I have mixed feelings about this "no kink at Pride" thing.
Part of me feels like sure, let's do "no kink at Pride," on the condition that there's a Folsom Street Fair equivalent, some sorta flog-a-riffic leather festival to make up for all the fucking JOY that just disappeared.
And part of me feels resentful of how I stopped being welcome at Pride because I'm not well-off or young, so my feelings are very much "fuck trying to get some sort of nice gentrified version."
Anyone who wants Squeaky Clean Pride is perfectly free to set up their own event, IMHO. Put their time, money, effort, and love where their mouth is.
Otherwise they can just shut their dumb asses when the people who are too fabulous for them to handle are strutting by.
Like, there is Mardi Gras down in the French Quarter, and it is every bit as decadent as you would expect - and there is also "Family Gras" out in the suburbs, that you can take your sheltered suburban kid to. And there is a lot of money pouring into making both of those happen. Only one of them really brings in the tourist bucks though I think.
@Leucrotta kink is one of those things that i see as so intertwined with being queer that it's erasure to exclude it from the main event.
also, selfishly, pride is one of the times of the year i can go as fuckin extra as i want in appearance, and i will fight if folks try to take that away.
@KitRedgrave tbh I really liked Folsom as a separate thing from Pride, and I’d honestly like allowing kink at Pride *and* having a kink festival. What’s the point of being an urbanite if you don’t get stuff like that? It’s like living in a major metropolitan area and never getting to a museum.
@Leucrotta hell yeah! i would like that too, albeit folsom is very much not my scene from what i've seen. though there's a niche there i might dig...
@KitRedgrave I dunno. Outside of my own body image issues and kinks, the idea of more street fairs is just really appealing to me. Saturday, the sun’s out, let’s go get flogged and have an overpriced frozen limeade, that sorta thing.
@Leucrotta yeah. definitely something to go to with a crew imo :3
Life is short, we're not even completely through a devastating pandemic, and outside of the lucky few we're all getting relatively poorer every year. In these conditions harshing a festival for being... well, festive... seems like a shitty thing in general.