we are not the kids we used to be

This was the first year that our city has done their own Pride event. Unfortunately, I didn't know about it until it was too late to take the day off of work (especially since I'm taking next weekend off already,) but Alex decided to head over!

...unfortunately, he said it was kind of nothing going on.

From pictures I saw later, it appears that most of what was going on was indoors, in a few particular storefronts. The locations were posted via social media, and I did tell him when and where different things were supposed to be happening, but he said he didn't see anything indicating stuff was going on. It sounds like there was basically zero on-site advertising of any kind. No signage or arrows pointing you toward where things were going on, not even any conspicuous rainbow flags poking out of doors or in windows or anything.

There was supposed to be a dog fashion show (which I guess did have a "competition" aspect to it, as there was a panel of judges, including the mayor, ha.)


It was warm, so he didn't dress Bella up. Alex did eventually agree to at least let her wear her bandana, haha.

...Though then he left before the dog stuff was even supposed to start, since everything else seemed so dead.

Again, apparently it was mostly inside a sort of small business indoor market, but there was nothing pointing you to it if you weren't already aware of where it was. I'm glad to know that the space is there now, though we're too late for the pride market. (But they'll apparently have a Halloween themed market later in the year, so maybe we'll try to check it out then.)

It seems like a missed opportunity to hold a "big" Pride event in a sort of "shopping district" that's designed to have a lot of outdoor social spaces... and then not use any of the outdoor space in any way.

I still wish I'd been able to go, and I might have tried harder to find the spots that things were supposed to happen, but I'm frustrated that it didn't seem to be well marked. If you didn't know that there was supposed to be a "Pride Festival" going on (and even if you did!) you'd have no idea that it was happening at all.

There was one later evening event on the schedule, a queer trivia and drag show at a distillery that's very close by. We've passed by, but hadn't ever been in, and since it was after I was off work for the day, we decided to head over.

They have a pretty extensive cocktail menu, that's less spendy than I expected.

I of course failed to take pictures of the fancy drinks.


But here's evidence of the ones we finished, ha.

We each got two drinks. Alex got an espresso martini and some sort of vaguely s'more-flavored whisky cocktail. I got two different extremely sweet fruity things. The drinks were all very tasty and very strong, haha. I was very much reminded of the fact that we don't drink much anymore, ha. I felt fine after one, but after two I was BUZZED. After we got home, I just wanted to sleep, haha. Later I did feel a little queasy, though it passed pretty quick. I have become a cheaper date than I used to be! (This was not helped by drinking on an empty stomach, but Alex was afraid that if we sat down to eat, he would settle in and not want to go out at all, ha.)

We didn't participate in the trivia (though we should have), but we talked a bit to someone who was helping table for Bread and Roses, a social justice legal center that does a lot of trans advocacy.


One of the queens, and some of the trivia participants.

It still wasn't terribly crowded, and from outside there wasn't anything making it obvious what was going on, but I am really glad we went! I'm happy that we finally visited the distillery, and I'm also obviously happy to support queer-friendly spaces.

I do hope that they do make the pride event an annual thing, even if it was a bit of a slow inaugural event, but it's a shame that it was so poorly advertised.