Puyallup, and this year in particular she's now living with her dad in her childhood home, as is her sister. This makes it a pretty easy event for her to meet up with me at.

Last year, she brought her sister Cindy, a lesbian who only just came out in the past few years; and their cousin Crystal. So I went from going solo in 2023 to it being a group outing last year. This year it was just a duo, Tracy and me; I can't remember the reason Crystal couldn't make it, but Cindy had to work and also is going to school and needed to study for multiple tests. She just didn't have the time to join us. Thankfully Tracy did.

I'm having a hard time pinpointing exactly how long the Tacoma Pride Festival has been happening, except that it started "in the early 1990s," which would put it at over thirty years at least. My interest two years ago was less of it being the first time I heard of it than it was a new interest I developed in regional Pride events in addition to just those in Seattle. The smaller events in surrounding cities have a certain charm that the massive scale of Seattle, even though I love that most of all, kind of lacks. I had a great time at Tacoma Pride in 2023 even though I was there by myself, and actually found the hired entertainment at the mainstage to be better and more engaging than the ones at Seattle PrideFest. I even discovered a new artist and downloaded their EP on Apple Music.

This year, the event was held at Wright Park, which I had never even heard of—and.I had not paid enough attention to the Tacoma Pride website to register the change; I assumed it would be downtown Tacoma just like it was the past two years. They used to have it there, and switched it to downtown for roughly the past decade, according to that Tacoma News Tribune article, but the size apparently once again made them shift back to the park this year. I did not realize this until well after I got off the bus on Commerce Street, and saw that there was nothing a block down the hill on Pacific Avenue like before, but I thought maybe they shifted a block further north or something. I walked a few blocks to the west, up the kind of steep hill, to get a photo of the Tacoma Municipal Building—I realized later that I should have stayed up there. I walked my way back down from there, but found all the streets totally empty of the festival. Where the hell was everyone?

I finally checked the website: oh. Wright Park. It was almost a mile away. An 18-minute walk, Google Maps said. And it was right past the Municipal Building. I texted Tracy, who had parked at Freighthouse Square and gotten on Light Rail into downtown, and who also did not know the location had changed. Luckily—and I had no idea about this either—Tacoma's Light Rail line was expanded just in 2023, and it goes right by Wright Park. So, once I got there on foot, Tracy was there minutes after. It took a few minutes to find each other but we finally did.

And I have to say: I don't know how much this might have just been perception, because when it was downtown you had to turn around corners to find rows of different blocks and also the space between them was wider on the streets, but it still felt much bigger this year, and especially more crowded, particularly shortly after I arrived at roughly 1:30 pm. It probably was relevant that there were rows of vendor booths on either side of footpaths that were far narrower than they had been on streets.

The flipside of that is, being in a park—Wright Park is 27 acres in size—there was also far more green space and grassy areas for people to mill about or sit down in. It was a far more pleasant location for the festival, and with many trees that provided a great deal of shade on what was a very hot day (high was 81°). Wright Park also has a conservatory, so to me it actually had a very similar vibe to Volunteer Park here on Capitol Hill, even though at 48 acres Volunteer Park is just under twice the size.

However they accomplished it, Tracy and I agreed that it felt like a very successful, incredibly well-attended event. We browsed every row of booths, I got some good photos, and at multiple booths I was very tempted to buy fun earrings but I resisted because I just don't have the budget. I've been over budget since right after my last paycheck, having started at about $63 over budget, but I came in so far under budget at Costco that it went down to about $23 over budget. But then other expenses I had not budgeted or came up, particularly the pair of black Levi's I bought for something like 40% off due to a Prime Day deal on Amazon, plus I didn't budget anything at all yesterday, but Tracy and I took Light Rail back to downtown Tacoma once we were done at the park (that was at about 4:45, so we spent just over three hours there) and had dinner at The Office Bar & Grill. That, incidentally, was also where we had all gone out to for dinner and drinks last year—and last year, it was packed. I did think about how much business places downtown must be losing this year now that they've moved Pride away again. Yesterday the place was pretty dead. (To be fair, we tried a place called Matador first, and they said it was a half hour wait, so we moved on.)

Tracy and I discovered it was Happy Hour when we happened to be at The Office Bar & Grill. We had talked about sharing a dish to save money, but then chose to get an order of nachos each when we saw the Happy Hour deal was $2 off, from regular price $13.25. We had no idea the nachos would be so huge, though, and probably still should have shared them for that reason alone. Nachos don't travel well, so I did not get them in a box to go. And I only managed to eat about half that giant tray. They were very good though.

We had talked about riding Light Rail together back to Freighthouse Square, since my bus has a stop right by there at Tacoma Dome Station. But then I saw my bus was leaving downtown in 15 minutes, so I decided I would catch my bus there instead. This did give us barely enough time to walk like three blocks away to a store called Vessel Vintage Collection, which a friend of hers owns and runs. She apparently has said she wanted to meet me, so now she got to, if only very briefly. And now I can't remember her name.

So I walked the block and a half or so from there to the Sound Transit bus #594 bus stop, and caught the northbound bus leaving at 7:30. It reached the last stop in downtown Seattle at 9th & Howell at around 8:25. I walked the rest of the way home up Capitol Hill from there, which would have gotten me home at about 8:45. Almost immediately I sat down with Shobhit to watch this week's two PBS reruns of As Time Goes By, which we love to watch on Saturday nights. Then we watched the final two episodes of Dying for Sex on Hulu, which Laney had recommended to me and was excellent. It was probably around midnight when I got to bed, which happened both evenings this weekend.

It was a very full and also a very lovely day. As most of them tend to be!

(Full photo album on Flickr)

[posted 8:38pm]