Queen City Cruise: Tours through the years
The Queen City Cruise is now older than most of those who partake on this annual "Naughtycal Adventure on the High Seas". It takes a hardy soul, strong sea legs, and a certain indominatable spirit to survive this five-hour tour of Seattle's inland passages. (Although, admittedly, a dominatable spirit will often find plenty to enjoy.)
We present on these pages retrospectives of the party themes and some of the publicity graphics used for each of the many annual extravagent gay-party events. Select from the menu to the right or click "Next" at the bottom of each page to see the themes of Cruise tours in easily-digestable five-year chunks.
About that name: It was called the Queen City Cruise back in 1981 to maintain a mostly-forgotten tradition that the town's movers and shakers in the visitors burueau wanted to keep forgotten. Seattle's semi-official but rarely-used nickname at the time was "Queen City of the Pacific", but that name seemed to embarrass those shaker-folk. To overcome their embarrassment, the visitors bureau set up a public vote to replace the nickname.
(The name they eventually came up with was Emerald City, much to the delight of the then-new Seattle Men's Chorus which has been milking the new name's rich set of queer references ever since.)
But Randy Hensen and the other intrepid souls who were the Tacky Tourist Clubs of the day felt that "Queen City" deserved to be retained, especially for the queer cruise they were planning for August. They adopted the name just as it was being semi-officially abandoned.
And ever since, there has been this annual reminder to those movers and shakers: Whatever its color might be, Seattle is, was, and always will be a Queen City.
One of many full moons that has shined upon the Cruise in broad daylight.
The 1996 Queen City Cruise: Sunshine Tour of the Moons and Stars commemorated the practice.
