Manchester pride is once again upon us, I've had a brilliant time at the festival site looking through all the cheesy tacky gay merchandise in the gay market and pushing my way through copious amounts of drunken patrons. The parade was a blast as usual, with millions of people coming from all over the country (nay, the world!) just to see me in my lovely dancing outfit. As usual the pride organizers are going to take another month or so sorting through the billions of pictures from the event but as soon as I find some good ones Ill let you know.
I of course have some of the pictures I took myself on hand, being the general photography type, but I didn't have my camera on hand the whole time, just to capture some special images, the best one is a simply image of canal street, just to show anyone who hasn't been to a pride event just how amazingly, stupidly busy it is.
You can imagine the fun one would have trying to get from one side of the street to the other, on any other occasion I would scoff at the challenge, but not parade day of pride. Its fantastic to see that the dear old
S.L.U.T.S turned out again to fight for justice and british prudishness, well done ladies!
In light of the jocularity however, I would like to remind us all how commercial pride itself has become, it is the only protest I've ever been to that one must pay to participate in, and of course we had the people from Get Bent protesting on the behalf of people who feel that pride has become a giant money pot for the pink pound, with whom I agree. People like students or younger teenagers, or perhaps the elderly or disabled who can't otherwise afford to pay extortionate prices for stalls or even a wristband to get into the village, or transport to, from and around the event are being left in the dark, are they too poor to be gay? absolutely not. The pride organizers still have allot to learn, whether this is their eighteenth birthday or not.
