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goldfish21
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29 May 2015, 2:44 pm

I've seen the parade a couple of times in Vancouver. It's good people watching/entertainment. Then I hang out on the beach in the sun, go for a swim in the ocean, spark one up with a friend/new friends for the day and head home at night vs. go to some night club party etc - totally not my scene.

This year is going to be different, though. I've never even attended a "Pride Party" yet I'm now involved in planning one at the bar/restaurant I work at, as a fundraiser for Covenant House - a youth homeless shelter where 40% of the kids 16-24 that live there are homeless because they've been kicked out of their family homes for being LGBT kids.

Annnnd one of the owners told me he's looking into possibly putting a float in the parade. And a couple of girls I work with march in the parade every year. Pretty cool.

Never really gave a flying F about this stuff in the past, and I'm not a "loud and proud" kind of homo.. but after going through some crap for a year dealing with false allegations of sexual harassment simply for being gay, it's all a little more important to me than it ever was & I'm looking forward to pride event things a little more this year. 8)


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Noca
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31 May 2015, 12:56 pm

I plan on going to the pride in Toronto with my friend but I don't do parties or clubs.



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31 May 2015, 11:04 pm

I have been to some of those things before but never liked them (the crowd, sleazily dressed people etc). But I understand that this kind of thing is important from the LGBT-rights point of view. Although many of us take "gay rights" for granted, many people in the past actually fought for and won them. I guess someone has to be "loud and proud" for the rest of us. I appreciate/admire those people. And there are still many prejudiced/discriminatory people everywhere. Well, I hope you enjoy the parade and whatever you participate in.



Marky9
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31 May 2015, 11:45 pm

Congrats on lining yourself up for some new adventures. I have done such things in the past and am glad I had those experiences. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!



goldfish21
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01 Jun 2015, 11:40 pm

Ya, should be a good time - but not a stereotypical gay night club good time lol we're not that kind of place at all.


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02 Jun 2015, 2:10 pm

I plan on marching in Portland's Gay Pride Parade on June 14th.


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goldfish21
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02 Jun 2015, 7:46 pm

If the owner's put a float in Vancouver's parade this year then I will join them/coworkers and march in the parade this year. It's not something I EVER would have thought I'd do, but after spending a year of my free time defending myself at the BC Human Rights Tribnal against fabricated allegations of verbal sexual harassment by a homophobe I used to work with.. well, the whole gay rights thing has become a little more important to me.


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goldfish21
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11 Jun 2015, 11:56 am

Annnd I just sent my ad copy over to our guy to send off to our marketing people to make it pretty. 8)

Still a bunch of work to do on this project yet... but so far so good! Now to sell as many tickets as possible in order to have a successful fundraiser! :heart:


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goldfish21
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12 Jun 2015, 1:59 pm

Ooooh, this is getting good..

I have several channels (and growing!) to promote this party both on and offline.

And since it's a Hawaiian beach party theme, I figured I'd try to score some beachin' prizes.. and yesterday got way more than I hoped for when Dan at Aerial Kiteboarding in Squamish agreed to donate $784.00 worth of kiteboarding lessons!! 4 as raffle prizes to raise funds for these homeless kids, and 2 to get a kid from each of the two houses out to experience the sport!! So, SO, awesome!

Then I went to the beach and met a Parkour Coach who agreed to hook me up with a Parkour class to raffle off.. and was also stoked on the idea of getting some of these underprivileged kids out to try it out, too. Amazing!

...then my friend's boss said he'd give me a gift certificate if I showed him my dick lol he's been 1/2 jokingly asking for a couple years (as he commonly does with people, it's funny) & I figured what the hell, I was just hanging out on a nude beach all evening so who cares?? He didn't expect me to, but I did it anyways. :lol: There aren't very many things I won't do for a good cause. :P


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AnonymousAnonymous
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18 Jun 2015, 2:11 pm

I marched in the Portland Pride Parade on June 14th and like many other Pride Parades nationwide, this one did attract a huge crowd of watchers who were there to show support for Portland's LGBT community. Like Spokane, this one also a had a group of a-holes who were shouting homophobic slurs at everyone, including straight people. However, a person in my group had a diabetic emergency, which led to me having a medical emergency of my own. After I recovered, I was told by a-hole paramedics that another person in my group had an asthma attack. I have never felt a stronger connection with fellow Portlanders {even though I am straight} than taking part in the Pride Parade.


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hiraeth
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18 Jun 2015, 11:16 pm

I marched in the parade once in Toronto and once in San Francisco. I mostly did it because I felt that the fledgling asexual contingent needed every participant they could get. I don't have any interest in people watching or being in such a big crowd... that scares the crap out of me D:

It's great to hear that pride has meant something special to other folks on the spectrum tho... I'd be more into it if it wasn't such a huge crowd with so much sensory overload in the large cities that I tend to find myself living in. I randomly had the chance to attend a tiny one in a smaller city once, and it was really nice.



goldfish21
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19 Jun 2015, 9:45 am

I suppose it can be overload central for some people... 1/2 a Million people in the streets watching the parade, loud music, bright colours etc etc. I guess it's a good thing for those people that we also have much lower key events going on all week, and other pride events in neighbouring suburb cities - much smaller parades, small festivals in parks with only a couple of sound stages vs. the massive gathering of people in the West End of Vancouver. I met the head of the New Westminster pride planning committee at the beach and it sounds like their smaller event would be much more suited to someone with serious crowd issues, especially since there's still a parade and a couple of stages vs. the small party in a park that Surrey does.

Myself, though I've only seen the parade twice, I prefer the main event downtown.. it is truly awesome to observe more than half a million amazingly positive and supportive people gathered in one place - with gay couples from around the world enjoying the ability to be completely comfortably out in public vs. fearing violence, or worse, back home where they come from. To see that is really truly something special & reminds me just how good we have it here.

Party planning is coming along nicely. I have a lot of local business support for advertising and raffle/door prizes.. so much so that I was informed that I've been appointed the title of "Community Relations" at work as another hat to wear. It'll become one of my jobs to schmooze the local businesses into coming to our brew pub for business lunches & to get their staff to come chill at our place for a pint after work etc. I might work on some sort of neighbourhood pub/brewery crawl project with our friendly competition, too. I like having a broad variety of work to do. 8)


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hiraeth
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19 Jun 2015, 7:50 pm

I would love to live in one of the buildings downtown where you can stand on your balcony and watch, nice and removed from the crowd, always having the option to shut the door and return to silence if necessary. Ahhh ^__^

I grew up in Vancouver. I attending the annual fireworks festival quite a few times, and that was always the dominant thought in my mind.



goldfish21
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23 Jun 2015, 5:51 pm

^ So make a friend with a downtown balcony.

I managed to get the dispensary across the street to agree to donate a gift certificate as a prize for our party. SOME lucky homo is going to win some fluffy nuggs! :D


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MaryXYX
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02 Jul 2015, 7:55 am

I took part in Gay Pride Oxford in 2013 and 2014 as part of my church group. Now that the gays have got what they wanted it's time for the rest of us to speak up, so this year I carried the blue/pink/white/pink/blue flag. I still walked with my church, but not carrying the church banner this time.

I went to Birmingham Pride last month, my first major Pride event. I found a church to walk with and found myself dropping automatically into street evangelist mode and talking to people along the route.



goldfish21
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02 Jul 2015, 12:06 pm

What's the blue pink white pink blue flag & what do they want?

Not sure what preaching religion has to do with sexual orientation.. ?


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