Sunday, June 30, 2002
Today is the gay pride parade in San Francisco. Patrick and I are not participating in any of the pride events for a variety of reasons: we both don't like crowds and just about everyone in the world agrees that the parade is completely boring and has lost its original meaning—that of making communities aware that gay people live in your community, too. Finding someone who lives in San Francisco and doesn't know that gay people live there is like finding a MUNI bus that's clean on the inside. There's a separatist group called Gay Shame that is publically boycotting the parade because of its commercialism. Their web site at gayshamesf.org proclaims, "We are committed to fighting the rabid assimilationist monster of corporate gay 'pride' with a devestating mobilization of queer brilliance." They have a direction—creating awareness—and they have a means of doing it—people dressed outlandishly and acting absurdly, and somehow although I agree with some of their logic and goals, I can't picture Patrick and myself taking part in their activities. It reminded me of trying to picture myself enduring the AOL-lovin, Mac-centric, corny-joke queeniness of Digital Queers enough to join their organization (which I didn't). We went to Land's End with Sam and walked a good way through. We walked past many trees, wildflowers, and overlooks with views of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. We got a few photos with Sam's camera. We had lunch at Cajun Pacific with (Patrick's words) the most awful waitress in existence. Her errors: she gave our order of fries to another table accidentally and never realized it until Patrick got up and asked them where our fries were; Sam ordered a half-shrimp, half-oyster po-boy but got an all-oyster po-boy (though this could have been the chef's error); Patrick ordered red beans and rice and never got them, and I had a glass of water that went dry. Patrick adds: "And, she never apologized for any of it." Consequently, Patrick swears we'll never go back, and I have no complaints about that. We don't forgive Sam for tipping her 10%. We then went to the Cliff House where we saw the Musee Mechanique and where we played the original Star Wars video game. We spurned the Camera Obscura tourist trap; it looked like a scam to me. We looked for sea lions, but all we saw were birds who loved to sit on a bird-shit-encrusted rock. We then went to Stonestown Mall because Patrick needed something air-conditioned and away from the sun. We bought drinks at Surf City. We bought a surprise gift for Tina's arrival in SF on July 9 when she comes to visit. Nap and dinner at home: chicken ravioli in alfredo sauce, fried bok choy in garlic, bread from Arizmendi. Today we visited http://www.serge.kirion.net/—I had Flash disabled, so nothing showed up on the screen at first. I enabled Flash, and then refreshed the page, and we were greeted with a Flash presentation of gray text on a black background that said, "WELCOME, 8 February 2001 - Page UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Please come back in 2 weeks." We watched Star Trek: TNG, "The Pegasus." Patrick and Sam both turned out a mild sunburn, despite my having warned them about using sunscreen earlier this morning.