Make My Monday - Denver's Pride 2008 in photo's

Alrighty now, as promised a recap of Denver's Pride 2008 via photo's. In advance, I'm sorry that they're blurry. I had planned to have a new camera for the event, but only had my Treo 700. The Treo also takes video, but unfortunately it doesn't provide it's own light source (or flash) so the indoor pictures are not great, but will give you an idea. The one video I have of the aerialist is pending my ability to move it off my Treo and uploading it here. I may have to provide it separately at a later time. So here we go with commentary.

The Friday night BAD Women's Pride Party Entertainment:




















This young lady is getting her NAKED breasts painted and glittered. Yes, we the dancing audience did get to watch the whole procedure. And if you happened to be standing in the right place at the right time, as I was with one of the many girls (or as I called them, The Glitter Girls), you could see the BEFORE behind a sheet! Actually, I wasn't really that impressed with the before.





















This is the AFTER. Again, I apologize for the quality of the picture. There are not a lot of options on the Treo, as it is a Smart Phone not a fancy digital camera. However, I think you can get the idea. There were about a half dozen of the Glitter Girls.





















This is a pretty good picture of another Glitter Girl's back. I asked the guy that was doing all the work how I could get into this line of work...heh. He was nice about the question, but I didn't quite catch his response. He did say that he has painted and glittered all of the dancers (The Glitter Girls) for other events. He also let me know that he would be in a booth later providing same service for the public (i.e. the BAD Party goers) for a fee. Gee, I guess you do have to pay for the paint and the glitter, but that guy should consider decorating naked breasts reward in itself!


Here are the Glitter Girls in action:




Sunday Morning - Denver's 2008 Pride Parade:



















Dykes on Bikes lead the big parade...la la la. Over 200,000 attended the 2007 event, but the estimates for this year aren't available yet. I'd say it was about the same.




















Boys (and some Girls) on Toys. This group gets bigger and bigger every year. When the scooter club first joined the parade several years back, they had a dozen gay guys. Now, it's several dozen gay guys and a dozen lesbians. Next year I predict all the fancy convertibles (except maybe the Grand Marshall car that comes after the scooters) will be replaced by two seater scooters.




















PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays). This is the longest most heartfelt part of the parade. Usually I get kinda teary, so I packed a wad of facial tissue in my cargo shorts for the occasion. But this time I was so busy taking pictures for this blog post I forgot to pay attention to the message of love. Sniff...excuse me now while I make up for that. (dab, dab, dab....snort). Okay, I'm good now...please continue.

Main Stage Entertainment (Bands...er Band):




















This is the Melanie Susuras Band playing at Denver Pridefest 2008. She was the first act to play this year! Last year she was the last one because she was invited last minute to fill in for another act. By the time she played last year, there was no crowd left except us MSB fanatics...all two dozen of us and our recruits. Her music is fabulous and I recommend checking her out via the link to the right. As you can see in this picture, it was rather warm in Denver on Sunday, but not as bad as last year!





















This is MSB at the 2007 Denver Pridefest. Just so you know what she kinda looks like (as well as her fabulous drummer David Derby who was blocked in the 2008 picture).


So that's it for my pictorial of the 2008 Denver Pride events. Hope you enjoyed them (and were a little bit jealous). By the way, we did have a celebrity in the parade. I was chatting away with a nice doctor (alas a gay man, not a woman) when I happened to look back at the parade just in time to see Calpernia Addams go by on the back of one of those previously mentioned convertibles. For those of you who don't know, she is a transwoman with a fascinating story and star of a LOGO reality series Transamerican Love Story. She'll be in both the San Fransisco and Atlanta Pride parades as well. Also, as I mentioned on Thursday, the biggest baddest Pride events are next weekend in NYC, SF and Chi town. If you live anywhere near them, get your queer butts to them!