Anticipated aftermath of Straight Pride parade The US is having a Straight Pride parade this year. The details are pretty sketchy as of yet; we only know that it’s going to be in Boston and that it will be Grand Marshalled by Milo Yiannopoulos, who is a gay, Republican xenophobe, after Brad Pitt emphatically denied the organizers’ request that he lead the parade, and called them a bunch of annoying fucktards, too.
Boston is an excellent locale for Straight Pride parading, because it is home regularly to the only sort of parades that straight guys actually enjoy— drunken mobbing, followed by a riot, of local professional athletes who have just won a championship, which Boston, to the annoyance of the rest of the country, does frequently. They just narrowly missed hosting another one, as the Bruins pissed away the Stanley Cup to the St. Louis Blues. We San Diegans remain championship, and hence parade, free.
Why straight guys love to celebrate the achievements of sports mercenaries who care nothing about us and would happily use their celebrity to have sex with our wives and girlfriends if we have one and especially if she looks like a supermodel is beyond me, but there is is. A lot of things straight guys do don't make much sense, but that's hardly worth holding a parade for.
We don’t know what the turnout for Straight Pride will be. Having Milo instead of Tom Brady at the head of the fest is bound to depress attendance, and what exactly the marchers will be proud of isn’t really clear. There are few things straight guys universally agree on, and a celebration of sports bars and lesbian porn doesn’t seem worth parading for. Being out of the closet as straight is no good reason—as soon as you threw on that Red Sox jersey over your cargo shorts and crammed your toes into your cheap flip-flops, you were out of the closet, my cisgender male pal.
For sure there will be drinking. Straight guys can’t enjoy a parade without drinking. Some of our critics say we can’t enjoy anything without drinking, and they may have a point. How else to express our essential straightness, except to have a can of Sam Adams in one hand and our cell phone tuned in to ESPN 2 in the other? Row after row of guys doing that is bound to make a pretty boring parade, though.
That’s the problem with parades and why straight guys hate them—they’re boring. The ones in New York where they stop and do a Broadway number in the middle of the street are okay, I guess, mostly because the parade announcers cease their unbelievably dull commentary when the shows are going on. The Rose Parade leaves me cold—it’s just patter and posies as far as I’m concerned. The Mummer's parade in Philly was a recurring trauma of my childhood.
But the real reason I hate parades is because I lived in Hawaii for nine years, right in Waikiki, which was shut down about twice a month because some ethnic group or another was celebrating its heritage, and Hawaii is home to about every single ethnic group there is. There was a Chinese parade, a Japanese parade, a Filipino parade, a Korean parade, a Samoan parade, a Portuguese parade and even a Polish and a Ukrainian parade. And of course, St. Patrick’s Day and all the usual holidays. They all paraded right down Kalakau Avenue, which is the main drag in Waikiki. If I was caught outside my hood, I was just plain stuck until the parade was over.
All the parades, despite the ethnics striving to outdo each other, were essentially the same—a few high school bands, a drill squad with fake rifles, a few politicians sitting in decorated convertibles and a couple of horses. I think they were the same horses each parade—they just passed them around.
Usually they presented the only hazard to me, since I lived in Waikiki and just had to wait for a break in the parade to scamper across Kalakau to the beach. Careful scampering, to avoid the horse mess.
Because I was always wearing my cheap flip-flops.
Boston is an excellent locale for Straight Pride parading, because it is home regularly to the only sort of parades that straight guys actually enjoy— drunken mobbing, followed by a riot, of local professional athletes who have just won a championship, which Boston, to the annoyance of the rest of the country, does frequently. They just narrowly missed hosting another one, as the Bruins pissed away the Stanley Cup to the St. Louis Blues. We San Diegans remain championship, and hence parade, free.
Why straight guys love to celebrate the achievements of sports mercenaries who care nothing about us and would happily use their celebrity to have sex with our wives and girlfriends if we have one and especially if she looks like a supermodel is beyond me, but there is is. A lot of things straight guys do don't make much sense, but that's hardly worth holding a parade for.
We don’t know what the turnout for Straight Pride will be. Having Milo instead of Tom Brady at the head of the fest is bound to depress attendance, and what exactly the marchers will be proud of isn’t really clear. There are few things straight guys universally agree on, and a celebration of sports bars and lesbian porn doesn’t seem worth parading for. Being out of the closet as straight is no good reason—as soon as you threw on that Red Sox jersey over your cargo shorts and crammed your toes into your cheap flip-flops, you were out of the closet, my cisgender male pal.
For sure there will be drinking. Straight guys can’t enjoy a parade without drinking. Some of our critics say we can’t enjoy anything without drinking, and they may have a point. How else to express our essential straightness, except to have a can of Sam Adams in one hand and our cell phone tuned in to ESPN 2 in the other? Row after row of guys doing that is bound to make a pretty boring parade, though.
That’s the problem with parades and why straight guys hate them—they’re boring. The ones in New York where they stop and do a Broadway number in the middle of the street are okay, I guess, mostly because the parade announcers cease their unbelievably dull commentary when the shows are going on. The Rose Parade leaves me cold—it’s just patter and posies as far as I’m concerned. The Mummer's parade in Philly was a recurring trauma of my childhood.
But the real reason I hate parades is because I lived in Hawaii for nine years, right in Waikiki, which was shut down about twice a month because some ethnic group or another was celebrating its heritage, and Hawaii is home to about every single ethnic group there is. There was a Chinese parade, a Japanese parade, a Filipino parade, a Korean parade, a Samoan parade, a Portuguese parade and even a Polish and a Ukrainian parade. And of course, St. Patrick’s Day and all the usual holidays. They all paraded right down Kalakau Avenue, which is the main drag in Waikiki. If I was caught outside my hood, I was just plain stuck until the parade was over.
All the parades, despite the ethnics striving to outdo each other, were essentially the same—a few high school bands, a drill squad with fake rifles, a few politicians sitting in decorated convertibles and a couple of horses. I think they were the same horses each parade—they just passed them around.
Usually they presented the only hazard to me, since I lived in Waikiki and just had to wait for a break in the parade to scamper across Kalakau to the beach. Careful scampering, to avoid the horse mess.
Because I was always wearing my cheap flip-flops.
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