A Tale of Two Prides
A Rather Queer Series of Events
By Jay Walker
June 23, 2023, began and ended with fire and brimstone. In the midst of what very well may be the coolest summer we’ll experience in our lives, mother nature enlisted all of her forces. Our first stop was People’s Pride: buried deep in the trenches of Powderhorn Park, we found a festival of grassroots community building. I was there with my associate and confidant, John Studd, who was nothing short of a towering leather-jacket-clad titan. As we strutted down a cascade of concrete stairs, a brunt of wind attempted, almost successfully, to flatten us. Overhead, the wind made itself known again as a tree branch came careening down with a snap. Nonetheless, we endured.
People’s Pride lived up to its name in spades. The sense of community at the forefront was inescapable, intimate, and approachable. Most vendors, dealing in an assortment of charming knick-knacks, appeared to offer their very souls in the handcrafted wares they peddled. Thus, one can rest assured knowing that any money spent here is likely to end up in the hands of regular folks, rather than in the gaping maws of leeches in suits. Although it would have been no herculean task to run circles around this modest event, the very lack of crowded raucousness may be preferable to those of the neurodivergent persuasion. Regardless, I will be looking on these future events in anticipation, eager to see how it develops in the coming years.
As we attempted to hail an Uber to carry us onto the next stop, we waited a few minutes until a white minivan approached, matching the Uber app tracker and car description. As we sauntered over to the vehicle, the driver's eyes remained bugged out and trained on me as I approached the rear passenger door. Clutching the door handle, the click of the lock sounded sharply. I looked to the figure squirming in the driver’s seat. The fear of god was displayed across those pearly white peepers of his.
Trembling, he uttered, “S-sorry! Wrong address!”
I opted not to contend with the man, who had adorned the uniform of all self-respecting, white Facebook fathers: the tried and true orange sports sunglasses, and allowed him to make his death-defying escape from us ravenous queer freaks. The tracker across the Uber app was promptly seen meeting our location, only to continue onward, leaving us as a lone dot in the middle of the phone screen. Giving the fleeing Uber driver the benefit of the doubt, we decided that perhaps he was allergic to men wearing garish lipstick and nail polish, such as yours truly. His loss.
A second ride was hailed, and boarded without the same strife. Onto the Nicollet Mall area! We made our way from the Regency and got to Loring Park. On the way, we found a bright electronic billboard in front of a modest stack of bricks, a church in specific. The array of LEDs displayed affirmations of acceptance toward queer people and empty platitudes of ‘god loving all’ that were starkly contradicted by what was situated mere inches away. Just below the hospitable display rested a bench, divided in severed sections by small metal ridges, surely meant to ward off any of those pesky varmints that dare to call themselves, ‘homeless,’ who somehow aren’t able to afford the average monthly rent of an arm and leg, from catching any z’s along its surface. And speaking of those facing the horrific structural violence of homelessness, we saw a pitiable man on the way to the park occupied with a conversation he appeared to be having with himself, only to be interrupted by his intermittent bursts of pained screaming, likely a product of inadequate access to healthcare, something that surely elicited a barbaric response from Minneapolis PD’s most callous, baton swinging, “justice bringers” after we had long left.
In the heart of Loring, there stood a beaming statue, a rainbow label that read out, “#takepride,” in front of which many laymen lined up to capture evidence of their presence for all of those glaring eyes of the digital landscape. Looming to the side was a most devilish sigil, a sanguine red bullseye icon, situated in a way to make not falling prey to the schemes of the Target Corporation’s most cunning marketing stooges an impossible task. Not to mention a brilliant stroke of irony: the fact that Target was found taking down pride merchandise in some of its stores due to backlash from the hordes of drooling yokels whose greatest source of ire and outrage is a pair of rainbow boxers resting upon a store shelf.
Later, we stumbled upon a valley that reeked of pork: tents lined up, one after the next, endorsing a number of tools of governmental authority like the FBI and the Minnesota National Guard’s “Diversity and Inclusion” Office. And to think it was not even a decade ago when the same government allowed same-sex marriage to be constitutionally protected. How time flies!
Throughout the rest of the time spent in Loring Park’s unforgiving heat, we witnessed what boiled down to be a cheap, commodified, conveyor belt farce disguised as activism. However, to anyone whose voice is underrepresented or devalued, it can be a breath of fresh air; it can be a place to truly be oneself. Pride is a great time for anyone wanting plenty to do, or looking for plenty of things to toss money at. The cheap thrills are unending: bright lights, long lines, decent grub. But John didn’t seem too bothered; he made quick work of the offerings at the beer garden. It’s all as American as apple pie, especially when you take into account the many police enforcers present, practically foaming at the mouth to gnaw upon flesh.
While day faded into twilight, Studd and I eventually found ourselves in the middle of a dance floor. There, we were caught between gyrating bodies, taking in a full serving of unwelcome groping, and hostility from the club’s security. After spotting many eager barflies mounting a statue of a giant phallus, there was no doubt in my mind: we were at the Gay 90’s, a place remarkably heterosexual on nights such as this. To further pound the gavel down was the sight of sashaying drag queens in all of their elegance, strutting under a parade of lights that only heightened their glamor. Meanwhile, a section of the dance floor’s light panels were broken, plastered in puke, and served with a steady supply of spilled booze.
Some time later, after disregarding some woman who was three sheets to the wind, and who had been drunkenly telling me I resembled Johnny Depp, we shuffled around for a while, and tried to push our way out through the teeming masses of people present. It was a small miracle we didn’t face trampling. Outside was hardly better. We practically drowned on the way to our ride, the streets were pouring over with water from the heavens, causing Hennepin Ave to resemble the Atlantic. It was raining pitchforks, a fact made all too clear as my boots had to be sat out to dry for a few days after the ordeal; the elements earned their keep. After damn near reenacting Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas” on our way to our ride, we made it inside, with my memory of the night fading with visions of the Orpheum Theatre’s bright, neon lights.