It’s gay pride weekend in Charlotte! (Video)

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Fred Stiening

A few of you may have seen my writeup of how nobody showed up for the Gay Pride Parade last Sunday. Boy was that embarrassing 😉

2 billion people expected!

image
(See comment for explanation)

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5 Responses to It’s gay pride weekend in Charlotte! (Video)

  1. Fred Stiening says:
    August 20, 2016 at 10:40 pm

    http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article96932202.html

    Worth a look. I can’t get past my suspicion that our mayor is transgender, not that it matters. You can hear protesters trying to drown her out.

    I drove uptown to show my support (for which side?)… It was interesting playing spot the tranny. The main north/south street was blocked off. There were definitely people there for the event, but not wall to wall people. Two thousand is probably a good number. Something was going on at the baseball stadium – I don’t know if it was related or competition. [Charlotte Knights had a home game at 5:05]

    The most exciting part was a phalanx of police on bicycles rushing down the street. In all, I think I counted 10 policycles. What was the emergency? There was a car with minor front end damage. It might have struck a pedestrian or maybe an idiot playing Pokemon while driving.

    Uptown has horse drawn carriages, which is a really bad idea. This isn’t New York City Central Park.

  2. Parrott says:
    August 21, 2016 at 2:10 pm

    LOL ‘No one showed up’ That hilarious. I guess the LGBTQ or whatever they are called today, is only .06 of the population in the U.S. ?

    Maybe they should just keep to Provincetown. Then you can drive there if you want to see that lifestyle.

    parrott

    • Fred Stiening says:
      August 21, 2016 at 8:06 pm

      Nobody showed up – because I went last week, and the parade was this weekend ?

      The parade today was from 1-3 PM. I showed up about 4 PM. My guess is the crowd was a little big bigger than Saturday, but not much more than a summer weekend crowd.

      The sponsors (especially the Charlotte Observer newspaper!) are full of crap. They said last year the crowd was 120,000 people, and 20% were visitors from out of the area. That just doesn’t add up. Even if you think 5% of the 800,000 people in Charlotte are gay, that’s 40,000 people. Only a fraction of those are self absorbed in displaying their sexuality.

      Promoters were predicting 200,000 people because of the “outrage” over the transgender bathroom bill. They were hoping for a national news story, or baiting someone to attack gay people. Every story in the paper mentioned the Orlando night club shootings. Only a newspaper person in Provincetown would think something like that is possible here. Shootout at a rap concert? Perhaps

      • Fred Stiening says:
        August 21, 2016 at 8:13 pm

        A little anecdote – as I was driving north on South Boulevard heading toward “Up”town, I noticed a bloodmobile motor home headed South. Presumably the point was the blood donation people felt a need to show the aren’t scared that gay men might have HIV

  3. Fred Stiening says:
    August 22, 2016 at 1:30 pm

    I added video of the Parade – it ran from 9th street to Trade (roughly 5th street). So look at the crowd that stretched for 4 blocks and guesstimate the crowd size. Further to the South, they had the street closed for a stage with music and people selling rainbow flags, etc

    During the summer, the Minor League Charlotte Knights pretty much has a sellout every game. The stadium holds 10,200 people. Charlotte had a decades long fight over whether we wanted / would support a full Major League Baseball team. BB&T stadium was built since I moved back three years ago. The Knights are a farm team for the Chicago White Sox. You don’t get too heavily invested in the players as they could be called up at any time, or more likely released back to civilian life. Going to a game should be on my list, too

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