It's been two years since I was last at Seattle Pride in the Park, because this event always happens on the first Saturday of June as a kickoff event to Pride month, but last year on that day Shobhit and I were in Washington, D.C. for World Pride, so missing Seattle Pride in the Park was a relatively small price to pay.

That makes two years I've missed this event since I started going in 2017; I also missed it in 2018 because that year, back in its early days as the "Volunteer Park Pride Festival," that was the day we left for Wallace, Idaho as a pit stop on our drive to our anniversary trip to Yellowstone National Park.

I have to digress a little here now, because the Seattle Pride organization produces "Pride in the Park," which has been the official name of the event since 2022. But, it was previously known as the "Volunteer Park Pride Festival," and even before that, the "Pride Picnic." I don't know how I did not register attending this event until 2017, but it apparently began in 2009—apparently always organized by the Seattle Pride organization, Seattle Out & Proud. It was the "Pride Picnic" between 2010 and 2015; rebranded the "Capitol Hill Pride Festival" between 2016 and 2019; was canceled in 2020 due to covid and postponed to what they called the "All Together Now In-Person Pride Event" at Volunteer Park (where Shobhit and I both got covid boosters) in September 2021; and then became "Seattle Pride in the Park" in 2022. I suspect I never went in the early years because it struck me as a small, neighborhood even that had little for me; they may not even have had much in the way of stage performances in those years. But ever since it became a larger, Pride Month kickoff event, I have been much more interested, and have come each year I was able since 2017, and so I attended in 2017, 2019, and then 2021 through 2024; and now back again in 2026.

Who I have gone with has varied over the years, although of the seven times I have gone, Shobhit has joined me the most times, at four. Back in 2024, though, he had to work, but Laney went with me (she has come with me three times), and we were there from 1:10 to at least 5:45—largely because, in addition to browsing the booths, we watched some of the main stage performances, and we also spent some time getting drinks and dancing. That was like four and a half hours, which provided plenty time for me to take 49 shots for that year's photo album, the second-highest on record (the record was the 59 shots in 2023, the one year both Shobhit and Laney came with me; Laney and I arrived together that year first, again at around 1:10, and Shobhit met up with us later; the first photo I took of him that day was at 2:56, but he must have been there a bit by then, as that photo is of him napping on the blanket tote next to Laney. My final photo at the park that day was take at 6:49, so that was a pretty long one. As I recall that day ended with Laney and me sitting amongst the trees and her having a drunken cigarette.

Anyway! The point is, this year Shobhit and I got to Volunteer Park at noon, right when the event started; we left right when it started raining, at about 2:50. So this year was only about three hours, so a 39-shot photo album for that amount of time isn't bad.

Laney was going to be coming this year, but canceled a couple of days prior because she's just too busy preparing to move out of her apartment and into her new travel van on the 15th. The weather forecast had long been dicey for Saturday anyway, and the sense that I got was that she was not super likely to go if it was going to be rainy anyway, so this really did not significantly break with my expectations. Ironically, the hourly forecast kept changing throughout the day, and by the time we were shortly to be leaving, the daily little icons had clouds but no rain until 5:00! That changed again later, with like 35% chance of rain by 3:00, but I thought whatever, I'll take it!

Laney had mentioned a chorus I had never heard of, and when she was planning to go she wanted to be there by noon, to see them perform. They're called STANCE, which stands for Seattle Trans And Nonbinary Choral Ensemble. I had never heard of them and this piqued my interest, so I still wanted to get there by noon to see them even after Laney backed out. So, Shobhit and I left to walk to Volunteer Park at 11:35. Normally this walk would take 20 minutes tops, but I wanted to pad some time given my current condition after my bike accident, the recovery from which is pretty slow going. On the upside, the weather was shockingly gorgeous the whole walk there: merely partly cloudy skies; I had to wear my sunglasses; I took off my jacket and held it most of the walk.

Indeed, the first photo I took while entering the Pride area of Volunteer Park was at 12:04. Once we reached the amphitheater area, though, we did see a drag performance by the emcee, Aleksa Manila, but after that, a whole lot of not much. I even took a photo of the mainstage lineup as we walked into the main section of vendor booths, and it showed STANCE as the second performer inside the first section. With nothing happening onstage, though, I suggested we just browse the booths and then go back toward the stage once we heard they were on.

I am only realizing now, looking at that lineup schedule again, that the first block was two hours and not just one; it was nearly 1:00 by the time we finished browsing the booths, and I thought they must have missed the gig or something. There was nothing by DJ music being played from the stage that entire time, and then Shobhit and I moved on to other sections of the park. For all I know they did perform between 1:00 and 2:00, but if they did, I totally missed it.

Aside from the minor pains in my abdomen slowing me down a little (and if I have to pee, just re-doing my fly and belt buckle takes way longer than normal), the rest of it was pretty standard routine for our experience with these events. Shobhit likes to walk past all the booths there are, and stop at a lot of them. We stopped for several minutes at the Seattle Gay News booth, of course, and Renee got up and gave us both big hugs. We caught up and I said I couldn't promise but may be interested in a write-up about World Pride Amsterdam, just as I had done last year for World Pride D.C.. Renee was very interested, as I thought she might be. I also learned a little more about how the paper is doing, and she mentioned a small history museum about the paper at their current office at All Pilgrims Church on Broadway. I may actually go check it out sometime.

We went to lots of other booths as well, getting the swag Shobhit always loves to get (okay, I enjoy some of it too), including sunscreen, candy, condoms and lube (god knows when I'll comfortably be able to have sex again), little clear shoulder-strap bags, and more. We walked through the road with the food trucks, and we split a personal Chicago-style pizza from Delfino's, which Shobhit was convinced was the place that had provided the pizza at the LMN Designs event during First Thursday Art Walk, except he said the same thing about the pizza place right in Occidental Square, and that place is actually called DeLeo Bros Pizza (and their pizzas did not look quite as deep as what we had at LMN Designs anyway).

We walked through more booths on the north lawn at the park, closer to the Volunteer Park Conservatory. By the time we made our way back it was around 1:30, and still it hadn't rained! After browsing a little bit more (including a booth amusingly selling "cum towels" with fairly graphic illustrations on them, resulting in my Bluesky post getting slapped with an "Adult Content" warning), I wanted to just sit and listen to the performers for a bit, and that's what we did for most of the hour between 2:00 and 3:00. We saw a lovely singer named Grace Love; we watched Cheer Seattle; and we watched Rainbow City Marching Band.

I might even have stayed a bit longer, except that it turned chilly enough that Shobhit, who had worn only shorts and a Pride tank top over a harness, asked to wear my jacket; for a good while I was actually comfortable enough without the jacket (which I had smartly brought along) so it was fine. But, even after the Executive Director of Pride got earlier on the mic and told us all that the weather was cooperating because she "took care of it," the rain finally started to fall at around 2:45. It wasn't super heavy, but it was enough, and I was ready to go home anyway. Aleksa Manila got on the mic and said, "Jesus is crying!"

Shobhit and I did stop at the outhouses on the way out, as we both needed to pee. This was basically under tree canopy so the light rain really didn't hit us there. I got a pretty good shot while I was standing in line there, of a guy I could only describe as "queer priest." Or maybe "priest" is the wrong word. Friar? I have no idea!

The southbound bus was so delayed that it never even caught up with us as Shobhit and I walked back home on 15th, after Shobhit bought a couple of tomato plant starts from a guy selling them in his front yard. Boy, do I feel young! I'm walking carefully to minimize pain and my husband is buying tomato plants. The excitement never stops in my neck of the woods. It did rain fairly steadily the whole walk home; Shobhit had his collapsible umbrella but he kept walking faster than I could. I didn't get too terribly wet, whatever. We spent much of the rest of the day working on the jigsaw puzzle of illustrated cats that he broght back from Portland, before I got a notice from Letterboxd that The King of Comedy, which I had never seen, was available on Prime Video. Shobhit continued working on the puzzle the entire time I watched it. We've otherwise been binging Curb Your Enthusiasm, which neither of us has ever watched either, around four episodes or so a day. Anyway that puzzle will almost certainly be finished today.

Well, I already have my Seattle Pride 2026 collection of albums started. I'm not sure how many separate Pride albums I'll manage this year, but probably at least eight, maybe more. I already have the requisite "Random Hot Guys" album going (a 22-year tradition!), but only one guy in it so far in this year's album. It was too cool weather-wise for there to be many guys in briefs or short shorts or whatnot, although there was that one guy with a great ass who had the nerve to wear shorter spandex under his short shorts. Rude.

[posted 8:36am]