NYC Pride

By Mister Curie

As evidenced by Madame Curie's post yesterday, we (Madame Curie, Le Petite Curie, and myself) all attended Pride in New York City.  We were also lucky enough to be able to meet up with NYC's resident MoHo, Horizon, for the Pride events (which really was lucky considering the difficulty we had finding each other in the crowd).  He had found us an amazing spot in the shade, immediately across from the Stonewall Inn.

In comparison to Philadelphia's Pride celebration held a couple of weeks ago, NYC Pride was HUGE!  We watched the parade near the end of its route and the crowds were still huge.  The sidewalks were barricaded to keep the crowds under control and spectators appeared to fill every available space.  The parade was everything I imagined Pride would be.  It was loud, energetic, and colorful.  There weren't any long pauses in the parade and there were amazing costumes (and lack of . . . costumes . . .).  At times it was edgy and "in your face" sexuality.  NYC apparently has an ordinance forbidding nudity below the waist, which is equally applied to men and women, so there were several topless women in the parade as well. Rather than throwing candy there were plenty of condoms and lubricant being handed out (which severely disappointed Le Petite Curie who had initially gotten excited at the packages), but there was still eye-candy in abundance for both Madame Curie and myself. Whereas I was a little surprised by how short the Philly parade was, the NYC Pride parade was longer than I could imagine (in fact, we ended up leaving after watching the parade for over three hours because Le Petite Curie was getting restless and Madame Curie was getting overheated).

Crowd control measures made it difficult for us to navigate our way to the Pride Festival after the parade, and when we got there it was rather disappointing in comparison to the Philadelphia Pride Festival, which was larger than the NYC festival. However, we sat down with Horizon and had a great visit. More on that, my first in-person meeting with a fellow MoHo, in a future post . . .