I did go to the parade. I was stuck at the end of the route, where there wasn't nearly as much music and partying and fun, but there was a protest from some scary gays who dislike the commercialization of Pride. Police came and arrested a few as everyone near them shouted, "Let her go! Let her go!"



Heard Sir Ian McKellen speak at the main stage at Civic Center. But by that point I could feel my face burning up in the sun so we had to bust a bitch outta there. Stupidly, Ben and I decided to go to the beach later on, where my red face darkened a shade. Not so much fun. Nor was climbing up the hill at Fort Funston very fun. To get back to the parking lot from the beach you have to climb this gargantuan, steep-as-a-mofo staircase. Again I say, no fun.



More fun was meeting Marcus and Tim yesterday. It's weird and sort of anticlimactic meeting "Internet friends" because it feels like you're meeting someone for the first time, but you already know so much about each other that all of the easy first-meeting chitchat is gone. (I actually had to tell someone yesterday, "Oh, yeah, so I"m meeting some people I've known for like three years, but who I've never met face to face. How embarrassing)



Last night was pretty cool. We saw a bit of the Dyke March while waiting for the idiots at a restaurant in the Mission to get their shit together and give us a table. We went to the Castro to see the debauchery. I heard stories of men having sex in a window on Castro St. (later confirmed by my roommate's girlfriend) but I didn't see it. I did happen to see three latino guys doing some very nasty things while waiting in line for the bathroom at a bar. That was fun/scary, but most of the night was much more tame, consisting mostly of thousands of people standing around in groups doing very little.



Oh! I almost forgot the best part of yesterday. At Civic Center in the afternoon there was some pre-Pride stuff going on. The best of it, by far, was Mystic Flava, this "Buddhist hip-hop collective." It was this group of like middle school kids who looked really random and out of place on the small DJ stage, but then all of the sudden they started busting out some insane moves. This 11-year-old white boy was the stud of the group - moonwalking around and schooling all the other dancers.