LA Gay Pride Festival 2009
This year we took our camera with us to LA's Gay Pride Festival to try and capture a portion of all the celebrations. Both the parade & the two-day festival on June 13 & 14 seemed busier, better attended and more exciting than it has been in several years which certainly a welcome sight. Of course, braving the crowds is a task unto itself and if you could get used to all the people and activity you'd find yourself having a ball.
Taking pics at the parade wasn't so easy so we focused our attention on the festival. Even at that you'd have to be there almost 90% of the time to see all the hot guys, celebs that were there either walking around or featured at a booth or venue. Naturally we wanted to soak up as much of it as we could whether it was on camera or not. Here we have a few looks at some of the "interesting" people we saw & met.
Of course all pride parades reflect their local communities so you can imagine that LA Pride had a tremendously diverse mixture of representatives from the GLBT community and our supporters. While you wouldn't exactly have seen Rose Parade level floats & marching bands, the influence of the entertainment industry was apparent. Even if you couldn't make it, the parade was broadcast on cable access AND streamed online! After all this was the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in NYC which began the gay rights movement so it was something not to be missed. By the way next year is the 40th anniversary of LA's first Gay Pride parade so next year will be just as important locally.
There was a time when decorated flatbed trucks were the kinds of "floats" you'd see but recent years have seen an increased level of sophisticated in design. As you might expect there were many groups represented broken down by profession, ethnicity, and many whose message was marriage equality including the NoH8 Campaign which was started in February by photographer Adam Bouska. It began as a grass-roots protest against the passage of Prop 8 and has since exploded into massive effort with many famous supporters. Be sure & check out the site.
Naturally there was a dose of promotion by bars and dance clubs of every kind, radio stations, social networking businesses, and adult media. Of particular interest to us were the guys from Randy Blue who came towards the end of the parade and wore distinctive light blue gym shorts (no shirts of course). On hand were stars Reese Rideout, Leo Giamani, Trent Davis, Jeremy Walker, Ryan Rockford, Malachi Marx, Lucky Daniels, Xander Scott, Brandon Christian, and Travis James.
We took a little break before heading to the festival and later, on the way we saw super hot couple (?) Adam Killian & Mitchell Rock, the stars and DVD cover models of Chi Chi LaRue's Taken. Adam is just as gorgeous as ever while Mitchell has beefed up considerably. They weren't there at the Channel 1 Releasing booth when we arrived at the festival nor later but the ever popular Johnny Hazzard was along with relatively new star Jeremy Bilding. But all that's coming up next time along with more pics.......
Posted by JackManly at 6/21/2009 3:31 PM 
Categories: events,gay pride,news
Tags: Jeremy Bilding Zack Randall LA Gay Pride
Categories: events,gay pride,news
Tags: Jeremy Bilding Zack Randall LA Gay Pride
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