The Pink Parade Down Under
6th March, Sydney CBD, Australia
The rain came down, and continued to come down all day but it failed to spoil the atmosphere for those people parading up Oxford Street in high heels and spangly pink dresses - the men, that is. Yep, this evening marked the culmination of the annual Gay and Lesbian Festival in Sydney with the traditional parade.
Men in pink tops and white fluffy ballerina skirts - it has to be Sydney's
Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade.
It wasn't quite the success of previous years: reports suggested that numbers of people watching along the streets was about half the normal amount (you can blame the rain for that) and the number of those 'performing' was about a third down from the heyday years of 2000-2002. Two years ago the organisers went into liquidation and the new organisers of the parade (imagintively titled The New Mardi Gras) have had difficulty securing corporate sponsors as they had in previous years. This was not helped by one advertiser, the brewers Coopers, running adverts all along the parade route wishing people a Happy Mardi Gras (the strapline: "Bottoms Up!"), a move that caused the organisers to accuse Coopers of 'hijacking' the event without putting in any money.
We managed to find a half-decent spot on the corner of Oxford Street and just up from Darlinghurst Road which was only partially/ocassionally obscured by other people's umbrellas, but after 45 minutes of watching the Dykes on Bikes and numerous political statements wrapped up in pink sequins we made our way back to the camp site (no pun intended). Despite having an umbrella ourselves, we still got completely soaked from the run-off of other people's umbrellas standing next to us.
A very wet night, but I was glad we made the effort to go along nonetheless rather than sitting in the van watching it on our tiny black and white portable television. After all, what's a gay parade without a bit of colour?