Returning books to the Main Library on Saturday morning, I walked through preparations for the annual, weekend-long Gay Pride Festival in Civic Center where the Asian Art Museum had installed new signage for the occasion.
On the various stages scattered around the plaza, sound checks were being made on speakers and microphones, allowing for odd bursts of sound mingling in a Charles Ives kind of way.
The dirty little secret of the Gay Pride Festival in San Francisco is how much money is involved, particularly in selling crappy, overpriced cocktails all day from booths devoted to "charity."
In front of the library were a pair of booths that scraped some kind of low, hawking $9 Bud Lights and McDonald's corporate swag...
...including an astonishingly ugly T-shirt that urged one to Celebrate Lovin'.
The controversial new metal detectors were set up at the entrance to the plaza at Grove and Market, and in truth they are welcome. In recent years, the festival has become a magnet for young, mostly straight suburbanites looking for a free party in San Francisco, and the combination of alcohol and weapons has contributed to more than a few violent altercations, with bystanders caught in the crossfire.
The metal detection staff were mostly young and black, which is probably not what this year's slogan "For Racial and Economic Justice" was referring to, but it was nice to see this usually unemployed demographic being offered jobs. Meanwhile, the promised enhanced police presence seemed to consist of herds of 20-30 uniformed police officers wandering about Civic Center looking foolish, as if they were afraid of being attacked unless they stayed together as gangs. The Black Lives Matter group, which had been given an honored spot in Sunday's parade, pulled out at the last minute in protest, saying they were more afraid of the heavyhanded police presence than terrorists, and it's hard to blame them.
This reminds me of a scene in a forgettable movie that has stuck with me (it must be forgettable, as I cannot for the life of me remember the name of it).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, decades after the "sixties" a reporter is looking for and finds a firebrand radical/revolutionary - an "Abbie Hoffman like" character - that has disappeared from the public eye. He finds him living in suburbia with a wife and kids, and they talk while he is grilling burgers on a barbecue with his neighbors in the back yard.
The ex-radical explains that revolution is impossible in the US simply because people really like all the consumer choice and simple pleasures like barbecue and micro-brews and corporate sports and even "Big Macs". Ultimately the corporate profit / consumer culture co-opts, subsumes and makes every revolutionary impulse mainstream.
There is something to be said there...
"You've come a long way, baby."
Take a victory lap. Your revolution crossed the finish line.
Do people actually pay to wear that hideous McD's advertising or is it offered for free?
ReplyDeleteBecause hideous.
Dear Dividist: Love the story and "Take a victory lap," but the sheer ugliness of that Mickey D's T-shirt is inexecusable. It made me feel Gay Shame.
ReplyDeleteDear Teddy: I was afraid to ask.
Oh god, that T-shirt!
ReplyDeleteI really, really hope I see people wearing those hideous things around town, haha!
Gay Liberation, for this old guy, was just one part of overall "Human Liberation."
ReplyDeleteNow we got a gay guy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whoopee!
The parade has become a funeral procession.
Thanks for documenting the sadness. Sort of like Diane Arbus.
Feel no gay shame. It's the price of success.
ReplyDelete