Rainbow Hearts and Open Minds

 

June is Pride Month. Supporting LGBTQ+ people is important to us, not only in June. But June is the month when all the fun events take place and we celebrate life and love in all its colorful shades.

The Geek's company participates in our local Pride Parade every year and of course we joined them. Dressing up for the event is half the fun already. The Geek was standing out with his rainbow wig.

 Next to him I was almost boring with the rainbow flowers I had arranged on my hat.

We were in third position in the parade which meant we could watch almost the entire parade after we had reached the finish. Everybody in our team took up some kind of "job" - the Geek was giving out some colorful necklaces to the people who were watching the parade while I was one of the flag bearers of the rainbow flag. You can see that I had real fun with that!

photo by B.S.

We sang and danced along the streets of downtown. It was such a happy and joyful atmosphere, smiling faces wherever you looked. It was inviting, inclusive and welcoming to everybody. I especially liked that our police department took part in the parade. The entire parade deserves the title "Love wins".

Even the dogs (of our friends M and J) "walked" with us.

When we were done and the team pictures had been taken, the Geek and I walked back along the entire parade. It was so much fun to see the creativity, the joy, the laughter. 

photo by J.M.

A week later we did a Pride Walk "Gays and their Allies" through our neighborhood. We live in a pretty gay neighborhood and have good friends here. We walk with them with pride.

photo by S.C.

There are so many faces in this post that after a long time I finally join Nicole's Friday Face off again.

T Stands for Together with Pride

 

June is Pride month with parades and all kinds of colorful events. Our county's Pride Parade took place yesterday and the Geek and I participated in the parade with his company. It was bigger than last year, even though it still dwarfs compared to the big parade in San Francisco that we saw in 2017. Last year there were 65 participating organisations, this year 91 - I assume probably in response to all the anti-LGBTQ+ laws in many states of the country. Whatever the reason, for us it was pretty clear that we would be part of it the moment the information was sent out in Robert's company.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day. The parade was in downtown, so we could walk there (it's a 30 minute walk) and didn't have to deal with finding a parking spot. It didn't take long to find "our" parade truck and hang out with colleagues and their families before the start.

While we waited for the parade to start, we met "Yanita Letgo" - time to take pictures!

Yanita Letgo certainly was one of the more colorful persons, but the whole event was a sea of colors. A rainbow of colors, so to speak.

We were on 11th position and therefore could watch most of the parade after we had arrived at the "finish line".

There even were bagpipes!

Some of our friends were walking with the Junior College.

This was one of my favorite flags, I love all the kitties on it!

Some of the churches participated as well and I was very glad to see that. I don't go to church and I am not religious at all, but if a church is all-inclusive and welcomes people form all kinds of way of life, I do cheer them on. What I don't like is bigotry.

Congressman Mike Thompson was there as well and I appreciate that.

But what I appreciated even more was that our law enforcement participated. The police from all the towns in the county were there as was the sheriff with their boat that is used for emergencies on the ocean. One of the police officers walked hand in hand with his husband and got a big cheer from the crowd. It was annoying that there were two young women who shouted "No cops in Pride" from the sidewalk - not very inclusive if you ask me (inclusive was the theme). Thankfully Santa Rosans didn't share this attitude and cheered the police on.

The biggest cheers, however, were directed to the firefighters. We as a city have not forgotten what they did for us during the Tubbs Fire in 2017.

Even some of the dogs were colorful.

And so was yours truly by the end of the festivities.

We were quite exhausted when we finally were back home. The rest of the afternoon I spent in the garden, in a shady place, drinking a maitai. That is my drink for this week's T Tuesday over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog. 

Cheers to a colorful community!

San Francisco Pride

June is Pride month and last weekend the Pride Parade took place in San Francisco. Kaefer wanted to go, and so we took her and a friend of hers down to the city and watched the parade and the festivities.

It was a joyful affair. Of course it was crowded which I don't particularly like and even tend to panic, but the "panicky moments" were fortunately only few and most of the time I could simply enjoy this colorful event. It was rather cool in the morning with a chilly wind - rather typical for San Francisco - but it warmed up eventually and became a sunny day.

The mood was joyful and I felt a very positive vibe. I loved people watching, taking in the creativity many people showed. Of course it was colorful, rainbows everywhere!

The parade was fascinating, full of great music and laughter.

Here are some more snippets that represent the color and joy of this festival:

I especially enjoyed these two guys with their colorful dogs!

Even some of the police officers carried pink handcuffs. I loved this little detail.

While the girls enjoyed the parade on their own, the Geek and I strolled around the Civic Center where all the booths (and the food!) were until we ended up near the dance floor. The dancing was fabulous, and we even ventured onto the dance floor ourselves and learned some line dancing. How fun!

This definitely was my favorite part of the day!

After we had met up with the girls again it was late in the afternoon and we decided to bring the day to a tasty end by visiting our favorite German restaurant in the city, the Suppenküche (soup kitchen). The food is very authentic here and absolutely delicious.

We had Wiener Schnitzel mit Bratkartoffeln and the Geek and I enjoyed some Erdinger Hefeweizen - the dark one was mine. Their selection of beer is so good - you can check it out here. Prost!