‘Yay gay!’: San Francisco Pride takes over city streets in its 39th year

From leather-clad to barely clad, masses numbering in the hundreds of thousands partied proud in downtown San Francisco this past weekend. June 27-28 marked the 39th anniversary of the San Francisco Pride Celebration & Parade, and judging by the morning-after media reports, the famous festival doesn’t seem to be getting dull with age.

If you’ve ever attended Pride in “The City,” you can imagine that, for attendees, festivities were far from tame, even in a year that included the passing of Proposition 8. As observed by the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Participants steered motorcycles and classic cars, danced on elaborate floats wearing formal gowns or skimpy underwear, and walked on stilts or behind simple banners. Rodeo cowboys and cowgirls rode a mechanical bull, while ‘Mistress Liliane’ was pulled in a pony cart by a leather-clad submissive.

“All said they were in the mood to party — to celebrate — despite a difficult year that included the state’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in November, not to mention then-Miss California Carrie Prejean’s famous support for it. The theme of this year’s parade: ‘To form a more perfect union.’ ”

With temperatures nearly at 90 degrees, it was a day that defied the June gloominess typical of S.F. at this time of year: “It was T-shirt weather,” reported the Chronicle, “and there were some memorable ones: ‘Heteros love homos,’ ‘Yay gay!’ and, on the backs of employees of the city public defender’s office, ‘Getting you off since 1921.’ ”

Tour the Chronicle’s photo gallery for a glimpse at the variety of festive folk, from the finely feathered to Marriage Equality USA sign-holders, as well as a rather unique costumed participant of a “group protesting male circumcision.”

As for the photos above in this post, they were taken by a Flickr user. (Thanks, C1ssou, for letting us post them!)

– Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Photos: Images of San Francisco Pride 2009 celebrations. Credit: C1ssou on Flickr

Permalink | E-mail | Print | Add to My Trips

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29, 2009 at 1:01 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under California, Festival, Gay, Northern California, San Francisco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.