Three Gay Pride Parades
I hadn't planned it this way, but Sevilla, Barcelona, and Amsterdam were all having their Pride Parades when I was in town, and I wasn't complaining. In Sevilla and Barcelona I was with the rugby team, so that made it even more fun. We didn't know that Sevilla Pride was going to be that weekend until we stumbled across the stage the night beforehand with their banners strung up and their flags flying. They were having a pre-party with some smarmy Spanish love ballads being sung by a woman and her band who seemed like a lot of rejected acts from that Adam Sandler movie The Wedding Singer. The impression was confirmed when she broke into a barely recognizable "It's Raining Men."
We spent too long at the beach the next day and missed the parade (they didn't walk very far), but we made it there for the rally and the party afterwards. it was in a big open plaza in the middle of an area with bars lining the path alongside of the road. There were stands set up seling beer for a euro (!) and people were sitting around in groups talking to friends. It wasn't a big gathering, maybe a couple hundred people tops.
From this experience we soon learned that in Spain, to indicate you're a lesbian, there is only one permissible haircut: the mullet. In clothing there are a couple of options, one being the baggy jeans dragging on the floor with a studded leather belt holding them up and a tank top (for the guns, I suppose). Option two is some sort of flowing, thin fabric, loose-fitting hippie type pants. But the mullet is really the key.
Unfortunately the music wasn't better than the previous night, mostly consisting of a whiny Indigo Girls wannabe duo sporting (you guessed it) a matching pair of rather ridiculous mullets. Therefore nobody wanted to dance and people started to leave pretty early, so it wasn't a very convivial atmosphere. We stayed for a while and had some drinks at a bar alongside before giving up and heading home to catch a couple hours of sleep before heading out on a long trip the next day.
Barcelona Pride was exponentially better. First of all, we actually got there in time for the parade this time. It wasn't a huge parade, not anywhere near San Francisco, but apparently the big one this year (actually the "official" one for all of Europe) was happening the same day in Madrid. There were all sorts of different groups and clubs marching: the standard AIDS awareness/find a cure, parents & allies, students, no to transphobia, etc. etc.). We fell in behind a group of drummers and dancers dressed all in white. Eventually they asked one of my teammates to join and she almost kept up. Later we joked that she should have danced completely off-beat to teach them a cultural lesson for picking the only black one out of the group and assuming she could dance. In the meanwhile, she was getting her picture taken left and right, so she may just end up on the cover of Out&Proud, who knows.
The parade was a lot more fun and the music was also a lot better. The mullet and studded belt + baggy jeans or hippy clothes rule was still mostly in effect, though not as completely as in Sevilla. We went to the after party that night in a big park. While there were way more people, it followed Sevilla's example by having really undance-able music. This time it was some sort of radical, experimental, electro-punk.
Now Amsterdam Pride was the real deal. I'd decided to stay in Amsterdam just to see it, and I was newly refreshed and well-nourished after my trip to Brugges. It was a huge affair, with events starting a week ahead of time and the schedule really getting packed starting three days beforehand. There were even multiple parties every night, including street parties with huge stages hosting DJ's and shows. One night I went to dance to the DJ at the Homomonument, a memorial along one of the ring canals to the gays killed in the Holocaust. A somber theme, but the corner is now also home to the Pink Point info center, which hosted parties every night of Pride. Another night I went to Rembrandtsplein and watched a huge drag show being put on there, stopping by a stage playing popular Dutch music on the way (which had about 10% of the audience that the drag show did).
The real deal, however, was on Saturday. The distinguishing factor of Amsterdam Pride is that it takes place on water. It starts at the north of the city by the train station and follows one of the ring canals all the way back around. It was supposed to start at 2pm, and by the time a got to a spot a third of the way along the route, everywhere was packed. Luckily a nice woman with her elderly mom made some room for me next to them. She said that everyone in Amsterdam comes to support the Pride Parade; "It's not just for gay people, you know." She'd come every year, and even hosted parties for it. There were whole families out and people had clearly planned their weekend around this. All along the sides of the canals were parked boats of spectators, often dressed in their own theme. This was a huge difference from the parade in Spain that people would pause for a second to look at, but wouldn't join in, and usually didn't seem to know it was happening.
The parade itself was huge, wildly varied, raunchy and political, but also with some of the more wholesome causes. But mostly it was a big camp display. It was basically the SF Pride Parade on water.
After the official parade went by, then everybody else followed along the canals in their own boats. The rest of the day consisted of techno music and people dancing all along the waterways, past sunset. There were even more street parties and stage performances. The streets around the main stages were packed with throngs of people, and litter was piled so high that you couldn't see the street anymore in those areas. I was glad I'd worn close-toed shoes. The Argentinian guy from my hostel that I was hanging out with was not so lucky. We hung out with some people we met from Rotterdam, up for the day, and had a great time despite the fact that the music on the main stage sucked (theme?). I have no idea how that happened since the music had been really great all the other nights. But they had on this band that was kind of like the MTV boy band spoof group 2gether, except they were two guys and two girls, which only made for more cheesy couple duets and choreography. But there were, thankfully, many other stages, and the night went on.
All in all, the Amsterdam Pride was really a much bigger spectacle, had way more events going on over a larger time span, and had exponentially more people participate. But I kind of liked the Barcelona parade, where we could walk with whatever group we wanted, unlike the official-ness of the Amsterdam parade with its sponsored boats and traffic routers. And Amsterdam Pride did lose some credibility with its distinct lack of mullets. How else are you going to tell people apart? Up to top
We spent too long at the beach the next day and missed the parade (they didn't walk very far), but we made it there for the rally and the party afterwards. it was in a big open plaza in the middle of an area with bars lining the path alongside of the road. There were stands set up seling beer for a euro (!) and people were sitting around in groups talking to friends. It wasn't a big gathering, maybe a couple hundred people tops.
From this experience we soon learned that in Spain, to indicate you're a lesbian, there is only one permissible haircut: the mullet. In clothing there are a couple of options, one being the baggy jeans dragging on the floor with a studded leather belt holding them up and a tank top (for the guns, I suppose). Option two is some sort of flowing, thin fabric, loose-fitting hippie type pants. But the mullet is really the key.
Unfortunately the music wasn't better than the previous night, mostly consisting of a whiny Indigo Girls wannabe duo sporting (you guessed it) a matching pair of rather ridiculous mullets. Therefore nobody wanted to dance and people started to leave pretty early, so it wasn't a very convivial atmosphere. We stayed for a while and had some drinks at a bar alongside before giving up and heading home to catch a couple hours of sleep before heading out on a long trip the next day.
Barcelona Pride was exponentially better. First of all, we actually got there in time for the parade this time. It wasn't a huge parade, not anywhere near San Francisco, but apparently the big one this year (actually the "official" one for all of Europe) was happening the same day in Madrid. There were all sorts of different groups and clubs marching: the standard AIDS awareness/find a cure, parents & allies, students, no to transphobia, etc. etc.). We fell in behind a group of drummers and dancers dressed all in white. Eventually they asked one of my teammates to join and she almost kept up. Later we joked that she should have danced completely off-beat to teach them a cultural lesson for picking the only black one out of the group and assuming she could dance. In the meanwhile, she was getting her picture taken left and right, so she may just end up on the cover of Out&Proud, who knows.
The parade was a lot more fun and the music was also a lot better. The mullet and studded belt + baggy jeans or hippy clothes rule was still mostly in effect, though not as completely as in Sevilla. We went to the after party that night in a big park. While there were way more people, it followed Sevilla's example by having really undance-able music. This time it was some sort of radical, experimental, electro-punk.
Now Amsterdam Pride was the real deal. I'd decided to stay in Amsterdam just to see it, and I was newly refreshed and well-nourished after my trip to Brugges. It was a huge affair, with events starting a week ahead of time and the schedule really getting packed starting three days beforehand. There were even multiple parties every night, including street parties with huge stages hosting DJ's and shows. One night I went to dance to the DJ at the Homomonument, a memorial along one of the ring canals to the gays killed in the Holocaust. A somber theme, but the corner is now also home to the Pink Point info center, which hosted parties every night of Pride. Another night I went to Rembrandtsplein and watched a huge drag show being put on there, stopping by a stage playing popular Dutch music on the way (which had about 10% of the audience that the drag show did).
The real deal, however, was on Saturday. The distinguishing factor of Amsterdam Pride is that it takes place on water. It starts at the north of the city by the train station and follows one of the ring canals all the way back around. It was supposed to start at 2pm, and by the time a got to a spot a third of the way along the route, everywhere was packed. Luckily a nice woman with her elderly mom made some room for me next to them. She said that everyone in Amsterdam comes to support the Pride Parade; "It's not just for gay people, you know." She'd come every year, and even hosted parties for it. There were whole families out and people had clearly planned their weekend around this. All along the sides of the canals were parked boats of spectators, often dressed in their own theme. This was a huge difference from the parade in Spain that people would pause for a second to look at, but wouldn't join in, and usually didn't seem to know it was happening.
The parade itself was huge, wildly varied, raunchy and political, but also with some of the more wholesome causes. But mostly it was a big camp display. It was basically the SF Pride Parade on water.
After the official parade went by, then everybody else followed along the canals in their own boats. The rest of the day consisted of techno music and people dancing all along the waterways, past sunset. There were even more street parties and stage performances. The streets around the main stages were packed with throngs of people, and litter was piled so high that you couldn't see the street anymore in those areas. I was glad I'd worn close-toed shoes. The Argentinian guy from my hostel that I was hanging out with was not so lucky. We hung out with some people we met from Rotterdam, up for the day, and had a great time despite the fact that the music on the main stage sucked (theme?). I have no idea how that happened since the music had been really great all the other nights. But they had on this band that was kind of like the MTV boy band spoof group 2gether, except they were two guys and two girls, which only made for more cheesy couple duets and choreography. But there were, thankfully, many other stages, and the night went on.
All in all, the Amsterdam Pride was really a much bigger spectacle, had way more events going on over a larger time span, and had exponentially more people participate. But I kind of liked the Barcelona parade, where we could walk with whatever group we wanted, unlike the official-ness of the Amsterdam parade with its sponsored boats and traffic routers. And Amsterdam Pride did lose some credibility with its distinct lack of mullets. How else are you going to tell people apart? Up to top
posted by Nora @ 8:33 AM
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