Do you know what happened 40 years ago today? You should.

Here are some extra shots of the Pride street festival on Sunday and the pool party afterward, hosted by Chris & Jeff. I wanted to see Martha Wash and RuPaul close out the festival but they weren’t scheduled to go on until 5:30 or so, and getting to the pool while there was still sunlight was the best idea. It was a great day at the pool, most of the folks who were on the float in the parade were at poolside, plus residents of the pHierce School.

Wow so fun!

My assignment for Evolve’s parade float was to pass out beads towards the front of the three-car float. The first truck played the sound system and the second truck was the float with the constructed apartment building. The third truck a vintage truck from the 50s, nicknamed “Hank” and was a repository for more beads.

The staging area was a very vibrant area, everybody playing their music and getting in a good mood and walking around and taking pictures. It was a great community.

Once the parade started, it was on. The people screaming and yelling for beads in Dupont Circle and also on 17th Street was amazing, and the feeling of euphoria felt while passing these beads out was absolutely incredible. I couldn’t throw beads to everyone who was yelling for them but it was great to sail them to those that you could pick out of the crowd. If you didn’t scream or yell out, then you didn’t get beads from me! Being a participant in the parade was so much more fun than being an observer on the sidelines.

I tried to connect with friends along the parade route, they let me know where they’d be. Some I couldn’t find (too bizzay throwin’ beads) but some I did have a quick chance to run over and say hello to. Other friends I found along the way was a great surprise, the biggest being Joe.My.God, whom I did a blargcrawl with a couple of years ago. Joe remembered me, even knowing my last name, which was a great honor coming from only the biggest and best blogger from NYC. His slideshow of the parade is here, giving me a shoutout by name. Joe, when is the next blargcrawl in NYC?

Pride Week is here again! Yay! For this year’s Pride Parade, I am again going to be involved in Evolve’s float and hopefully it won’t end up being a fiasco like last years. I doubt it will: the pool party is being held after tomorrow’s street festival instead of before the parade. That way I won’t end up lost in Dupont with no keys, no cash, no ATM card, no phone, no dignity, etc.

Yesterday I went over to Jeff & Chris’s house to do a little decorating. Jeff had seen some of the restaurants on 17th St put up these huge rainbow flags using plastic tablecloth covers and he wanted to wrap the School’s metal fence in them. Surprisingly it didn’t take us nearly as long as I thought it would. I thought we’d fold the table clothes and weave them through the fence but Jeff’s idea was to bunch up each color which made much more sense and allowed for tweaking the spacing of the stripes once they were put in place.

I think it turned out looking pretty great! Neighbors and passersby were making approving comments as we were putting it up, and one person even asked if there was a new bar opening up. They apparently don’t know about Dick & Kitty’s upstairs!

Last night I went with J & C, Eddy and the gang over to the (newly renamed) EFN Bar for a Pride happy hour that had $5 half-pitchers of Blue Moon Hefeweizen and free pizza. Not a bad deal at all. And here’s Jeff, beaming with pride at his new fence and happy with his Coors.