35 Years of Pride

This weekend is the 35-Annual Gay Pride event here in SF. We met up with Pete, Richard, Blane and Lorevic for drinks yesterday afternoon at the Metro for cocktails.

Seeing all of the rainbow flags up in the neighborhood (even more than usual, i should say) reminds me of a fun story from when i first moved to this neighborhood almost 7 years ago. My parents were driving my paternal grandparents (who live in Stockton) to SF to show them my new place. Once they reached the Castro, my Grandfather saw all of the flags and asked, "Oh, is there a parade?"

My Mom, in all her wisdom, answered, "Yes. Yes, it is a parade!"
LOL - I say, "It's a parade every day here in the Castro!".

Another thing that pride weekend reminds me is how thoroughly lucky we are to live in this neighborhood, in this city, and in the Bay Area in general. In this area, people are able have pride in their diversity, sexuality, individuality, equality and acceptance of all, and to celebrate these qualities with one another in public. I've lived in other parts of the country where men and women are not as fortunate, and they have to be much more aware and careful of what they may say and do in public.

This brings to mind one of the most relevant blog posts that I've ever put up, and the ironic thing is: it isn't even something that I wrote myself. It's a letter that was read at the Memorial Service of our friend, Al Nicols. The letter was written by the husband of one of his color guard students who grew up in Wisconsin. This young man wrote a letter that so eloquently explained how meeting Al changed his life. I read this letter every once in a while to remind myself that we can not take for granted that everyone is as open minded or as liberal as we are.

This was actually one of my earliest posts from when just I started to Blog almost two years ago. I wrote it before I had as many frequent visitors to my site as i do now, so I doubt that many of you have read it.

here's the link.