Albuquerque Pride 2012

Pride month comes to an end, we say goodbye to another year full of glitter, rainbow boas, enormous sunglasses, rainbow stockings and bracelets, but we keep the memory of how great of a year it was.

We just came back from Gay Pride Albuquerque, and it’s nothing like I had seen before. It really was something different to feast your eyes on.

The parade was interesting. I must’ve seen more than 50 organizations, businesses, and even churches all together come and support the community. What surprised me the most had to be the churches.

As we were walking up the parade to get to the beginning of it, we saw a group of protesters with their signs and banners, shirts, a P.A., and just shouting hate.

Of course nobody was paying attention to them, so everyone carried on to the parade as usual. But… These assholes still had the nerve to get in the parade at the end, and protest. I can’t remember the last time I saw so many angry lesbians yelling. Hahaha!

I think what made the best out of it, was a gay guy standing in front of them, and popped one of those tubes that you pull a string and confetti blows up. Everyone cheered as the confetti hit their faces.

After the parade, we went to a local restaurant, called The Frontier Restaurant. Apparently this is a famous restaurant in Albuquerque, since it has quite a large menu, and the lines to order food are long as well. The good thing about it is that they must have like 10 people taking your order, and more than 20 cooks in the kitchen, so it was pretty quick to get our food.

If you ever get to take a road trip up there, make sure you try their Frontier Burrito. It’s amazing.

We drive up to Albuquerque Pride Fest, being held @ Expo New Mexico, so it was fairly large. I have to say that the amount of people that showed up to this 36th Annual celebration, are really into their pride.

Boas, glitter, rainbow stockings, boys in short shorts, and men in leather shirtless, girls with their kids, women with their partners. It’s great!

After being discouraged a bit with the morons protesting at the parade (yes, they have their freedom of speech), we stumbled upon a booth which I’m sure we’re all familiar with. PFLAG.

One of the members came up to us and said “Did you guys get your PFLAG sticker already? I’m a PFLAG mom”. We said no of course, she put the sticker on us, and she gave us a big hug and said “Happy Pride”. It’s stuff like this that we should not take for granted.

We all go through many things. Breakups, hard times, but it’s the people that you surround yourself with, that make the difference in your life. I don’t know about you guys, but that mom giving me a hug meant a lot. I wish there was more like that everywhere.

At night, you have to hit up Sidewinders, which is probably the neighborhood dance bar of any city. It was interesting to see so many different kinds of people, and see how they can manage to have fun one way or another.

Whatever it is you choose to do in Albuquerque for pride, make sure that you keep in mind all the people that put the event together, and thank them for all their support and hard work.

HAPPY PRIDE!