How Old Were You When You Aged Out Of The Pride Parade?

I’m 72 and have never attended one. I hate crowds.

DLers don't strike me as the Pride Parade type of people.

The parade is a bore. But the parties can be great. Seriously, how many times can anyone watch motorcycles and marching bands?

25?

I went a few yrs ago and had a gay ol time. I was 47.

One parade was sufficient, though went to three others with friends visiting from out of town.

33. I bought too much party favors, got paranoid, and sold all of them off at the gym.

The last time I walked in a parade was Halloween in the West Village, realizing that they didn’t have enough supervision, and came too close to being trampled when the crowd started pushing.

I don’t know if I aged out of it, but at this point in my life I don’t relate to a lot of it other than the underlying themes as a whole. Zero interest in crowds, or seeing people in their underwear. Overstimulation central.

I still go and I’m 55

Numbskulls on this thread and others who don’t have a clue why people participate in the parade, or are bigots ( the trans trolls and misogynists), or think they’re really cool because they’re above it all. Go back to your closets.

I haven't aged out of them. I'm up for rainbows, fun, and hot men, but I have no interest in trans issues or all the gender silliness, so my interest is less these days.

I still go and have a blast!

Right. The naysayers must all be a bunch of antisocial shut-ins.

OP the correct answer would be

WHEN THEY BECAME BORING

When we assimilated and the parade was taken over by corporations, politicians and the most boring floats in the world

Pride Parades were ONLY fun when they celebrated "deviance." When we behave like the people the right accused of us being.

OP the correct answer would be

WHENEVER WE FEEL LIKE IT.

I've not aged out. The parade her in San Francisco, became too overwhelming for me, so I've not attended in about 10-12 years. As I've gotten older, I more concerned and aware of falling down. This means I can't do big crowds anymore, though I lived for these celebrations in my younger days.

Just before social media started to take off. For similar reasons, they got messy, crowded and corporate.

I happened to have stumbled upon the start of Dyke March at Bryant Park yesterday afternoon and I give the old broads credit for trying but a lot of the younger participants seem to try-hard. And don’t get me started on the “masked section.” I don’t think food allergies that seem to plague lesbians are contagious.

R1 sounds fun.

I attended my first pride parade and festival when I was 32 after I moved to a large city that had one. It was really grassroots and a lot of fun. The festival was chaotic but intimate. I went a few years later. By then Absolut was one of the corporate sponsors, the floats carried brand names, and some corporation “owned” it. The festival was essentially a collection of highly organized beer and vodka tents with drunks and loud music, along with countless vendors selling shit that had nothing to do with pride.

When I moved, my new place was on the parade route so I invited some people over to watch from my balcony and the festival had several stages, headliners, $30 parking, and lots of drugged out tweakers. That was 23 years ago and I haven’t been to another. So I aged myself out physically when I was 37, but mentally many years prior.

When Pride Day morphed into Pride Month. Christ, even I don't like gays that much.

- Gay McGay

[quote] I’m 72 and have never attended one. I hate crowds.

There was no Pride in my day... just jail.

30. Weho Pride 2006.

I was wasted and ran after Gloria Allred's motorcade. It was fun, but when my friends showed me the pics, ouch.

Looking back, it was all about the pre-parade parties and post-parade bar hopping.

What a time to be alive!

Post-parade bar hopping? You can't even move in the bars during Pride in most cities.

I go every few years for a little while. It's been on repeat the past 25 years - same floats, corporate sponsors, drag queens, dykes on bikes, and now trans the past few years. Oh and all the straight people who come and watch the animals and want to get woke points - but just get in our way and crowd things up needlessly.

My first gay pride was NYC 1987 - it felt important and political back then. We've come a long way - but not necessarily all for the better.

How old were you when you got stupid?

these are for dirty freaks.

Went to the first New York parade in 1970, the five more years. Today's "March" ended before teeming rains arrived.

The nice thing about living in gay neighborhoods is that you can drop in on the festivities and drop out.

Right now, I’d like to withdraw cash and pay some misguided youths to smash the windows of the car that keeps revving its fucking engine.

Some of the children are wearing dog masks. I swear most attendees recycle the same parade outfit season after season. Bleached out rainbows in ecologically responsible woven clothing could easily go Renfair.

When Gay Pride became Pride.

62 years old

Around the time they took the "Gay" out of Gay Pride and turned it into "Pride" which includes lots of non-gay people.

Now that gay men over forty are clearly not welcomed I have never really thought of trying to enjoy the festivities which is too bad.

Pride is for the bridge and tunnel and surrounding area crowd anyway.

Here in SF, half of the pride attendees are from Sacramento and Fresno. All dressed in their pride gear that locals detest.

We were in the Castro last week (gorgeous weather) and will be there again next week. Today we're looking at bathroom hardware as two proud and fussy gay men. No need to be in all the riffraff.

I watched a parade once. After four or five festivals in cities of differing sizes they all seemed the same. I all of a sudden found them boring.

“Let’s stop pretending that parades are fun

There are plenty of other ways to get outside and celebrate whatever it is you’re celebrating. Let’s not let nostalgia box us in.”

[quote] Pride is for the bridge and tunnel and surrounding area crowd anyway. Here in SF, half of the pride attendees are from Sacramento and Fresno. All dressed in their pride gear that locals detest. We were in the Castro last week (gorgeous weather) and will be there again next week. Today we're looking at bathroom hardware as two proud and fussy gay men. No need to be in all the riffraff.

My God. So what if GAY people from outside of the San Francisco peninsula want to meet in SF and celebrate. Why begrudge people of having some fun in a central location.

We're here, we're queer, I'm used to it.

I never marched in one.

I went once to the Chicago one and it was like St Patricks Day - daytime drunks falling down in the street pissing themselves - and that was enough for me.

I have gone to non-parade sort of things - have lived in other places where it's more like a picnic or festival. Those, I enjoyed. But getting hammered for 8 hours with little to no food standing around with a bunch of drunken queens is not a recipe for fun for me.

Well, SMELL Miss R31!

Do NOT confuse her with The Poors or the hoi polloi!

Once your mom and dad go to one it's just not the same.

52 here. Have been going for over 30 years, although definitely not as hard as in my youth.

I like running into old friends mostly, although last year I took in the parade for the first time in years. I was genuinely touched by recent immigrants who were ecstatic at being at what I presume to be their first Pride parade.

I'm going to start a festival just for gay men. The Gay Men's Jamboree? The Gay Power Festival? The Gay Takeover the World Conference?

I woke up the following Monday on a pile of trash with wrecked asshole, empty pockets, and missing my shoes.

It was fun when I was younger, but now it has been cynically commercialised by big business, and there is no sense of it being an organic, community driven event. That and the ridiculous LGBTQI ee aye ee aye oh crap. I don’t see anything of any merit . Just narcissists and fetishists wanting to be viewed as victims for something they made up for themselves. It is the antithesis of Pride.

40, but that was 30 years ago.

My opinion of them now - the marketing, the day, the month, the circuit boys, the drag queens, and others unmentioned - is that they are useless and a parody.

They no longer have the political energy, point, or purpose of years ago. They're - well, they've become silly. Which is too bad because they had a purpose and a positive effect in the early years.

Smaller parades in smaller cities and towns that haven't already outstayed their welcome are probably still comforting and empowering for younger gays and lesbians. But big cities? Devolving into a joke.

Sometime in my 30s probably (mid-late 90s). It used to be a big deal, and I would march or man a booth most years but after a while I just got tired of it. Living in the epicenter of then gay West Village, I suppose the overkill of it all became banal to me.