Conversation

Notices

1. allan (allan@mastodon.club)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2019 18:47:28 EDT allan

   #Edmonton pride week starts tomorrow. Which means...not much? 🤷

   That the parade was cancelled this year just underlines how hollowed-out pride has become, recently.

   1. allan (allan@mastodon.club)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2019 18:51:29 EDT allan

      in reply to

      I was talking about this a while ago with some straight people, on the occasion of their first trip to a gay bar. I casually mentioned that Edmonton used to have half a dozen queer bars of various flavours and now there's just the one. Gentrification has largely swept away a lot of historically queer businesses and left in its wake just general inclusion?

      Then the parade was moved it from the historically gay downtown west side to the more tourist-centric Whyte ave...

      1. allan (allan@mastodon.club)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2019 18:57:56 EDT allan

         in reply to

         It's a strange thing to reflect on but in the past decade it's gotten dramatically better to be gay -- I don't generally feel like anyone's going to murder me when I leave the bar anymore -- but also it's much less visible? There really isn't a gay ghetto any more. We're just dispersed into the crowd.

         It's very assimilationist? I dunno.

         1. allan (allan@mastodon.club)'s status on Friday, 07-Jun-2019 19:12:41 EDT allan

            in reply to

            It is also possible that I'm just being an old man yelling at clouds.

            When I complain about the bar scene (mostly that the only gay pubs closed) people point out that grindr et al exist. So it could be just that the world has moved on and I have not moved with it.

            Similarly I don't use Facebook, which is how the universe plans events now, so I could just be shatteringly out of the loop on pride related activities outside the party scene.

            I don't think so, but maybe?