Pride week recap

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Thought I'd share the recap I posted on Craigslist here for your enjoyment.



Wow. Just wow. This has been the most party filled week of my entire life. I didn't really set out for that.. it just sorta happened.

I've never really done the whole pride thing before, or any of this. Sure, I'd seen the parade the last couple years and hung out on the beach for a bit, but that's about it. TBH, I never really gave a s**t about pride or gay rights or equality etc because it didn't affect my life. I'm not an effeminate guy & didn't grow up getting bullied.. but everything changed when I spent almost all of my free time last year defending myself against fabricated allegations of verbal sexual harassment at the BC Human Rights Tribunal. It was an eye opening "so this is what that feels like.." sort of thing. Stressful at first, but then it became a "whatever doesn't kill me only makes me stronger" thing & I'm better off for having gone through it. It also made me understand why people celebrate Pride & do ridiculous things like what I did to my hair this year. Pride is different now that it has personal meaning to me, that's for sure.

My week recap:

Tuesday:

Hair dying party time at Sweet Styling Space (2nd & Manitoba) w/ hair.by.REN ‪#‎hairbyREN

Wednesday:

Hosted a fundraiser for Covenant House at Steel Toad (2nd & Quebec) w/ the Pride tie in being that 40% of homeless youths are LGBT and for many of them that's why they're homeless. We raised ~$2600 & a lot of awareness of the problem. I'm not finished with that fun yet, as the donors who contributed seriously cool raffle prizes of kiteboarding lessons (Aerial Kiteboarding), SUP lessons (SUP Vancouver), Dragonboat rentals (Dragonboat BC) & Parkour lessons (Origins Parkour) have also all volunteered time to take groups of young people out from the homeless shelter to do these things. I'll spend some time over there chatting with these kids about my story, too.

Thursday:

After work I headed to Wreck, met some new party people and went to Organix at Prive in Plaza of Nations.

Friday:

Went shopping after work, home, then back to Main street for a ridiculously fun warehouse party called "Back door" - an interesting night that went until 7am. lol at this one I was wearing blue lululemon boxers & ultraviolet ink. Then over to a bit of an after party until 5pm. It was nice to take a shower lol.

Saturday:

Back to Wreck for some fun, over to dog beach under the Burrard bridge for the fireworks, grabbed a friend of a friend and went to round up a few more partiers.. then it was over to the Beaumont Studios party until 4am - more Wreckers there. After party until 11:30am. Again, it was nice to take a shower!

Sunday:

Made it down to English Bay and got rockstar parking behind Celebs. Juuuuust missed the parade this year - ah well. Chilled on the beach and checked out the party for a while. Then it was free cover at Celebrities until 8 & I'd never been there before, either.. sooo, ended up there at 5:30pm.. until 3am. I don't do night clubs, or gay bars, or dance floors.. but Sunday night I did lol. Blue lululemons, pink glitter courtesy of some kind girl on the beach, annnnnd LED finger tipped gloves - ahahahhaa - soooo much FUN! Never done anything like it in my life but I had people snapping pics and videos lol, just pure ridiculous fun! Also, I now see why Zach Shore is kind of a big deal of a dj.. met him on the beach a week or two before and had no idea who he was because it's not my scene.. but after feeling his work, and other dj's, I get it.

Monday:

Back to work, then Wreck, bumped into coworkers, ended up going to Cordury in Kits for their rock paper scissors tournament. (which is 80% comedy and 20% rps for cash prizes, pretty fun.)

Tuesday:

Work, errands, Wreck where I met Katy Hairy who I'd seen Friday night who invited me to check out a drag show that Evita Versace was performing in. I met Evita and friends a couple weeks ago and had never seen a drag show, so wtf why not? Parked on Davie and walked down to 2nd beach to catch the beginning of Top Gun on the fresh air cinema screen.. then trekked back up to 1181 Davie for the drag show. Holy s**t it was impressive! Seriously talented makeup artists, dancers, lip synchers, and a ton of laughs. Of course I had to end the night stopping in at Nick's house party.

Wednesday:

I slept! lol but tonight I'm heading to The Cobalt because Nick is hosting SNAG Pride Edition art/comedy show & Evita Versace is performing there as well.


After this one it's back to work & life but man-o-man what a week of partying like I have NEVER experienced before in my entire LIFE. I just felt like completely immersing myself in e v e r y t h i n g I could jam into my schedule this time around and I'm glad I did it. I've met SO many cool people, and hope I continue to.

I gotta say that the most amazingly beautiful people I ran into all week were (not in a sexual attraction way, just.. in their Real presence) most definitely without a doubt the bearded drag queens at Back Door on Friday night. Especially the 2nd one I ran into who had crystals (I think) throughout her beard. Stunning. At first I'm sure he assumed I was staring and being judgemental.. but when called out for staring I had to say he looked absolutely awesome, that it wasn't a character or a costume - he was the real deal, that was him & he owned it and it was so So cool. From each of their reactions to similar compliments, I doubt they hear that sort of thing nearly often enough & I'm glad I was there to point it out. Also, it's gotta take some pretty big balls to be yourself like that, so huge HUGE props to those guys for sure.

Beyond that, sure there were plenty of hot guys all over the place.. I'm not blind lol but you know which ones I thought looked the best? All the ones that were together. The couples. Young, old, mixed types and races etc - so, so, so nice to see so many amazing couples out there. I'm starting to see them amongst my friends, too, which is awesome. Maaaaaaaaybe next year I'll join their ranks.. maybe. I have no set timeline or objective, but am certainly open to meeting someone I click with beyond a hookup - which is why, FYI, this entire week has been completely hookupless beyond a few fun kisses on dance floors. Wasn't my thing. I'm no prude, I mean I've had more than my fair share of fun over the years.. (while maintaining a squeaky clean bill of health) but this whole party time was just about fun times, people, experiences, connections, new friends & old, and just immersing myself in the true meaning of all of this stuff for the first time in my life.. and I think I did it up right. Not quite sure how I'm going to outdo myself next year.. but I have a little under a year to figure it out.


If you happened to bump into me over this past week and want to get in touch - please do. Friends are always welcome - especially ones who are down to take action and help change things for the better. If we happened to meet and there may have been a bit of a mutual momentary spark.. well, again, feel free to get in touch, I'm open to meeting and hanging out in the real world outside of Pride week shenanigans and seeing if there's a connection worth cultivating. I don't have a crystal ball... but I can see the time between Pride 2015 & Pride 2016 being filled with the usual hard work & fun times, but also with the addition of something new-ish to me: dates. Sounds a bit high-schooly, but hey.. I'm never gonna grow up, so it's all good.

I suppose I should also state that my type = younger cute gay boys, not older jacked masc men. I never hang out on Davie Street, so walking up and down that strip was kinda hilarious w/ a bunch of eyes turning my way. (and some guys literally stopping me to ask if they can take pictures of me, my hair, of us together etc lol fun times.) I guess that's what I get for having party hair and going shirtless (for a tan, not attention) lol. Seems to be a lot more men around there than boys.. which is typical since we all want what we can't have. Ha. But again, I don't have a deadline or an expiry date so it's all good - I'll meet someone I click with when it happens and then.. well, then life will change again.

PS The beard might not stay after Halloween.. I'm growing it out for a costume. (King Leonidas, of course.) So, I'll probably need to figure out where the best Halloween party is at this year - feel free to inform me if you're in the know!

If you read this far you should probably at least drop me an email and say hi.

<3
Richard

Ha, was off work early so ended up going to Wreck Beach for a bit until the sun dipped behind the clouds, then off to run some errands and ended up at the restaurant/bar my closest friend works at for day 9 at some sort of bar besides the one I work at. Split shift today, soo probably no more fun times unless I manage to hit the beach in the middle of the day between my shifts.. time will tell. I also have other stuff to catch up on lol so maybe I'll just plug away at some paperwork and such.

Anyways, yeah, this has been the most ridiculously amazing party week (or so) of my entire life! Sooooooo much fun!

I wish I could have been there. Maybe I'll go next year.

It's so worth every single moment.

Although, I am biased because I'm male. A couple of lesbians I know/talked to complained that there's not really a lot of things geared towards lesbians for pride parties in Vancouver. They're right... but the thing is that like 99% of the people out partying for pride week are gay guys so there isn't the same market for lesbian specific parties and events. But there are a lot of lesbians partying it up with gay guys, though. I think their complaints were more geared towards not being able to meet many lesbians - especially for hooking up with. But if you're just there to party vs. hookup (like I was) then it's AWESOME - well, if you don't mind partying with hundreds/thousands of guys vs. girls.

I'll be honest, I dont really understand this sort of thing. And never heard of it, either.

Though as I also avoid parties and similar things like some sort of unholy plague of laser bees, I guess this isnt surprising.

You've never heard of Pride? Pride parades/celebrations/parties? Gay/LGBT Pride?

It's evolved from the gay rights movement protests of the ~1960's in Stonewall & now there are similar parades and festivals around the world.

It's a pretty awesome party here - half a million+ people crowd the streets for the parade.

In other parts of the world it's still a dangerous political statement, especially in countries where the legal penalty for being gay is death or imprisonment. That's, in part, why people party it up in free lands.. in global support of everyone's freedom of sexual expression/orientation etc.