pride 2006.

sunday, i went to pride 2006 with russ, his roommate jeff, mauricio, seth, and jeremy. nothing quite matched the spirit and energy during the parade since coming to new york city. we started off at a bar on christopher, then to a rooftop party, followed by a 20 block walk up west end avenue to hop to one more bar, and finally a lounge called opus 22 featuring amazing post-operative transsexual performer, candis cayne.

i can't even begin to explain how high energy the crowd was. people willfully wished one another "happy pride" and shouted out "you're beautiful." my favorite float was an HIV awareness non-profit with a black queen shouting "you positive, you negative?!" as a chant to encourage people to test themselves. speaking of, yesterday was national HIV testing day. plus, this year marks the sad but hopeful 25th anniversary of the first HIV diagnosi back in '81. a news program i watched recently re-aired the first news story on what was then called a "strange disease." it's hard to think back to a time when there was not a working arhcive of knowledge concerning the disease.