Life

General ramblings connected to my personal life and activities.

MiS Day Two: 2005 Seattle Gay Pride Parade

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Day two of the “MiS (Men in Skirts)” weekend has come and gone. Rick, Kirsten, and Kory joined Prairie and I to head up the hill to this year’s Gay Pride parade.

We staked out a spot right about where I was last year, just in front of Seattle Central Community College. Over the past couple years, that’s become my favorite place to set up for the parade — wide sidewalks, so you don’t get too claustrophobic from the crowds if you’re on the sidelines; and a median divider running down the street that I like to hang out on, as it’s a great spot for getting photos as the parade goes by. Chas was just a bit up the street from us, and he came down to say hi before the parade and then again after everything was done.

I always forget how long this parade is. It started right on time (a pleasant surprise for Seattle), and wrapped up three hours later! I ended up filling three of my four Compact Flash cards (one 512Mb, one 256Mb, and one 32Mb) with photos, topping out the day at around 550 total. I’ve culled out about half of those for my Flickr photoset — I didn’t see any “oh wow” shots this time around, but there’s still a lot of fun stuff in there.

www.flickr.com

Once the parade was done, we all went down to Charlie’s for lunch, then split up. Rick went up the hill to the rest of the Pride celebration at Volunteer Park; Kirsten and Kory went off to go shopping, and Prairie and I came back home, as she had to head back out to Ellensburg. I grabbed a nap for a bit after she left, then spent a few hours working on getting photos ready until Kirsten and Kory came back.

After they crashed out for a short nap, the three of us headed back up the hill to hit the Vogue‘s Sunday night fetish night. Bounced around for a bit, saw some people I’d met a while ago but hadn’t seen in a good year or so (Toni and Deandra, and met their friends Kane and Teresa), and then headed back home round about midnight.

And with that, the Men in Skirts weekend is done. I’m blearily making my way through the morning, and the work week is about to begin.

Of course, on the bright side, there’s a three-day weekend coming up next weekend thanks to the Fourth of July….

iTunes “Leather” by Amos, Tori from the album Little Earthquakes (1991, 3:12).

MiS Day One

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Today was day one of what I’ve dubbed the “Men in Skirts” weekend, with a jaunt out to Golden Gardens Park for the Utilikilts 5th Anniversary party.

Rock Crab, Golden Gardens Park, Seattle, WAPrairie and I had a lot of fun exploring the park. Neither of us had been there before, so we bounced back and forth between the picnic and wandering up and down the beach. While clambering over rock piles and underneath a pier, Prairie got to show me a lot of sea critters that I hadn’t seen outside of aquariums before, from huge starfish to tiny rock crabs that skittered away from us after she kicked over the rocks they were hiding under.

Me, Frisbee, Utilikilts Annivesary Party, Golden Gardens Park, Seattle, WAThe picnic was also quite fun, with really good sausages and other potluck goodies to munch on, and quite a few Utilikiltarians (some of them employees, others, like me, customers and fans) chatting and playing. I spent some time playing frisbee out on the sand with Steven, Jenniviere, and Ben‘s daughter (amusingly, Ben and I know each other from Anchorage — long time ago) until my feet couldn’t take the hot sand anymore.

We ended up bailing out around 4pm, as there were chores to putter with at home (fun things like laundry and a little bit of straightening up for visitors tomorrow). Good day, a park that we’ll definitely be heading back to so we can explore it in a bit more detail, and much fun meeting some of the people behind the Utilikilt empire!

www.flickr.com

iTunes “Phorever People (D’s Mellow)” by Shamen, The from the album Phorever People (1992, 4:52).

Shake, rattle, and roll

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“Good night.”

“Good night.”

(pause)

“Did you feel that?”

“Yeah…what is that?”

“No idea.”

The entire apartment was shaking, slightly, but very noticeably, about once every second and a half or so. It felt like a small earthquake, except that it was far too regular, and it kept going.

And it seemed to be getting stronger.

I got up, tossed on some clothes, and started to see if it might be coming from somewhere in the apartment building. Someone banging on a wall, maybe? Some late-night work on their apartment?

It was a little stronger on the floor below us — strong enough that the door to the apartment directly below mine was rattling lightly in its frame. As I continued on my way downstairs, it kept feeling a bit stronger. I got to the ground floor and saw a girl from one of the other apartments out in the hall. “Do you feel the building shaking?” she asked.

“Yeah — that’s why I’m up. What’s going on?”

She didn’t know. It seemed to be strongest by the mailboxes. A few moments later another tenant came out of their apartment, then another, and another. Eventually there were eight of us, all wondering just what was going on.

“Oh, I’ve got an idea,” I said. “They’re doing a lot of construction on I-5 this weekend…that’s gotta be it. Some construction equipment pounding the ground for some reason.”

That made sense, and it seemed to be fading a bit, and people started heading back to their apartments. Prairie and I were quite awake by this point, though, so we decided to head out and see if our guess was right. Jim (one of the other tenants, and the one who recognized me earlier this week) came along, and we wandered the two blocks down to the Spring St. bridge over I-5.

Pavement breaking, I-5, Seattle, WASure enough, a few lanes of I-5 were shut down, and a large truck was slowly moving down one lane, a huge contraption on the back sending what must be an insanely heavy metal slab slamming into the pavement again and again, breaking it up to be removed.

We stood on the bridge and watched it for a few moments, feeling the bridge shudder with each drop, marveling at how heavy this thing must be. “You should have brought your camera,” Prairie said. That sounded like a good idea, so we came back, Jim went back to his apartment, I grabbed my camera, and we headed back out to the bridge.

Construction (817 Kb .mov)I took a few shots and a few seconds of video (things like this really are more impressive when you can actually see and hear what’s going on — a still photo just doesn’t give the same impression), and then we headed back home.

The building’s still shaking every few seconds, but it’s not as strong as it was…and now that we know what’s going on, instead of just being somewhat freaked out and envisioning the building foundation suddenly cracking and collapsing, it’s not as disturbing as it was. Prairie’s already crashed out, and I will be as soon as this post goes up.

A bit of an unexpected adventure on a Friday night. Kinda fun, actually.

Goth Pride fundraiser

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Last night I made a rare mid-week visit to the Vogue, as they were having a fundraiser for the local goth community’s entry into this Sunday’s Pride parade. It gave me a chance to play a little bit with low-light photography, experimenting with various shutter speeds to see if I could get anything decent at the club.

Bad JuJu Lounge and The Vogue, Seattle, WASome shots worked better than others, of course (trial and error will do that). I brought along a monopod, which allowed me to me to go for two- to four-second exposures without too much camera shake. A tripod would have been better, but it would have been a lot bulkier and a lot more difficult to adjust quickly. The resulting shots aren’t my greatest, but I’m not unhappy with them at all — it was fun to try, and I’ve got a better idea of what settings to use the next time I get a chance for something like this.

Burlesque, Goth Pride Fundraiser, The Vogue, Seattle, WAThe one bummer was that as the actual fundraiser part of the show started late (scheduled for 10:30pm, they didn’t get going until about 11:15pm), I only got a chance to shoot three of the burlesque dancers before I had to leave. By the time I had found settings that were working pretty well (half-second exposure, front-curtain flash, focus fixed at just over two meters), the three of them were done and I needed to be getting home.

Still, it was fun to experiment with, and I got some time to bounce around on the dance floor for a bit. I’d been missing that, as the past two weekends have been too busy for me to make it out on Saturday night, and I don’t think I’ll be making it out this Saturday, either. Sunday’s the Pride parade, and Prairie and I will be heading up to watch that along with Rick and Kirsten and her husband; and on Saturday we’re planning on heading out to the Utilikilt Anniversary picnic.

The Vogue, Seattle, WA

Looks to be another busy weekend lined up. Yay for summer!

iTunes “Believer” by BT from the album Go (1999, 5:11).

Rules and Regs, Section 8: Noise

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My apartment building just transferred to a new management company, and along with the letter alerting all the tenants to the transfer, they also gave us a copy of the new rules and regulations for the building (which, as far as I can tell, is the same as the old rules and regulations). For those of us that weren’t home when they distributed these, they left them taped to our doors.

So, since my next door neighbor hadn’t emerged from his apartment to grab his copy yet, I grabbed a big red permanent marker and circled section eight on his copy:

NOISE: All Residents and their guests shall have due regard for the peace, comfort and quiet enjoyment of other Residents at all times. Musical instruments, radios, television sets, laundry facilities, etc. must be kept quiet from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. All noise shall be confined within the walls of Resident’s own apartment.

I doubt it’ll make much of a difference — he hasn’t shown any indication of caring one whit about those of us on either side of him — but it made me feel a little bit better.

iTunes “Misery Machine” by Marilyn Manson from the album Portrait of an American Family (1994, 13:09).

Fame

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Last night when I went down to check my snail mail, another of the residents in my apartment building was checking his. I was heading back to the elevator when he spoke up. “Hey — aren’t you Eclecticism?”

Turns out he’d stumbled across my site a while ago looking for pictures of the Jensonia Hotel fire, and has stopped by from time to time (recently enough to have seen some of the Fremont Parade pictures), and recognized me from my photos and my kilt.

Pretty fun, actually. So far, that makes the second time someone in the “real world” has recognized me from my site (the first being one of the regulars at the Vogue). I’m famous! ;)

More old Gig’s photos

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I’ve updated my photoset of old photos from Gig’s Music Theatre with shots of a lot of my friends from that time period. I’d held off on uploading those, as I don’t have a way to contact most of those people to be sure they won’t mind, but tonight I figured that as most of the shots have been on my archived Gig’s Music Theatre site for years now — and had been donated to me for public use — that it would be okay.

Of course, if anyone finds them and says “Hey! Get me offa there!” I’ll oblige. Hopefully that won’t be the case, though.

www.flickr.com

iTunes “I Showed A Caveman How to Rock” by US3 feat. Def Jef from the album Flintstones, The (1994, 5:19).

Fremont Favorites

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My top three favorite photos from yesterday, in reverse order:

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

“Butterfly Girl,” as we ended up nicknaming her. She rode with the naked bikers, though she chose to stay dressed. Quite pretty, and I love her mask.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

One of the floats had a group of people dressed in bride and groom costumes, running around and “marrying” anyone who asked. This green-haired bride ended up as my second favorite shot.

My favorite shot, as often happens, was pure luck. I was trying to get a picture of one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as they walked by. My camera was being a little slow, probably having a tough time auto-focusing on moving people and trying to adjust exposure all at the same time. I wasn’t sure quite when it was actually going to take the shot, so I just stayed crouched down to the ground, aiming the camera as the Sister as she walked past me, hoping that something useable would come out.

What I ended up getting floored me.

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

So much better than what I was expecting to end up with, or even hoping for. Hooray for luck!

As before, the rest of my shots are in the Flickr photoset.

www.flickr.com

iTunes “Peace, Love and Grease (Hot Tracks)” by BT from the album Roadkill 2.19 (1997, 6:48).