The Prideful Storm of Progress
And it’s possible that “fun” is a totally satisfying answer to the question of what goes on at Pride; it’s possible that what Pride produces and reproduces is an opportunity for unabashed fun. Possible, but not likely.
Boystown’s N. Halsted Street and N. Broadway Avenue were not meant to hold 450,000 people. This seems fairly clear. PRIDEChicago[1] estimates that roughly that many people showed up to its 2009 Pride parade, and though one is sort of naturally inclined to assume that figure is exaggerated, it feels – if anything – conservative, when standing on the sidewalk at Halsted & Roscoe.
The atmosphere at the 2009 parade doesn’t feel too different from the party atmosphere at the ’08, ’07, or ’06 parades, even though organizers have tended to highlight the fact that this is a big one. It’s the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City’s Greenwich Village, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn refused to let the New York City Police Department shut the bar down and started riots and demonstrations that continued in the Village throughout the early morning of 28 June 1969 and for the next few days. Technically, it’s only the 39th Pride-esque event: the first “Gay Power” marches started in June 1970, and generally became “Gay Pride” only in the ’80s. But nitpicking aside, it’s a not-small deal that the most recent, most public and outspoken incarnation of the gay-rights movement is about forty years old.[2]
It’s also the fortieth anniversary of contralto, addict, and icon Judy Garland’s death. Which may or may not have had any bearing on the Stonewall riot itself, depending on which account you read.
But age and death are no more the focus of this parade than of the three that preceded it. The floats – PRIDEChicago’s official registry lists 250 of them – are huge and teeming with drag queens and go-go boys performing for the crowd, throwing beads and condoms and candy. (If it’s hard to keep dancing or mugging for cameras while in stripper heels or with wings strapped to your naked back for three-plus hours, the performers don’t show it.)
Most are like that, anyway. The official list identifies floats no. 7, 7A, 8, 8, 8 again, 8A, 10, 10, 10, and 10, 11, 12, 19, 20, 32,[3] 36, 48, 64, 65, 65A, 80, 81, 83A, 105, 106, 107, 107A, 108, 121, 191, 193,[4] and 195 as occupied by politicians representing various levels of government, geographical areas, and degrees of queerness. If you were to count each politician as his own float, even those who clustered in poly-politician groups (platonic running mates? cheaper registration? safety in numbers?), you’d find that 13.2% of the registered paraders were looking for your vote. (This figure excludes political organizations, largely to avoid straddling the line between bald-faced electioneering and authentic attempts to participate in or represent the LGBTQ community. Perhaps it’s not necessarily clear which of these camps would claim, for example, the Human Rights Campaign, which has a representative role but also a brand to sell.) These floats are a little less spectacular: most of the politicos seem to be trying to force some kind of dignity—then again, it’s an often hilarious attempt in and of itself.
If you subscribe to the popular idea that shopping is a way of “voting with your dollar,” the political tally shifts dramatic, and occasionally confusing, degrees. (So PepsiCo, Frito-Lay, and the Exelon Corporation [154-6] seem to have a fairly clear agenda—whereas something about nos. 21, “PFLAG & Wrigley Co.,” and 41, “AIDS Care & Google,” is suspect at best.) The number of legally recognized limited-liability corporations at Chicago’s 2009 parade was staggering, and it seems likely that the majority of ’09′s floats were corporate-sponsored.
There’s something comic about some of the corporate floats, in that it’s sort of hard for a savvy consumer to imagine the logic that led to their presence. This chronicler is not sure, for example, what bp (née British Petroleum – no. 163) expected to gain from their float. It seems that if a car is low on gas, one first considers where the nearest gas station is, then where the cheapest one is. Were there steps in deliberative the process beyond those, they would hardly include “Which of the available gas stations is more likely to use a teeny-tiny fragment of my money to hire go-go boys to gyrate for me within the next twelve months?” Put that way, it’s maybe not the worst thing to consider, but even after seeing the float, I associate Fritos not with washboard-abbed public pride but with tubby, very private, binge-eating shame.
It’s hard not to love the display, regardless of who’s paying for it. In classic camp style, enjoyment is enjoyment, no matter the source or the context. Casual observation and a couple of clumsily attempted man-on-the-street interviews tended to reveal that STOCKYARD sounds like it might be a leather-fetish magazine, that people don’t come to Pride parades to talk, and that, if there is something essential about the experience of the parade, it’s that Pride is fun.
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[1] The uppercase letters don’t represent an acronym or anything; they’re apparently a typographic conceit, and are reproduced sic throughout.
[2] Too old, probably, to be picked up in at least half the bars on Halsted. The gay-rights movement would likely be advised to stay in Charlie’s, Buck’s, or Sidetrack. The Jackhammer, which is much farther north, is another option. Those who think the movement hasn’t aged too well, that it started becoming a troll after it hit 30, might suggest that it stick to Little Jim’s or the Lucky Horseshoe. But that’s neither here nor there.
[3] Float no. 32 was registered to “Friends of Jim Madigan.” This chronicler missed that particular float; and speculating on the friendliness of Jim’s relationship with himself is outside this article’s purview, so it’s unclear whether he was himself in attendance.
[4] Float no. 193 was, in fact, “Schroeder (people for)”—an even more ambiguous label that makes his bodily presence still less certain than Jim Madigan’s supra.
