Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

A couple of significant Pride Week news bits have come along while your webwrangler was off doing other things.

SOAP fundraiser
SOAP, the producers of the downtown parade, will hold a Halloween-night fundraiser called Pajama Party at the W Hotel [get directions] on October 31 from 7pm until midnight. Suggested donation at the door is $15. Proceeds benefit SOAP and the BRA Show for Breast Cancer Awareness.

The party will include a no-host bar, complementary appetizers, music for dancing, and an informal fashion event for men and women that will include the W Hotel's own loungewear line as well as bra's from Seattle's own BRA Show, and bras designed by Seattle local designers including Le Mare, Jessica Lovelace, Zombie Hearts, Cintli, and Lisa Doran.

And there's likely to be fascinating fashion from the crowd because a prize will be awarded to the attendee sporting the most creative PJs.

SOAP seeks Pride Parade theme suggestions
The official theme of the 2007 SOAP parade was -- somewhat wistfully -- "Come Together". They're now seeking suggestions from folks in the community about what their parade theme should be for 2008. Deadline for suggestions is January 1. The person submitting the theme chosen by SOAP's board will win a one-night stay at Seattle's Hotel Monaco.

Email your suggestions to info[at]seattlepride.or snail-mail them to 1605 12th Ave, Suite 2, Seattle WA 98122, Attn: Theme 2008. Include name, mailing address, and phone number with your suggestion.

SOAP seeks board members
SOAP is looking for board members to help guide the organization. Send an email to the same address if you think you have what it takes to perform what's often a thankless job. And, hey, you might be able to help choose the theme that way. But this is not for the feint of heart. Applicants should be willing to work tirelessly on next year's downtown parade and be willing to suffer criticism from some among us who might not SOAP's mission an entirely admirable one.

New non-profit for Seattle Center Pride festival
Egan Orion of OneDegree Events last year pulled on one of the most remarkable feats of event production ever seen when he and his staff pulled together a major Pride Sunday festival at Seattle Center, after others had proved incapable of meeting that considerable challenge.

Although there are few details yet, Orion announced in an email to the OneDegree mailing list that a 501(c)3 [i.e. tax exempt] non-profit will be formed to oversee future iterations of the festival. He promises more details real soon now.

Labels: fundraisers, gay pride, Gay Seattle, org:SOAP, Seattle Pride

Just to catch up on what other folks were saying before and after the Pride week festivities...

The lede of the PI story by Keri Murakami on yesterday's parade focused on a Japanese tourist who unexpectedly got caught up in the big crowds:

But in the Seattle Pride Parade's second year downtown, there were those, like Yui Igarashi, who planned to spend the day shopping, but instead ran into parade crowds.

She was at the corner of Fourth and Pine holding her digital camera up, trying to shoot over the two tall men in front of her.

Retreating to change memory cards on her camera, she said, "It's very live."

Igarashi, who is visiting from Japan, had never seen a gay pride parade in her home country. "It's very open," she said, as peacock feathers from the headdresses of a few men in the parade peeked over the crowd.

The Times story by Marsha King called the parade "dazzling celebration of Seattle's gay and lesbian culture."

In advance of the weekend, the PI ran a couple of stories about Seattle's gay history, including a remarkable column by the paper's cranky columnist, Joel Connelly. He recounts his return from a trip in 1978 to find a headline that would often be repeated in the years to come.

A headline across the top of the Seattle P-I front page carried big news: Seattle had just become the first town in America to vote AGAINST a bid to repeal its city ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Anita Bryant and her ilk were turned back by a civic campaign, chaired by Mayor Charley Royer's then-wife Rosanne, arguing the right to privacy.

The remarkable vote, in what was then called the Queen City, was driven home as I dragged my duffel bag through customs in San Francisco. Supervisor Dianne Feinstein was on TV announcing that Mayor George Moscone and gay fellow supervisor Harvey Milk had been murdered.

The 1978 campaign that defeated the anti-gay initiative was probably unknown to most who celebrated here the anniversary of the Stonewall protests in New York, but it was Seattle's own Stonewall.

Connelly does a great job of tracing the political and social tolerance in the city that was both given its birth by that initiative fight and reflected in the outcome.

PI reporter Keri Murakami traces the history of the Double Header, the Seattle bar that was in many ways like New York's Stonewall except that its customers never attracted the kind of raid that would lead to the Stonewall protests.

Seattle University professor Gary Atkins wrote in a 2003 history of gays in Seattle, "For the next three decades, one gay man or woman after another would find that all-important staircase on Washington Street, go down into the underground, and begin the process of both coming out and finding a new family."

And gradually, the scene moved upstairs to the Double Header.

Rose Bohanan, who is quoted in Atkins' book, recalled that she hadn't been to the Double Header for years. Now 66, she said she was a teenage runaway when she came across the Double Header in the '50s.

"For a 17-year-old, it was heaven on Earth. Finally finding people like me, and finding out I wasn't the only one," she said in an interview. "I was a street child, and the drag queens took me in. They taught me how to behave, not to be a fool."

There were fights in the bar, she said, because sailors would come in to harass the drag queens, but, she said, "There's nothing like an angry drag queen. I've seen some sailors dragged out with a high heel embedded in them."

That was a long time ago, but friend-of-The-Stranger and YouTube star Chris Crocker sent Seattle a greeting to remind us that it's not so different than what folks elsewhere deal with today.

Another such reminder from the experience of Seattle Men's Chorus who tried to do edgy posters for their annual Pride Week concert over the weekend. But edgey turned out to be offensive to several merchants who demanded that the Chorus censor its poster promoting the concert.

The promotional material for this weekend's concert at McCaw Hall, for example, features two protesters hoisting picket signs that proclaim: "God hates fags" and "You're going to hell."

Coleman's intent was one of humor, a spoof of the very religion with which many gays struggle and to which so many have found a closed door. He titled the performance "Scared Faithless: God and Gays in the 21st Century." ...

"I probably made a mistake," Coleman admitted Thursday. "I guess I was naive and just didn't realize that people would be that uncomfortable with that image and those words. After all, we live with this all the time."

The concert will explore ? through song and performance ? the pain some members have faced in seeking acceptance in their church. But it will also celebrate the warm welcome gays have felt in other communities of faith.

While many of their songs are religious, the Seattle Men's Chorus is secular, its mostly gay members hailing from many different faiths ? or none at all.

And in other censorship news, a school administrator in New Jersey apologized after his staff was ordered to black out an image of two men kissing that was included in the school's yearbook.

And congradulations to Randy, Mark, Scott and the big crew who've worked so hard to create Butch the big, pink, gay poodle mascot of the LVHS Classless Reunion. Butch won the second-place prize offered by The Stranger for entries in the Sunday parade. (And congrats to The Stranger judges for not holding grudges. [This is a point where we're glad that they ignore this blog.]) Congratulations as well to Nothwest Bears for thier grand-prize entry, "Bears, Bath & Beyond" [Times photo].

Labels: gay news, gay pride, Gay Seattle, history, Seattle, Seattle Pride

Seattlest asks, "What the hell is going on with Pride?" (except that they like book-title capitalization for their posts). Presumably while walking through the Broadway or Pike/Pine sub-neighborhoods of un-SOAPed Capitol Hill, poster Kim Ruhl says that "we noticed a bunch of signs all over everywhere announcing a parade, a party, and a Queerfest." Yeah. A bunch of stuff, as we've been noting for the past month.

And we're even ready to join Seattlest in throwing in the towel and accepting SOAP's still-silly decision to parade through the construction sites on Fourth Avenue. But we can't quite go as far as it (or however one is supposed to refer to the "Seattlest" collective poster) in advising,

Just go to the damn Web site and do your civic duty to save the gay-rade for those of us who feel the need to put on our thongs and leather and dance in a shower of glitter this summer. We've earned it. Besides, let's face it, we'll just throw a party on your neighbor's lawn if you don't let us have one in the middle of town.

Give them money? Come on now. SOAP lost over a hundred-thou through the group's own incompetence. Despite that, they're sticking around to host a parade -- something they've done a dreadful job at producing in two prior attempts. We suspect, though, that they might finally get it right and figure out that it involves more than just sending entrants on their way, gaps be damned.

So they'll be marching for the tourists again on Fourth Avenue, feeling somehow more pride because they've finally managed to abandon a neighborhood that once welcomed us all. OK, fine. They've managed to hold out longer than they had any reason to hold out.

So join them. Build a kick-ass float for their parade to get a chance to win some of The Stranger's money. Watch the thing. March in the thing. Volunteer to help them actually (and finally and for the first time after two attempts) do a parade right. Fine. But give this group money? That, to us, is a hell of a stretch.

There's every sign that we'll have a great Pride weekend again this year. But -- again this year -- it will happen in spite of SOAP and not because of the group. If you've got extra money in your cards that you're trying to get rid of, give it to one of the many groups that has actually managed to earn your trust. SOAP isn't one of those groups. Hell, you could even buy a ticket to a OneDegree event if you feed you must support downtown Pride activities. That's a group, after all, that appears to be wisely doing what SOAP tried and failed to do -- building a Pride beyond the despised-by-some 'gayborhood.' And they're doing it without asking for donations.

Let The Stranger pay for its parade. They have plenty of money for that. Show your pride in your community by giving to a group -- any group other than SOAP -- that has earned respect.

Labels: gay organization, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

Seattle Out & Proud, Inc. (SOAP) has announced the names of the folks who will now have to fulfill that odd parade tradition of sitting on the trunk of a convertible with their feet on the back seat while smiling and waving ("figure-eight, figure-eight") at the crowd waiting for something interesting to come by. SOAP, of course, is sponsoring the downtown Pride parade on Sunday, June 24.

Dennis Coleman, artistic director of Seattle Men's Chorus, is the male grand marshal for the parade. Kiantha Duncan-Woods, president of Seattle Black Pride, is the female grand marshal. Although SOAP might not use the long parade name anymore, they have shown themselves willing to appeal to many segments by appointing even a group grand marshal. Gay Fathers Association of Seattle will fill that role, but we're not sure how that will work out with the traditional convertible.

And since there might be more car dealerships that would be interested in slapping their business name on the side of a wave-mobile, SOAP has invited some "celebrity" wavers to join the Fourth Avenue procession.

• Jane Abbott Lighty and Pete-e Petersen met over 30 years ago in Sacramento, California. They?ve been in a committed relationship ever since, and were married in Seattle First Baptist Church in October, 2005. Since their retirement from careers in nursing, Pete-e and Jane have devoted their time to several community endeavors, including the Seattle Women?s Chorus and their heart warming appearance in the film Inlaws & Outlaws.
• Chuck Lazenby was born and raised in Seattle, the youngest of five children. Chuck ran away from home at the age of 16. Within a few years he met his partner David Asplund. They lived together for fifty years to the week before David died in 1999. Through the support of his UCC church, Chuck then came out and has been a volunteer for several organizations supporting the LGBT community. Chuck appeared in Drew Emery?s prior video project, The Bridge, before telling his story in Inlaws & Outlaws.

Mark "Mom" Finley will reprise his role as emcee of the parade from a stand near Westlake Park. We heard and saw him last year on the KSTW broadcast of the parade, and he made the thing almost bearable, and consistently funny.

Of course, SOAP is also asking you to pay for their many past mistakes. They have some sort of promo for those willing to hand over money to the group. Check their website.

Labels: gay pride, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

OneDegree Events, Egan Orion's company that is producing an array of Pride Weekend activities in and near Seattle Center, has announced that it has signed on with local festival management experts Festivals Inc to help with production of PrideFest, the free-admission Seattle Center festival that will be held Sunday afternoon, June 24 from 11 am until 7 pm, with main programming from 2 pm until 6 pm.

New Growth Event Solutions, a division of Festivals Inc., will serve as the production management team for PrideFest 2007. Festivals Inc. produces Bite of Seattle each summer at Seattle Center and Taste of Tacoma. According to OneDegree's press release, Festivals and New Growth were chosen "for their familiarity with Seattle Center, both at the administration and operational level."

"We have many years of experience producing high-profile events at Seattle Center," noted Bjorn Estlund, the lead on the New Growth Events production team. "We have always enjoyed working in conjunction with the Center and look forward to building this partnership with PrideFest to be a part of this important event."

New Growth will be responsible for general festival operations including mapping the grounds, laying out booths, contracting all service providers, and on-site management.

One Degree will run free shuttles from PrideFest to Capitol Hill starting at 4 pm on June 24. Shuttles will leave every half hour between 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and will drop guests off at clubs and bars that sponsor buses for PrideFest.

Later in the evening, One Degree, will also provide shuttle service from the Hill to Level 5 for the company's Sunday party, Revival, which will be held at Level 5 across the street from EMP from 5 pm to 2 am.

Entertainment lineup for the festival is still developing, but OneDegree has already booked entertainment from every corner of the gay community. DJs includes DJ Bryan Pfeifer (LA), Wasabi and LA Kendall from Re:Launch-Hitgirl! Productions and DJ Kyler (c89.5). National performing talent includes Inaya Day, Reina, and Abigail. They're saying, coyly, that the lineup will "likely feature at least one comedian." PrideFest has confirmed State Senator Ed Murray and will announce more speakers as agreements are made.

Orion offers this reflection on the busy weekend: ?Pride Weekend has important events going on in every corner of the city," Orion said, "from house parties to bar and club events to special events like our big Saturday night party at EMP Sky Church, One Mighty Pride Party, and Festivals like PrideFest and QueerFest."

"There is enough business to go around for everybody to be successful," he said. "Pride can be on both Capitol Hill and Downtown. It's bigger than any one person or one event. Pride is about community, and at the end of the weekend, hopefully we?ll be able to forget the politics that have divided us and embrace that which connects us all in this very vibrant gay community."

OneDegree has also hired sponsorship consultant Cindy Baccetti, who had previously worked with SOAP, a local group that had tried and failed to sponsor a Center festival this year. She is quoted as noting that "Wide spread support and excitement from the business community about PrideFest continues to strengthen as we approach the event." Eleven corporate sponsors are named in the press release.

Labels: Gay events, gay party, Seattle, Seattle Pride

For the fourth year, Seattle's LGBTQ Center [see map] will present a Portraits of Pride exhibit in its gallery space at the back of the Center on Pike Street. Cody Blomberg, curator of the show, asked artists this year to create self-portraits, a favorite theme of many artists. The show features work of Chris Rollins, Mike Curato, Cody Blomberg, loti, John Tozzi, Holly Senn, Thomas Wurst, Tennessee Loveless, Michael Strangeways, Matt Wencl, and others.

The exhibit opens on Friday, June 1 with an artists reception from 7 to 10pm in the gallery. The reception is open to the public. The Portraits of Pride exhibit runs through the month of June and can be viewed during regular Center hours (which are irregular and dependent on volunteer staffing and occupancy of the gallery for other scheduled events).

There will be even more queer-themed art to view as Dunshee House displays work of local artist Andrew Grant Stone. He will be hanging various collections reflecting on strength and courage of facing the unknown, as well as lighthearted and inspiring never-before-seen works from the artist's studio. Dunshee House is normally open from 3 pm until 9 pm weekdays.

Some of Andrew's work was seen in limited engagement at Glo's in May and a notable hanging in April at Rosebud Restaurant, but the Dunshee exhibit will be his largest and longest local showing. Works will be viewable throughout the summer.

Dunshee House, located at 303 17th Avenue East in Seattle [get directions], offers over 20 peer-facilitated groups each week includingboth HIV/AIDS-related and non-HIV/AIDS related groups, such as our growing program for gay/bisexual/queer men, lesbian/bisexual/queer women, transfolks, and LGBTQ folks inclusively.

Labels: Gay events, gay pride, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

If you don't have them already, you've missed the steepest discounts for pre-sale tickets to the big downtown Pride weekend parties, One Mighty Pride at EMP and Tribe at Level 5, but hefty discounts are still available on the ticket price.

Tickets to "The Party", One Mighty Pride are available until June 1 for $40. The price then rises to $45 until June 21. Cost will be $55 at the door. Tickets to Tribe, the after-hours party at Level 5, are $25 before June 21 and $30 at the door.

VIP passes are available for $150. That will get you priority access to those two parties as well as a Friday night Military Party also produced by OneDegree at Neumo's and to Revival, OneDegree's post-festival Pride version of its Sunday party at Level 5.
The parties are produced by Seattle's master empressario Egan Orion and associates at OneDegree Events. One Mighty Pride will be held Saturday, June 23 from 8 pm until 2 am in Seattle's best party venue, EMP Sky Church [get directions]. The party features DJ Joe Gauthreaux from New York City and performances by Frenchie Davis [plays music] of American Idol, Rent, and Dreamgirls. That's inside SkyChurch.

Outside on the plaza, you'll enjoy another party with DJ Funky Bear and Ladyjane DJ. Tired of dancing? Take an amusement park ride. The Fun Forest Rides adjacent to EMP will be open Saturday night exclusively to One Mighty Pride guests.

At midnight, Frenchie will be accompanied by the Seattle Men's Chorus and Seattle Women's Chorus in a special homage to the gay rights movement.

25% of net proceeds from the parties will be donated to non-profits in the community: Gay City, Verbena, Seattle Men's Chorus and Seattle Women's Chorus.

The music, dancing, and partying doesn't have to stop at 2 am because the all-night party, Tribe, kicks off at 1 am and continues until 8 am across the street from EMP at Level 5 [get directions].

DJ Escape from New York City mixes. Rascal Video's Johnny Hazzard [link not safe for work] will entertain and titillate with go-go dancing.

OneDegree still isn't finished when Tribe disbands because their free-admission PrideFest at Fisher Pavilion and the lawn next to the Fountain kicks off at noon and runs until 6 pm in Seattle Center. The festival boasts a beer garden, booths (for-profit and non-profit), a mainstage with DJ Bryan Pfeifer from LA, performers and speakers, and food booths.

The party then moves across the street again to Level 5 where a special Pride Sunday edition of OneDegree's weekly Revival T-Dance starts at 5 pm and continues to 2 am. DJ Bryan Pfeifer moves over to provide the early mixes until 7 pm. Seattle's own DJ Brian Gorr [music] spins from 8 pm until close. The party is included in OneDegree's $150 VIP Pass. Individual tickets are available at the door only. Entry before 7 pm will cost $5 with a $10 cover after 7.

Labels: Gay events, gay party, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

Purr greatly expands your Pride Weekend options on Friday, June 22 through Sunday, June 24 with a series of theme parties, live concerts, and dance events at the Capitol Hill nightclub [see bar map]. Purr's owner, Barbie Humphrey, said she's excited to offer live performances by dance divas and pop stars for the first time in the large space.

A performance stage will be set up at the far end of the nightclub for the weekend. Cover for each evening performance is only $5.

Purr will also offer a Sunday T-Dance with DJ Jst from Boston.

Humphrey told us that some details are still being worked out, but offered this initial schedule below. (The links are all to MySpace Music pages, so -- of course -- tunes will play automatically):

Friday, June 22 -- Toga Party

• Loren Hildebrandt (Burnin Out)
• Jacinta (Can't Keep a Secret)

Saturday, June 23 -- Military Party

• Allyson
• Sean van der Wilt (Boom Ba Boom)

Sunday, June 24 -- Beach Party

• Afternoon T-Dance with DJ Jst, Boston
• Jenna Drey (By the Way)
• Erin Hamilton (Dreamweaver)

Labels: gay bar, gay party, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

The Seattle Center "PrideFest" whose existence was telegraphed last week by the event's "promotional sponsor", The Stranger, and by Seattle Times was officially announced this weekend by One Degree Events, Egan Orion's private production company that has produced several popular parties for the past two years, including the weekly Revival parties at Level 5.

In the announcement to the company's public mailing list, One Degree promises

Everything you expect from a Festival will be at PrideFest: A beer garden, booths (for-profit and non-profit), a mainstage with a DJ, performers and speakers, food booths, and one amazing community! We just signed our contract for the space and are going to be quickly building the rest of our program. ...

PrideFest takes place on Sunday, June 24 from noon to 6pm in the Fisher Pavilion and Internaitonal Fountain areas of Seattle Center. DJ Bryan Pfeifer from LA has been booked for the Sunday celebration that follows SOAP's downtown pride parade.

One Degree had previously announced [pdf format] a busy weekend of evening parties during pride week under the title "One Mighty Pride".

Our special weekend of events, as well as the big Saturday night all-community centerpiece event of Pride, is called One Mighty Pride.

Featuring Broadway performance stars, A?List DJs from all over the country, and high production values, the four events will also have a half a dozen non?profit organizations as beneficiaries, with a minimum of 25% of net proceeds from our Saturday night event going to these great causes plus further contributions coming from the other three events. ...

DJ Joe Gauthreaux, from New York City, will be headlining the One Mighty Pride Party. One of the rising stars amongst the gay dance party scene nationally, Gauthreaux has earned his striped. He's drawn huge crowds spinning for some huge events as Montreal's Black & Blue Ball, Toronto Pride and Cherry in D.C. In 2002, his prominence propelled him into even greater success when he released his first compilation CD through Centaur Records, called Party Groove. His high profile role in the music world led him to his ongoing tenure as a reporter for Billboard magazine.

DJ and music producer Escape (www.djescape.com) will be headlining Tribe, our men's afterhours party at Level 5 (formerly Element). Escape is from New York city and is straight, but long ago found a following in the gay community because he felt that gay men really appreciated the music played. He has released eight studio mix CDs, and has produced a number of popular remixes, including the Escape v. Gomi remixes of John Mellencamp's "Jack And Diane", Jessica Simpson's "Take My Breath Away", and Kristine W.'s "The Wonder of it All."

Tickets for all of the One Degree parties are now on sale. A "VIP Pass" for all of the parties costs $150. Tickets to One Mighty Pride and/or Tribe are also available.

Combining the two announcements, we get this preliminary schedule for the One Degree events:

• Friday, June 22, 10pm-3am -- Military Party at Neumo?s ? DJ Rob Hall (NYC)
• Saturday, June 23 8pm-2am -- One Mighty Pride Party at EMP Sky Church ? DJ Joe Gauthreaux (NYC), Frenchie Davis, DJ Funky Bear, and more to be announced
• Saturday, June 23/24, 1:30am-8am -- Tribe at Level 5 (formerly Element), a men?s party ? DJ Escape with special guest performer
• Sunday, June 24, Noon to 6pm -- PrideFest at Seattle Center with DJ Bryan Pfeifer (LA).
• Sunday, June 24, 5pm to 2am -- Revival at Level 5 with DJ Bryan Pfeifer (LA) and DJ Brian Gorr (SEA) with many more performers to be announced soon.

The PrideFest will feature booths and information tables available to both non-profit groups and businesses. Costs range from $75 for a table by a non-profit group to $2500 for a "Gold Sponsor Booth."

One Degree is accepting applications for those who would like to host a food vender booth at PrideFest. Book a space by emailing vendors[at]onemightypride.com. One Degree "reserve[s] the right the choose whichever businesses we feel will best suit the event, but will be as fair as we can in deciding which food vendors we'll use. Since we have limited space, we want to first place priority on variety, so the first inquiry from each type of food category will likely be the one chosen to serve at the event."

For local businesses, food booths cost $800 for a 10 foot by 10 foot booth or $1300 for a 10x20 foot booth. The fee for national businesses is $2500.

Labels: gay party, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

Seattle Out & Proud (SOAP) is now taking online applications for their Seattle Pride 2007 parade downtown.

These are the entry fees:

• $35 for "community and non-profit groups (suggested donation)
• $500 for "local businesses" (You are considered a local business if you only have offices located in the Puget Sound area.)
• $1500 for "national businesses"

The group encourages entrants who want to help pay off the group's debts of at least $110,000 to pay more. Their website lists recent contributions to the debt payoff at $2130.



Floats can be up to 12 wide, 25 feet long, and up to 12 feet high, measured from the street to highest point.

Entries are encouraged to display their identity through a variety of visual media such as signs, banners both in front of and to the sides of the entry, balloons, flags or T-shirts so that judges and spectators can easily identify the entry.

Some of the rules:

• No articles of any kind may be thrown from the float.
• No one may enter or exit the float once the float is in motion on the Parade route.
• Trailers must be towed by an accompanying vehicle and have a turning radius of not less than 90 degrees.

The parade kicks off "at exactly 11am" at 4th and Union. It marches through the Regrade to Denny where it will disband.

Email SOAP (volunteer[at]seattlepride.org) is you would like to volunteer as crowd controller, parade monitor, or to help with check-in.

Labels: Gay events, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

We try to avoid printing press releases verbatem, but this one deserves to be an exception to the rule. It was issued jointly last night by the Center and SOAP on SOAP's email list.

SEATTLE - May 04, 2007 - Representatives from the Seattle LGBT Community Center (The Center) and Seattle Out & Proud (SOAP) presented Friday to Seattle City Councilmembers Tom Rasmussen and Sally Clark a plan to co-promote a large-scale citywide Pride weekend in Seattle.

"This year's Pride Celebration will encompass the depth and breadth of the city's (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) LGBT community." Councilmember Tom Rasmussen said, "Celebrating the diversity of the LGBT community is always a central part of Pride weekend."

Pride events will include the "Raise Your Voice" political march, rally and Pride Festival on Capitol Hill Saturday, June 23 as well as the Seattle Pride Parade Downtown Sunday, June 24. Various activities and parties put on by other groups and private individuals will also be happening in and around Seattle during the weekend as well.

"Pride is all about a coming together of our LGBT community to celebrate the forward strides we have made politically," The Center Executive Director Shannon Thomas said. "Our community is proud of its most recent statewide victory, the passage of the domestic partnership bill in Olympia. The Center and SOAP have a duty to produce events for Pride weekend that will make our community proud, and do it as much justice as our legislators have this year."

Both groups produced similar, paired events last year, and are enthusiastic about the continued grand scale of this year's Pride celebration.

"Our groups are supporting each other's efforts for a weekend of citywide Pride events," SOAP Board Vice President Weston Sprigg said. "The diversity of Pride events is a reflection of the community's broad interests. Having activities throughout the city expands opportunity for businesses as well as sponsor and LGBT community visibility."

The Center and SOAP have scheduled weekly meetings to collaborate on logistics with a strong emphasis on cross promoting their paired events. Both groups have identified joint advertising and promotional opportunities, aimed at curbing costs for producing events as well as to better inform the public of what is happening and when.

The Center and SOAP have already begun preliminary discussions around future Pride planning, including the formation of a community oversight board.

For more information about how to get involved and for a schedule of events, visit www.seattlelgbt.org and http://www.seattlelgbt.org.

Pride Event Schedule:

Saturday, June 23, 2007

• 11 am - 1 pm Raise Your Voice March on Broadway
• Noon - Dark Rally & Pride Festival in Volunteer Park
• After Dark Three Dollar Bill Cinema Film Screening in Volunteer Park

Sunday, June 24, 2007

• 11 am - 2 pm Seattle Pride Parade on 4th Avenue Downtown

Labels: Gay events, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

"Pride" is a mess again this year. We will have two parades. One on Saturday on Broadway. Another downtown pride parade on Sunday. We'll have a patchwork of festivals this year from the popular Street Parties sponsored by Pike/Pine bars to QueerFest at Volunteer Park.

The Stranger's Eli Sanders offers a grand vision of a Gay Pride 2010 celebration in this week's edition.

Imagine a Pride weekend with a sensible progression of events that move seamlessly from the Hill to downtown and back again, mirroring the ease with which gays now move about in this city and recognizing the community's roots, both old and new.

It's a fine vision, and Sanders offers some suggestions on how to get there.

The problem is that it isn't the lack of grand visions that has put us into the kind of mess we find ourselves in semi-regularly concerning the June commemoration of the Stonewall uprising. There have been as many grand visions than there have been parades in the past 30 years.

But we keep stumbling back into this kind of mess partly because of another aspect of things that is well demonstrated in Sanders' article.

In Sanders' view, the folks who have tried to do maintain a pride celebrations on Capitol Hill are "disgruntled supporters of 'tradition'." According to Sanders skewed view of things, they hosted a "scraggly counter-parade held on the Hill" even though the shorter Hill parade was far better organized than the truly scraggly downtown affair that stretched on for hours with more gaps than entries.

He explains to his readers why they should hold those "disgruntled supporters of 'tradition'" in comtempt:

Roughly put: Downtown Pride Parade supporters back integration; Capitol Hill Pride Parade supporters back separation. It's Mainstream Sensibility vs. Ghetto Mentality.

His article becomes yet another set-piece in that long tradition that has given us such a mess each spring as preparation for the June Stonewall commemoration unfolds into semi-public view.

Each spring, we get grand visions of the future of Pride Week accompanied by mean-spirited attacks on "the other guys" who don't share the grand vision. Each June, we muddle through a celebration that becomes -- despite the disarray -- somehow celebratory enough that most of us are willing to forget about it all for another nine months.

A big part of the problem (a problem of which Sanders' article is but a recent symptom) is that the June events have often been treated as the property of one publiclation or another. It's been that way from the start. Seattle Gay News was started by David Neth as a newsletter to promote Seattle's first gay pride celebration way back in the 70s. The paper developed awkwardly and by fits and starts into an independent voice, but has often turned back into a two-way embrace with parade organizers.

The paper's current editor, George Bakan, first introduced himself to the community as an activist working with the group that organized the parade/march and rally in the early 90s. He took over SGN during one of the lower points in its checkered history even though he himself admitted that he was more interested in activism than in journalism.

Sanders' slanted piece in this week's Stranger would appear downright fair and balanced if set against some of the articles that Bakan's SGN printed in the 90s promoting its (and Bakan's) view of what the parade should be.

As Bakan stepped aside from active involvement in the Freedom Day Committee in the later 90s, his paper set aside most of its parade activism. But SGN continued to publish the ad-heavy "Official Pride Guide" for the parade/march and rally organizer, the Freedom Day Committee.

Pride Week is Christmas-in-June for publications that cater to gay and lesbian readers. During what would normally be a slow advertising season, gay publications can pack their pages with ads from both national and local businesses hoping to attract some of the dollars spent during pride week.

Two different publications again became central in the 2005 split among parade organizers that resulted in the formation of SOAP and last year's duel parades. One of the folks who had stepped in to take over the crumbling remnants of the Freedom Day Committee was the publisher of a new monthly magazine that attempted to attract Seattle gay readers and advertisers. The magazine with no track record was given the designation "Official Pride Guide" by the proto-SOAP group that had taken control of the pride planning group. (The group wouldn't adopt the SOAP name until 2006.)

(SGN's thick Pride Week advertising supplement didn't seem to suffer from the lack of official imprimatur, however.)

Predictably, the 2005 venue change announcement was carried as an "exclusive" by the magazine whose publisher served on the proto-SOAP board.

Sanders points out in his article that those who have attempted to maintain pride events on Capitol Hill have been "encouraged by some Capitol Hill bar owners who see downtown celebrations as a threat to their Pride weekend income." But he fails to point out that the original move to Seattle Center and to 4th Avenue was encouraged by party promoters who hoped to create downtown celebrations that would bring pride weekend income to their companies.

The proto-SOAP board included at least one party promoter who reportedly explained to some at the time that he expected the new venue to give his company and others a better way to compete for party business on pride weekend.

There are an array of competing commercial interests involved in the disarray this year as there have been in the past. Both SOAP and the Capitol Hill supporters have been entwined with those commercial interests from its start. SOAP is hardly the other-interested community-based "committee" that Sanders tries to make it in his article.

Another of the historic problems with Seattle pride celebrations has been their tendency to ignore those kinds of commercial interests. A number of folks in the 90s -- including The Stranger's current editor, Dan Savage -- tried to change the tilt of the June events to something that would be more friendly to business interests. The attempts were resisted by leftist political groups (and SGN) that maintained control of the events throughout the 90s.

It's doubtful we'll ever get to any new grand compromise about pride week until we find a way to embrace the week as both a political and commercial venture. SOAP's current round of recriminations echoed by The Stranger aren't getting us any closer to that point of compromise.

One of the ironies of the SOAP's assumption of control is that although it was an essentially commercial enterprise, it became more hostile than the old political activists had been to participation in pride planning by local gay businesses. That hostility to local businesses has characterized SOAP's short history.

It's true, as Sanders argues, that "if people in the 'leadership' of the gay community stop working at cross-purposes and try to get there, [pride celebrations] could be a great success, symbolically and financially, for all concerned." But that "leadership" has not been demonstrated this year or at anytime in its brief and sorry history by SOAP, the group endorsed by Sanders and The Stranger. They've been throwing out excuses and recriminations at those who have refused since 2005 to shut up and do what they wanted done.

We won't get beyond that this year. Maybe SOAP will manage somehow to pull off something so spectacular this year that they will finally become, along with their partners at The Stranger, the default "owners" of "Seattle Pride" making them able to finally do whatever they decide is best for "the community." Maybe.

I'm still convinced that SOAP in any form is so much the root cause for the current set of problems that there is little hope as long as that group is involved in things of getting beyond the kinds of recriminations that Sanders throws out throughout his article.

We not going to get beyond it between now and this June. We won't get beyond it if we wait again until next Spring 2008. We might get beyond the nastyness if folks without the usual baggage of self-interest take an interest in doing something about it in, say, September.

Labels: gay organization, Gay Seattle, history, Seattle, Seattle Pride

Seattle's LGBT Community Center will host its annual Fruit Bowl Awards this year on Saturday, June 2 from 6pm to 10pm at Fisher Pavilion in Seattle Center. Think of it as a Golden Globes for local activists.

The event -- with a dinner, entertainment, auction, and far more -- honors several people and organizations each year for current and past work on matters affecting gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, and/or queer folk in the greater Seattle area. The ever-popular reality-show hunk Reichen Lehmkuhl is scheduled to be special guest and will "speak to the need for coming out and coming together." (An unexpectedly relevant topic this June.)

The theme for Fruit Bowl this year is "It's About Time: Honor our Past, Celebrate our Present, Build our Future." Sure, that's predictably wordy, but it offers up a task for anyone who's been involved with things around here for any brief or long period of time: Pull out your memorabilia -- snapshots, posters, crushed and dried corsages, ticket stubs -- that hearkens back to those days, months, or years gone by.

The Center will present a Seattle LGBT History Display as part of this year's awards ceremony and pride month. Help them out by digging up the bits of personal memory that will contribute to a forgotten community memory. You and/or your organization can make that display more meaningful by giving them more mementos than they expect.

There are a number of other things that organizations can do to participate in the ceremony. If you haven't heard from them already, contact the Center (info on their site) at info[at]SeattleLGBT.org.

Despite all the all-too frequent pre-June side issues that have resurfaced this year, it's been a good year for Seattle's LGBTQ folk, with continued legislative progress along with other signs of progress. The awards ceremony is a (mostly) light-hearted way to celebrate it all.

Ticket prices and availability have not yet been announced.

Labels: Gay events, Gay Seattle, history, Seattle Pride

SGN managing editor Robert Raketty demonstrates this week why it's still good to have a paper-based gay news source in town with its necessarily slow weekly schedule. He offers a balanced and informative summary of the week's parade developments.

Here are the highlights from the story, rearranged a bit and with links added. The story includes SGN's expected exclusive on the LGBT Center's current plans:

• On Monday, April 23, before SOAP changed their minds and resurrected their plans to organize the parade downtown, the Seattle LGBT Community Center applied to move its permit for a parade/march and festival on Seattle's Capitol Hill -- originally set for Saturday, June 23 -- to the long-standing traditional date of the last Sunday in June, which this year is June 24.


• As it stands, the Seattle LGBT Community Center will be staging its second annual Raise Your Voice Parade/March, which will follow a route down Broadway to Volunteer Park, where the QueerFest/Pride Festival will be held. .
  
  The Raise Your Voice Parade/March will step-off at 11am. Floats and motorized vehicles will be allowed since the event will be a march/parade.


• After all the operating costs are paid, proceeds from the events will go to support the Seattle LGBT Community Center. [Shannon Thomas, Executive Director of the Seattle LGBT Center,] said that the Seattle LGBT Community Center's events will be properly accounted, transparent and public.

Zing!

The new spokesperson for Seattle Out & Proud, Inc. (SOAP), Troy Campbell, a SOAP board member, explained to SGN that the normally close-lipped group's confusing series of press releases resulted from miscommunication within the group that runs the organization.

"The board had not met [about declaring bankruptcy] and there were still options available. Those needed to be discussed," he said. "We needed to collectively meet. The press release that went out earlier was done prematurely."

• SOAP hopes that by staging the parade again in 2007, they will stave off the need to declare bankruptcy and, perhaps, allow the organization to continue into future organizing.
  "The parade has always been a profitable part of what SOAP has produced," said Campbell. "Although it won't cover the entire cost of the debt that has been incurred, it can certainly start chipping away at it."


• SOAP owes the Seattle Center $100,026.33 plus accruing interest and, during a February public board meeting, admitted to having additional debts of approximately $40,000 that are owed to vendors from 2005 and 2006. No list of vendors/creditors has been released. However, SOAP is being sued in several collection actions.
  
  Campbell said it was "high on the agenda" of SOAP to resolve its past due debts.


• SOAP had to cancel plans to hold a festival after Independent Event Solutions (IES), organizers of the annual Capitol Hill Block Party in July, pulled out as the event planner of the festival and rescinded announced plans to make a $50,000 debt service payment to the Seattle Center as part of a partnership with SOAP.


• For 2007, SOAP has begun to collect donations on its website, www.seattlepride.org. As of, press time on Thursday, the group had raised $1,425. SOAP is also planning six fundraisers between now and June 24, according to Campbell. An evening boat cruise on Puget Sound on Saturday, June 23, will be one of the fundraisers to benefit SOAP.


• Campbell declined to say how much cash that SOAP had on hand or how much the group expected to come in from parade sponsorships. "Right now, we are contacting all of the sponsors - in light of not having the festival. We, basically, need to renegotiate with them," he said.

Raketty's story is even more carefully balanced in its printed form than what appears above. (And that, in itself, is a remarkable feat for SGN. It's also, we might note in passing, an historic role reversal for us, your WebWrangler.)

It will, hopefully, go some way in correcting the misinformation like that presented in an op-ed commentary in yesterday's PI, which fails to note SOAP's short and sorry history of staging the event.

Seattle Times helps things along with a bit of history in today's paper. Although the story by long-suffering reporter Lornet Turnbull, who shared the task of sorting through last week's blizzard of ever-changing news about the event, doesn't mention the LGBT Center's plans, it does provide helpful background:

"I guess it explains why we call it the Pride season rather than the "let's-all-get-along" season," said Breanna Anderson, a former co-chair of the Freedom Day Committee, which organized the event in its early years. "Maybe we should come up with a different name."

To be sure, the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is not of a single mind, representing a cross-section of people and ideologies. ...

This year's Pride parade, seven weeks away, is still not entirely a sure thing. Seattle Out and Proud has a parade-permit application before the city, whose special-events committee will review it at a meeting May 9. While approval is likely, it's not automatic.

Seattle Out and Proud still owes the city more than $102,000 for last year's event at Seattle Center. Virginia Swanson, who chairs the city's special-events committee, said there are aspects of the upcoming parade that will need to be addressed, such us where it can start and end, and sanitation problems that arose during last year's parade.

Just before the 2005 parade, which drew a record crowd, the organizing group, which at the time was the Seattle Pride Committee (it later changed its name to Seattle Out and Proud), disclosed that it was looking to move the celebration from the heart of the gay community on Capitol Hill.

The parade would move from Broadway to Fourth Avenue, where it had room to stretch out, and the festival would move from Volunteer Park to Seattle Center, which could accommodate more people and activities.

The move created divisions -- the biggest rift between traditional activists who wanted to keep Pride centered in the gay community, and less political types who envisioned more mainstream acceptance outside Capitol Hill.

Some of the loudest howls of protest came from Capitol Hill businesses, some of whom have been the targets of grumbling criticism by Pride organizers who've said that while the businesses benefit from the festival, they've not backed it financially.

Volunteers started to bail.

Organizers held meetings seeking opinions from the community -- contentious gatherings at which organizers were accused of having already decided.

The Capitol Hill loyalists turned to the LGBT Community Center, which organized a Saturday march during Pride weekend and activities in Volunteer Park. It also snagged two major Pride sponsors -- Microsoft and Budweiser -- and drew about 30,000 people.

Seattle Out and Proud said the loss of volunteers and corporate dollars hurt.

Bill Dubay, a longtime gay-rights activist who participated in both events last year, said he was surprised to see the large numbers, both on Broadway and downtown. "With the people lining the sidewalks on the Hill waiting for the parade, it was almost like all the other years," he said.

"Most people turned out for both. It was amazing." ...

[SOAP's] Campbell said it is renegotiating with corporate sponsors from last year to help with this year's parade-only event. "We can now focus on the parade, and our resources are not spread as thin," he said.

Campbell said the group is also working to address criticism about its lack of openness. "We're making every effort to correct things," he said. "Our budget for the parade is being finalized and it will be posted on our Web site."

Labels: Gay events, gay organization, Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride

Parade or march where ever you wish, but if you (unlike many who support one of the controversial events) are willing to visit Seattle's Pike/Pine neighborhood then you'll find plenty of semi-public celebrations of Pride week. Although Seattle's lesbian bar is not yet making an official announcement on its website, The Wildrise [see map] is expected to hold its multi-day street party once again this year.

Just up the street, The Cuff [see map] has made its official announcement: It will, as it has for years, close off 13th Ave. East and open up all interior and exterior levels of the bar for its usually packed Pride Day Street Party.

In the announcement on its weekly email list, The Cuff, generously mentions that its party starts "after the parade."

Be sure to make plans to join us once again for The Cuff's Annual Pride Day Street Party on Sunday, June 24th! After The Pride Parade, be sure to come join us as we continue the Pride Celebration for 7000+ of your closest friends.

The Cuff's Pride Day Street party is always a blast with lots of hot studs and this year should be no exception. Watch for the entertainment line-up to be announced soon.

But let's get real here: Do you need to wait until "after the parade" which is likely to be what it's always been -- a great place for endless church affinity groups, non-profits, political interest groups, and politicians, to walk down the street behind banners? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

There are strong hints that The Stranger, which has been a loud proponent of a downtown-pride parade will host some kind of guerrilla festival somewhere and will offer its previously announced generous prizes to imaginative floats. But do you need to go to the downtown pride parade to see the prize-winning floats? Maybe. But it's just as likely that any group that puts the time and money into building a prize-winning float will do its best to drive it up the hill so that it will be seen by those at the various street parties. We could even end up with a guerrilla parade to compete with the guerrilla fest that The Stranger seems to be hoping will keep people away from the Capitol Hill bars.

There's no need to wait until June, of course.

The Wildrose hosts 80s Not Dead night tonight with DJ Lady Jane and DJ Valentine. Tomorrow is "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" with $2 off Bloody Marys.

The Cuff presents DJ Harmonix from Portland tonight in Cuff Dance from 10pm to 3am. Their weekly Country & Western dance starts at 4pm in the dance bar. The weekly no-cover Sunday T-Dance features DJ Mike in Cuff Dance and drink specials at all the bars including $4 double wells and $1 domestic drafts and sodas all day. Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Abby of St. Joan will host a fundraiser tomorrow at The Cuff. It's called "Boys will be Boys ? Flogging, Boots and Buzzcuts" and runs from 6 to 10pm.

Labels: gay bar, Gay events, Gay Seattle, Seattle Pride

You can't blame folks for being confused about what's going on here with the Pride parade/march/festival/rally mess. We're confused. But one of the more intriguing bits of "news" comes from the generally reliable and superb gay news site 365gay.com. Based apparently on the SOAP's claim of an outpouring of support for their downtown parade to nowhere, 365gay "reported" this afternoon that SOAP's $102,000 debt had magically disappeared overnight.

Hmm.

Count on that bit of "news" to spread because 365gay feeds a lot of information-hungry blogs and sites including the digest on our own Squidoo Gay news page.

Under the headline "Seattle Rallies Behind Financially Troubled Gay Pride" we could read this fabulous (literally) info:

Within hours of Tuesday's announcement that Seattle's Out and Proud - the volunteer group that puts on the city's annual gay pride parade and festival - was filing for bankruptcy and canceling this year's event, the organization's phones began ringing.

The city's gay community was rallying to the cause. By the end of the night enough money had come in to pay off the group's $102,000 debt from last year's parade and save the organization from bankruptcy.

"Due to overwhelming support ..., we will move forward with our plans to produce the parade down 4th Avenue on Sunday, June 24, 2007", the group said in a press release Wednesday, following another emergency meeting of Out and Proud's board.

Yeah, sure. Forgive us for not being ready to believe that. This for a group that didn't have a donation link on its website before most of the site disappeared yesterday and that hadn't -- according to the Seattle PI -- registered as a non-profit. In case you missed that bit in one of yesterday's stories, here's the 'graph:

[SOAP vice-president Weston] Sprigg said the group is deeper in debt than the $102,000 owed to the city. He declined to reveal the amount, but said money is owed to vendors as well.

Out and Proud's financial information is not available because the group didn't register with the Secretary of State's Office, a requirement for non-profits that plan to solicit money. Multiple letters had been mailed to the group requesting their financial records, a staff member in the charities office said.

We're usually impressed with the staff at 365gay, but this time around they came up with something that clearly belongs on the Colbert fan site Wikiality.com.

But then, that site hasn't exactly ignored us. Wikiality.com offered this bit of "breaking news" (written, as always, "in the spirit of Stephen Colbert"):

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, April 23, 2007--

For most Americans, what homos do is a mystery best left hidden. But, recent events threaten to spritz America's Pacific Northwest in a lavendar scented rainbow.
According to sources, June is Gay Pride Month. This is when homosensuality bursts into bloom and those of the sodomite persuasion engage in their fabulous mating ritual: the Gay Pride Parade.

However, Americans will not sit back while the gays run wild through their cities primping everything in sight.

No.

Just days after Washington's lady governor, Christine Gregoire, signed a law giving the gays the right to have driver's licenses, American citizens came forward to fight off the encroachment of yet another Gay Menace into the very heart of straight America.

Apparently, the gays use their driver's licenses to parade through the streets, dancing and waving rainbow flags. Sometimes, they even ride on floats. Obviously, such rainbowfying of America's streets could not be taken lying down! So the good Christian people of Seattle bent over backwards to ensure that the gays would not bring this abomination of a parade upon their city.

No one is coming forward to take credit for this victory, but Wikiality.com can rule out Pastor Fred since the Westboro Baptist Church prefers to picket/picnic at funerals, leaving the parades to less holy organizations.

For more information and updates, please visit this gay tube.

Thanks for the link, guys. But really... it's Pastor Ken that you should be looking for. Someone should pen an entry on him... but not one of the Mormons over there.

Labels: Colbert Report, Seattle Pride, wikiality

They're running a poll over on SLOG, where the writers have strongly favored a downtown parade and festival, to get a sense of where their readers think a parade should be held. Not surprisingly, a downtown location is favored by a 55% majority of the 656 voters at this point. (The poll will remain open until Sunday.)

A few of SLOG's commenters have even suggested that Tacky Tourist Clubs should host a party after the parade. (Not gonna happen folks. That's the prime planning time for the Cruise and the limited volunteer energies of the organization have to be concentrated on that.)

Let's note that one member of the TTCA board also strongly favors a downtown route. Others either don't care or favor a Capitol Hill route. Your WebWrangler is not on the board, but, of course favors parading on Broadway.

Why? I think it's an important part of maintaining a community's claim to a physical neighborhood in the city.

When the first marches were organized way back in the day, most gay bars in town along with the few organizations that served the gay and lesbian communities were located downtown. The activists who organized the early parades put them downtown with rallies at Occidental Park in Pioneer Square or, a couple of times, at Freeway Park.

It was the place where lesbian and gay folk were most accustomed to congregating after all.

By 1980, many of the bars and a few other businesses catering to gay and lesbian folk had moved to the old auto showrooms and furniture warehouses along Pike/Pine and Broadway. A tension developed then between the businesses who favored a more celebratory observation of the Stonewall anniversary and the leftist activists who favored using the anniversary to put forth a slate of multi-issue "demands" for lesbian and gay rights (eventually including the "B" and "T" of what would eventually take on the shorthand acronym LGBT).

The leftist "protest" group tended to favor a downtown march while the business-oriented "celebration" group favored a Capitol Hill route. A grand compromise was reached between the two elements in 1983. Although there were still tensions, the new Broadway route was one thing both sides agreed on. Even when the compromise briefly fell apart in 1984, both the resulting parade and the separate march stayed with Capitol Hill routes. ['graph edited on 4/28 to fix the dates. Original post was one year off on each. See comment.]

SOAP's decision to move the parade to a different downtown route than had ever been used before had little to do with the old controversies about protest vs. celebration. SOAP put itself clearly in the celebration camp, but did it without the support or backing of Capitol Hill businesses. They moved the parade downtown to serve as a feed mechanism for their festival at Seattle Center.

To justify the move, SOAP supporters borrowed an one of the arguments from the old protest crowd. They claimed that it would show more pride for LGBT folk to march past empty office buildings, closed stores, hotels, condos, and construction sites along 4th Avenue because, somehow, that was supposed to make the parade more visible.

What that argument ignores is that Seattle does not and has never had a gay village with the kind of strong identity that neighborhoods in, say, San Francisco, Philadelphia, San Diego, Vancouver, or Toronto have. Holding the march and/or parade on Broadway was a way of claiming that street for one weekend. It's a worthy claim to make.

Holding the parade on Broadway should not be considered an affront to those of us who have chosen to live in other neighborhoods. It's even more a civic celebration for the whole city when we hold it with a sense of place. Broadway has provided that sense of place for the parade/march for ov