My Pride Packed Weekend is over! Friday evening featured
Trans Pride and the World Cup "Pride Match"; Saturday featured
PrideFest Capitol Hill and the Indigiqueer Festival; Sunday, which this very post will focus on, featured the Pride Parade and PrideFest Seattle Center. And all of that's not even to mention Tess's high school graduation party, which got
its own post.
And this was how my action-packed weekend went: I'd wake up sometime around 7 a.m.; Shobhit would make breakfast (French toast on Saturday, pancakes on Sunday, both with fresh blueberries from the p-patch); I would write blog posts about the previous day, cutting it down to the wire until I barely had enough time to get ready before needing to head out to the day's first event—Capitol Hill PrideFest at noon on Saturday; the Pride Parade at 11 a.m. yesterday.
Except in both cases I had to head out earlier even than that: we attempted to pick up my repaired bicycle at 20/20 Cycle when they opened on Saturday morning, only to discover some glue was still needed. Because there was no time to pick it up any other time over the weekend, and they are closed Mondays and Tuesdays, I'll now have to aim for Wednesday for pickup. And yesterday (Sunday), Laney and I had agreed to meet at my office at 10:45, but then she decided to go down there early in case there was a long line at the Starbucks on 7th between Pine and Pike, which she wanted to stop at first.
My aim had been to get into the bathroom to start getting ready by 8:30, theorizing I'd be done around 9:30, giving me roughly 15 minutes wriggle room before I hoped to head out at least by 9:45. This way I could get to the office about a half hour earlier than Laney, so I could finally take some "after" photos for my long-planned "
PCC Downtown / Central Office - Before & Afters" photo album, illustrating how the office looks now versus either when it was the larger downtown store 2022-2024, or when the new office was under construction. I have had 15 "before" photos ready to go in an album for months, but was waiting until all the final touches were done on the new office, which took some time. Well, it's basically all done now, and being in the empty office over the weekend made the perfect opportunity to take the "after" photos. So that's yet another thing I did yesterday.
Except! I did run about half an hour behind that whole intended schedule yesterday morning, just because it took me that long to finish writing the post about Tess's graduation party, after finishing my pancakes for breakfast. That meant I did not finish up until just after 10:00, and I probably headed out toward downtown at roughly 10:05, maybe 20 minutes later than hoped. (Shobhit marched with SAG-AFTRA Seattle Local, so he did not go downtown with me; we decided to meet up later.) I made up a little bit of time when a bus pulled up to a stop right as I reached it a few blocks west of Broadway, so I rode the #49, which was very crowded with people clearly headed to the Pride Parade, down as far as 9th Avenue. I texted Laney to ask if she was at Starbucks and she said yes, so I got off on 9th instead of 5th (the next stop) and met up with her there. I went ahead and bought myself a hot chocolate. That cost me $6.25 when I actually budgeted $50 for possible Pride Sunday spending, so I'm way below budget there, although that's well more than offset for the $280 bike repair expenses I had not budgeted for at all. I did also budget another $50 for Costco that I will not likely be spending either so that will help. The rest will just come out of savings.
Anyway, we got to my office at maybe 10:35, actually ahead of time in terms of Laney's and my originally stated meetup time of 10:45. Then, of course, I nearly forgot about my "after photos" plan in the office! So once Laney was settled at the bar seating by the window in the office kitchen, I set about taking the 15 specific "after" photos, doing my best to stand in the same spot, as far as I could tell, where the "before" photos were taken. I started this at 10:41, and was done at 11:00, which is when the parade is scheduled to start. When I get a chance I should really caption all the photos in the "
PCC Downtown / Central Office - Before & Afters" photo album, just to make clear exactly what I was doing there.
So, a few details about watching the Pride Parade from the office, which has a few drawbacks but I would say overall has far more benefits. Hey, why don't I just enumerate them? I'll start with the few drawbacks:
• The office kitchen window overlooks the block of 4th Avenue between Union and University, which is actually the first block of the parade staging area. What this means is that the very first contingents waited to kick off the parade to the north of us, and we had no opportunity to see them coming, or in several cases see them at all. There were also the traditional Dykes on Bikes that lead the parade every year, and we saw zero of those either. It just occurred to me that maybe next year I'll actually go outside to stand in the crowd just long enough to see the Dykes on Bikes, and then go inside to watch the rest of the parade. Even though Laney and I joked that "If you've seen one Dyke on a Bike, you've seen them all!" I have to admit I kind of missed seeing them.
• Our office is kind of surprisingly well insulated from outside noise. This is a huge benefit most of the time, but, if you're like me and, say, you love marching bands, their music as they pass by is largely muffled. We could kind of hear them okay in person, actually, but the sound did not translate that well
on video, in which the band music sounds much more distant than it really is, and it's much easier to hear the echoing chatter between Laney and myself. Shobhit did take
on brief, in-person video clip of a band practicing by City Hall, and the sound is far better in that video.
• This isn't even that big a drawback, but I decided to mention it anyway: our vantage point at these windows was fantastic, except for the way the windows are divided into four vertical panes, which meant having to move somewhat awkwardly in between panels to get good, unobstructed shots—compounded slightly by the sign post in the middle of our view across the sidewalk as well. But, I managed to get a lot of great shots anyway.
Okay, so now let's talk about the many benefits that easily outweighed all of the above:
• While the specific location being the first block of the staging area was in a way a drawback, it doubled very much as a benefit, and in two different ways. First, even though we don't get the greatest view of contingents on this first block, once those ones have launched the parade and are on their way, the
rest of the parade passes by as normal. And second, once the rest of the parade is passing by, I don't think it can be overstated how great it is to be sitting at bar seating at a window maybe 10 feet above the crowd below. It occurs a perfect line of sight to the parade contingents, with no crowds of people having even any capability of blocking our view. Side note: it occurred to me yesterday that a good protip for regular, outside parade-viewers would be to come specifically
to this block, simply wait for the first block of contingents to pass by, and find a great viewing spot on the curb of the sidewalk. The crowds were likely several people deep only two blocks further north at the intersection of 4th and Pine, but here, they were never more than one-person deep
the entire parade. Someone could have come halfway through the parade and still found a spot to watch right from the curb. Now, this
is at the far south end of the parade route so it does mean more than a mile walk to PrideFest at Seattle Center after the parade, but for many people that might be a small price to pay for a very easy vantage point.
• Even if the crowd wasn't that thick outside on this block: don't like crowds? Come inside and watch from the PCC office! I mean, if you have access, and nobody except the ~120 PCC office workers do. And that includes me! Also, just as happened with people at the old office where you could watch the New Year's Eve fireworks off the Space Needle in a comfortable, climate controlled environment, no one but me even thought to do this. Most people don't live as close to the office as I do, though, so for me this works out beautifully. Anyway, Laney is generally averse to crowds and that made an invite to watch from this location particularly appealing to her. As you may have deduced from the photo above, Ivan also wound up joining us (I'll get to that in a bit), and he's probably more crowd-averse than the rest of us put together. He might defensively say "I can handle it!" if he heard me say that (as he did when I mentioned his aversion to crowds the last time we were together), and I know he can, but I am also certain that if he can find a way to avoid them he will.
• This could easily be the biggest selling point for a lot of people: private bathrooms! And not Port-a-Potties like most parade viewers have to use either, but real, conventional bathrooms, right here at the back of the office space, usuable at any time, as many times as needed, with no line to wait in. That part really was glorious. I have often been on the parade route, looking at people in buildings right on 4th Avenue watching the parade, and I have been jealous of them. Now I don't have to be! It would be a lot more fun if we actually had something like a second-floor outdoor balcony, but you know, you can't have everything. This is still far better than fighting the crowds further north along the route.
• Climate control! Just like the New Year's fireworks at the old office when it's cold out (although with the advent of the Drone Shows I never wanted to be that far away again), this office easily offers respite from the heat. I mean, if it
is that hot, which this year it really wasn't. There had been some chance of rain all through the weekend so it was a delightful surprise how much the weather actually cooperated with Pride events: it rained lightly on Friday but stopped in favor of sun breaks in time for Trans Pride; we actually had a half hour or so of straight up deluge mid-morning on Saturday but the sun was out for basically the entire afternoon and evening; it was cloudy yesterday morning but the day was otherwise dry all day, and the sun came out for most of the parade as well. The high Friday was 64°, well below normal but quite comfortable when the sun was out; Saturday it was 69°, same deal but even better; and yesterday it was a very comparable 67°. We've had many years with far hotter weather over Pride, and Laney even noted as we watched through the windows that this weather was perfect for the marchers as they would not be dealing with too much heat while they expended the energy of marching the parade route.
• Free snacks! How much of a benefit this is can ebb and flow though, because the snacks in the kitchen itself that are typically set out for staff are a bit limited, and although I did take both Laney and Ivan to the back of the office to look at options in the Merchandising Pantry, what's available there can also be very random depending on what categories the Merchandisers are working on at any given time. There's a bunch of bags of chips, though, so Laney took a bag of tortilla chips; and I took the cheddar flavor of a bag of a new line of
Dave's Killer Bread Snack Bites, an easy one to take because there were boxes of them (stuff there was only one sample off, I would not have been as inclined to take). Ivan took a look at the options back there and declined, but later did take a few of the tortilla chips. Laney made an exception to her usually limited snack intake, then later found herself with a bit of a stomach ache. She did take two of the Lime flavored LaCroix cans available in the staff fridge, though, and I think that helped a little.
• This is a slightly lesser benefit, but still worth mentioning: easy access to electrical outlets. I think my phone is nearly the point where the battery will need replacing, which means my charge goes down more quickly than it used to. I probably would have been able to stretch it through the entire day, but it otherwise would have been right around going dead on our way home. But, I simply brought my phone charger, and when it got below 50% maybe halfway through the parade, I needed only to plug it in to charge in the outlet on the north side of the bar along the outer wall of the kitchen, and I was still close enough to get pictures through the windows even while it was attached to the wall via the charger. Laney has several mobile chargers and a lantern thing she needed charging for life in her van, and she brought those to charge while we were here as well.
So much about how we watched the parade this year was so much more comfortable, it actually made the time pass more quickly than it usually does when sitting on the sidewalk amongst the crowds outside. Laney was so delighted by it, she commented more than once how great it was and that she would quite happily do it again this way next year. I have long complained about how the Seattle Pride Parade is really too long, often taking about four hours; much to our surprise, it ended at about 2:30 this year. In retrospect, this may only be because we watched from its very beginning—had we watched from Belltown, closer to the north end of the route, it likely would have ended closer to 3:00 as usual. I think sometimes it even stretches into 3:30, though; Shobhit and I spoke to someone later too, I can't remember now who, who said it did seem smaller this year. I did check the
Seattle Times coverage, and there is no indication that it was any shorter than normal. I'm thinking, in retrospect, that it only felt shorter to us, both because we were right at the beginning of the route, and we missed things like the Dykes on Bikes.
Okay, so now let's talk about who joined
me this year.
I've already written a lot about Laney, with whom I made the plan to meet up. Laney's actually been more present throughout the entire Pride weekend with me than usual this year; typically she'll go to an event with me only one day of Pride Weekend, or maybe two; this year she actually joined me all three days! She joined me for Trans Pride on Friday; for PrideFest Capitol Hill on Saturday; and for the Pride Parade yesterday. I went to two Pride events each day, and Shobhit joined me for all the others.
Shobhit decided to come join us for a bit at the office, before he went to join the SAG-AFTRA Seattle Local group, which was actually part of the MLK Labor union contingent, just as it was last year, when I marched with them. His contingent was closer to the end of the parade, so he didn't neet to meet up with them, all the way down by 4th and Cherry, until their scheduled launch time of 1:30, and they wound up leaving at about 1:45. In any case, I took the group selfie that included him right at noon (okay, the time stamp was 12:01), so he would have arrived shortly before that. He couldn't have hung out with us more than about half an hour, because the first of many photos he texted me from where he was at was time stamped at 12:27.
So now let's get back to Ivan, who I didn't even know would be at Seattle Pride; he didn't tell me. And completely by chance, Shobhit ran into him while walking through Cal Anderson Park up on Capitol Hill. He texted me at 11:11 that he'd run into Ivan, adding:
He is gonna go to the parade after a walk. I later learned he had taken Light Rail down from Lynnwood just for Pride, even though he had to be back to work last night.
So then I texted Ivan directly, said I heard Shobhit had run into him, and let him know where Laney and I were and that he was welcome to join us for a while if he liked. I only said "for a while" because I assumed he might join us for a while and then leave; in the end he actually stayed for the entirety of the parade. Perhaps he also liked the comfort and vantage point of this location? Again by chance, when Shobhit was near the office, he ran into Ivan! So he texted me at 11:55 a.m.,
Near your office and
Bringing Ivan.
I tried to text him to come to the Rainier Square lobby entrance on Union (this is the same stretch of road where I wiped out on my bike; I even showed Laney the exact spot before we went inside), but he clearly had not seen my texts, because we saw Shobhit and Ivan through the window. I had to motion him to go back around the corner to the right, because the PCC Corner Market store is not open on weekends, which means the 4th Avenue entrance is completely inaccessible, with the metal garage door even pulled down over the glass doors. (There is a similar metal covering for the office kitchen windows, and I'm deeply grateful no one had closed that, because then we would have been fucked; it appears to control that you need a key that I do not have.)
So I went out the back exit to the office, through the Rainier Square Tower lobby, and saw them come in through that entrance on 4th Avenue. Ivan even commented on how he had randomly run into Shobhit again, "So I guess this was meant to be!"
Especially once Shobhit left, hanging out with just Laney and Ivan together was kind of an interestingly unique experience. Laney and I never run out of things to talk about, but when Ivan and I hang out together, which I even mentioned to her shortly after his visit the previous weekend for the Fremont Solstice Parade, we can go ten minute stretches at a time without talking at all. Laney told me later they did talk a little bit the couple of times I left them alone to go use the bathroom, but she also kind of worried about whether he was annoyed by her running commentary about the parade, which I generally found very amusing. I honestly don't think Ivan was even thinking much about it, let alone irritated by it. Ivan is a pretty mentally insular guy, constantly thinking about stuff and even sometimes muttering to himself, but I have always had the sense that whatever he was thinking about was not generally directly related to whatever was going on in the room at the time. (I saw one person yesterday wearing a T-shirt that said AUTISTIC PRIDE, and I thought of him.)
I do really pride myself in the wide diversity of personality types I can really get along with. I am really just as fond of Ivan as I am of Laney and love spending time with them both, even though their vibes are wildly different from each other. For Ivan's part, it feels like he's a lot more sociable these days than he used to be, at least when it comes to hanging out with other friends of mine in addition to just me. I don't feel like he would have been as inclined to join us yesterday, or go on day trips with Alexia, even a couple of years ago.
So I guess this sort of dovetails with my surprise that Ivan stuck out the entire parade with us. I did ask him if he was planning to go to Seattle Center; if he was I thought maybe we could walk up there together. But he said, "Maybe later." I have no idea whether he did or not. While Laney went to the bathroom, I escorted him back to the back exit of the office, and he gave me a hug goodbye and thanked me for inviting him. Then he was on his way.
Shobhit had texted me to ask if I was going to wait with Laney at her bus stop, but I had no intention of doing that; she only requested I do that last week after a movie because it was getting dark and she doesn't feel as safe in the city at night. He had also clearly hoped I could rush to catch up with him along the parade route after his contingent had passed and the parade ended shortly after, but I wanted to wait until Laney had used the bathroom. I didn't want to rush out and leave her here in the office by herself.
Still, although I did not catch up with Shobhit on the parade route, I got kind of close. Once Laney and I hugged goodbye on the sidewalk out on Union Street, I then went over to 4th, and was able to walk briskly on the street itself alongside the sidewalk, because the people actually on the sidewalk would have slowed me down. In Belltown, just before the end of the route, I actually caught back up with the very last contingent in the parade, which was the
Gay Fathers Association of Seattle. (I'm not quite sure why they were last, maybe a lottery thing? I was surprised how closer to the middle contingents like Leather Pride, "Pups and Handlers" or "Furries" were, as they usually relegate them further toward the end.)
The crowd was far thicker at this point, as so many people were just following the parade to Seattle Center for PrideFest there, which I always dedicate as its own
standalone photo album, which this year features 29 shots, actually more than I've managed since 2014, a year in which I combined the photos with Capitol Hill Pride Festival. And this is even though I removed the "Random Hot Guys" shots from that album in favor of putting them only in this year's "
Random Hot Guys" album, which so far has 35 shots itself, but will likely get a few more after Tacoma Pride next month and Alki Beach Pride the month after. My
Random Hot Guys collection of albums features shots from Pride at every city I've gone to Pride in, and will later include those from World Pride Amsterdam in early August. The Random Hot Guys from Seattle Pride 2025 featured 49 shots, so I have another 14 to go this year to catch up with that, which I'm not sure I'll be able to do with just two more local events over the summer.
I do the same with the
Seattle Pride Parade photo album, putting photos of hot guys in just the "Random Hot Guys" album, largely to help prevent the Parade album from being too huge. Even as it is, that album has 98 shots in it; 11 of the Random Hot Guys are from the Parade, another 8 are from PrideFest. A few of these you won't be able to view unless you are a Flickr member, due to varying levels of nudity.
Anyway, I found Shobhit outside the Armory, and we went inside there first, and then we went ahead and, just like we did last year, went downstairs to the TPS Center Theater to make an appearance at the TPS (Theater Puget Sound) "Pride After Party." And just like I did last year, I took 9 photos there, and gave them
their own photo album, which means I now also have a new "TPS Pride After Parties"
Collection. Also, because I totally spaced on the likelihood of this as yet another standalone Pride album, now that Pride Weekend is over, I actually have
9 Seattle Pride 2026 photo albums so far this year; with Tacoma Pride and Alki Beach Pride, two more will be added, totalling
eleven rather than the ten I thought it was going to be, which will then
match the record I set in 2024, which had some extra albums due to it being the 50th anniversary of Seattle Pride. (Side note, whoever did the Seattle Pride website this year did not have their shit together, because the site itself said 2026 was the 51st year, even though they made such a big deal of it being the 50th
two years ago.)
The photo I took above, which I really like, of the Moscow Mule Shobhit bought for me at the Center Theater bar, was taken at the TPS Pride After Party.
Shobhit always likes to go to the International Fountain, both to see the other hot guys frolicking in it in either underwear or sometimes totally nude, and to get wet himself. Shobhit actually marched in his rainbow underwear last year, with his Pride SAG-AFTRA T-shirt ripped into a crop top, but
kept his jeans on for the parade this year, I think maybe only because it wasn't that hot this year. He did strip down to the underwear this year after we got to Seattle Center.
In fact, he did it right before he volunteered to have a cute young man lift him into the air in an acrobatic move, and that guy was also wearing nothing but boxer briefs.
Shobhit was getting ready to do this, and wanted me to take his picture, but he wanted to have his pants off. I instinctively said, "Did you tell him you're doing that?" So Shobhit called over him and ask, "Is if okay if I take my pants off?" The guy was like, "Yeah. You see what I'm wearing?" Duh. I need to stop being resistant to Shobhit's inclination to take his clothes off, at least in environments where it's not going to be offensive to anyone who has any sense; my insticts here are clearly the result of my own residiual repression, and my disinclination to do the same under similar circumstances. I am far too self-conscious about my body, and Shobhit really isn't. He wants to enjoy the same kind of body expression many others do during Pride, and we see people of all body types doing it, wearing revealing outfits or crop tops or mesh shirts or shorts or whatever, whether they are conventionally attractive or not. I should not be discouraging this at all, and I kind of feel bad for doing that. And Shobhit has succeeded in losing enough weight that these days he's often a pound or two
lighter than I am; he's never going to have the concave belly of a svelte twink, but he should still be proud of what he's achieved. I have yet to succeed at being even fully comfortable with my body, and I have long wished I could be.
Anyway, I got a very fun video clip of this young guy lifting Shobhit in the air, which took a couple of tries, less because of their espective weights than the need to teach Shobhit the technique. I also took a screen shot from the video, from when Shobhit is lifted above the guy in a sort of Superman pose, which I also find delightful.
Now, usually I can count on Gabriel texting me to meet up somewhere, at a beer garden and then maybe going somewhere else for dinner like we did last year. He never wants to be
at Pride at not see me, which I can understand. Given the downer news that came up at the end of Tess's party Saturday night, though, I rather doubted he and Lea would come to Pride this year. I knew Tess and her girlfriend were coming, but we never ran into them; my best guess is that those two still came. I never heard from Gabriel yesterday, which was basically as I expected, probably confirming that they did not come this year. They often march with Brooks Running, Lea's employer, and Shobhit took
this shot of the Brooks Running contingent and texted it to me, without even realizing that was the company they were with.
Shobhit got chilly after getting himself all wet in the fountain, because as I said it was not super hot yesterday. We actually called it a day shortly after 4:00, which was fine by me because it left me plenty of time to spend the evening processing nearly 200 photos I had taken yesterday (which I later pared down to 169). I did this while we watched this week's episodes of
House of the Dragon, which so far is better than ever, and
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
I've deliberately not planned anything for this evening so I can write up the email photo digest I'll send out for Seattle Pride 2026. Usually I just post a converted version of that for blog posts, after travel anyway, but I'm still too dedicated to blog posts about individual Pride events for that; my blog posts have far more detail than I will need to share in the email. It did mean having to spend a lot of time writing about it all, of course, but I think I've gotten pretty good at the time management needed for it.
