This year's 26th annual tour of the
Queen City Cruise slips away from its dock on downtown Seattle's Pier 55 at 1200 hours (that's noon to landlubbers) on
Saturday, August 11. The ruby-red lips on the bow of the Goodtime II will be puckered and ready to blow (kisses, that is) as the party boat takes its five-hour tour of Seattle's wettest spots, including -- of course -- the ever-popular passage to and fro through the Ballard Locks.
Tickets for this incredible party are still
$50. They go on sale this Saturday, June 23 and are available only
online at ttca.org. (But here's a special blog-reader hint for those who hope to avoid any virtual lines: The tickets button is currently live on the site for a "preview sale", so you could actually snap up some of the first tickets even before the official start date.)
The Queen City Cruise is -- as we're wont to call it on this blog's (current) host site -- an "Unforgettable Naughtycal Adventure on the High Seas" and a deliciously deviant contribution to Seafair. If you haven't been on the boat yet and wonder what that means, you can get a hint from the photos in the
TTCA gallery. (But, really, the on-board photographers are usually circumspect about what they're willing to share with the public site, so you'll have to use your imagination. But don't go
too far. Remember, it's called
naughtycal and not
nastycal.)
The theme of this year's Queen City Cruise is
Pier Pressure. "Why?", you ask. It's because the Cruise this year is the climax event of the
LVHS Classless Reunion. The Reunion a
full summer of activities commemorating the student bodies of Lavender Valley High School.
Some of you might recall Lavender Valley High as the home of Seattle?s most notorious springtime party:
THE PROM... You Never Went To!. That party had a fourteen-year run from 1983 to 1997. This year marks the 10th Anniversary of the Last Prom, so the Tacky Tourists are celebrating the occasion by holding a Classless Reunion. (It's classless because graduation was never something that caught on at Lavender Valley High School.)
Even if you don't remember any of that, don't worry. All you need to know is that LVHS was some kind of ineffable place or feeling. It existed in its own odd world where everyone had the chance either to create the high school that we wished we went to or to make up bizarro versions of the places we actually did suffer through. And create they did. Again, the TTCA galleries feature a few hints of
what things were like.

LVHS mascot Butch has the balls to march in
two parades!
The brain trust of Tacky Tourist Clubs is hoping that some of the same creative energy will be on display this summer on the Cruise and other
Classless Reunion events.
To help spur the creative juices (ahem), TTCA has created
Butch. You'll see him this weekend if you go to either or (come now -- show your
Spirit) both of the Pride parade/marches. Butch is the huge, very pink, tres gay, and well-endowed (sorry Bob Barker) mascot of the LVHS Fighting Poodles. You'll see him rolling down both Broadway and Fourth, and may even catch sight of him elsewhere over the weekend. (Go ahead, pet him. He's friendly.)
Blogger's note
Your webWrangler sends this personal note: I'm sorry for the lax posting during the past week or more. I've missed a few things that deserved to be posted, and still haven't gotten to making a complete wrap-up of Pride events. (Still hoping to get to that tomorrow.)
If you dig through to the url of our site or our RSS feed, you'd note the original intent of this blog that has long since moved on to other things: QueenCityCruiseNews is what the feed is still named. And that partly explains the recent posting downfall.
Mostly, now, I leave the Cruise news to an
email list and only occasionally post an update here. But whether it's on the list or here on this blog or in the too-long text parts of posters, flyers, and such, I do end up writing most of it. And frankly, I'm not all that good at multi-tasking these days. So while the site got its updated pages for the Reunion, the Cruise, and all that, the blog took a back seat. We'll be back to the usual schedule in a few weeks, so keep (or
start) sending those press releases for us to rewrite.
And, yes... as I've been hinting for months: This blog will move to its own URL late in the summer. Given the lack of participation here in the comments, I'm not sure it's worth it, but other indications tell me that there actually are a few folks reading some of the posts. For you, we'll give a dedicated site a try. Later.
Labels: fundraisers, gay organization, gay party, Gay Seattle