Boston pride parade

cattitude and I went down to the Common to watch the Boston Pride parade today. We saw a variety of banners and floats. In addition to people on foot, and riding in classic cars (one of the parade groups was a car club), a lot of groups had rented either duck boats or tourist "trolley" buses.

We were there for about an hour before I started feeling as though I might overheat from standing in the sunshine. On the subway trip back, we saw a lot of other people coming from the parade, including one who, like me, was wearing a rainbow "Queerville" shirt and said that he'd been looking around all day for someone else with that shirt. (The design feels a bit in-your-face, but not only is it a fundraiser for the Somerville High School GSA, the shirts were on sale via the city's website last week.)

I grumble occasionally about the extent to which Pride has become commercial at the expense of political, but I had to smile at the number of children who were coming home from the parade waving banners and wearing shirts with Pride slogans. One of the groups that we saw in the parade was a Montessori school (i.e., kindergarten through eighth grade). Elsewhere in the parade, I saw banners saying "protect bi kids" and "protect trans kids."

(I could have managed the logistics better if I had planned ahead a little more; next year I think I want to either leave home earlier so I can see the parade from the beginning, or head for a point closer to the end of the parade route. On the other hand, I picked this location partly for ease of travel; the reason I didn't plan ahead is that I wasn't sure, yesterday, if my hips and knee would be up for going to the parade at all.)