St. George Down Under

I’m So Controversial. SYDNEY GAY AND LESBIAN MARDI GRAS!

March 8, 2009 at 9:55 pm (Uncategorized)

Another memorable, unique, one-of-a-kind night in Sydney! Yesterday I got into the city at around 3pm and headed to Hyde Park to meet my American friends. As I was looking for them I passed large groups of scantily clad, spandex-wearing men and women in matching pink outfits, black boxer-briefs, glitter, wings, masks, and of course leather…I had entered the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras!

I found Ryan along with my other friend Ryan, with a group of the other Ryan’s friends, and my good friend Ryan’s roommate. (Does that make sense? haha) We hung out a bit ( I sat while they drank), then we headed to a pub/grill to get some food/drinks. The city was just completely saturated with people, many who were dressed in drag (and quite impressively, I might add. I remember thinking, “She’s kinda hot”. Then taking a second look and realizing it was a dude), spandex, underwear, a few men with nothing more than banana-hammocks (thongs/g-strings) and all painted up. It was Mardi Gras, but queer! 

We wandered around for a bit, then met up with our other American friends and hung out a little bit. Two of the (straight) guys apparently thought it would be funny if they dressed up (or down, I guess) in their white spandex boxer-briefs. Turned out to not be such a good idea…apparently one almost got into a fight because a gay man made a comment about the unfortunate size of one of their members, if ya catch my drift. 

The group wanted more alcohol, so we headed to a bottleshop, then back to Hyde Park to catch the parade, which was to start at 7:45. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that many people that concentrated before. All along one street, pushing against one another to get a good view of where the parade was to be. It was a challenge just to get back to Hyde Park, they had streets blocked off, and hundreds of people were trying to cross the street to get to the park. We finally made it over and chilled in the park, waiting for the parade to start. 

Crossing the street with the rest of Sydney.

It finally started, and we pushed as close as we could to the street. Got separated from my friends, but it was so loud that it didnt matter. The parade was incredible, and lasted over 2 hours. Crazy floats with people dancing to techno, YMCA, 80′s music. Guys in short shorts running around, girls in spandex, just flamboyancy. There was a cool tribute to Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to public office (see movie “Milk”). 

I’m a little tired of writing, so I’m gonna take a snippet of an article written before the event…taken from 

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25149943-12377,00.html

THE floats are almost complete and hundreds of bodies have been buffed, waxed and sprayed with fake tans in preparation for the highlight of Sydney’s gay and lesbian community calendar.

Tomorrow night Oxford and Flinders streets, in Sydney’s inner-city Darlinghurst, will be awash with flags, national dress and global icons to match the 2009 gay and lesbian Mardi Grad parade theme – Nations United.

Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham, the only openly gay medal winner at the Beijing games, has been chosen to lead the parade and is expected to get a hero’s reception from the crowd.

It’s not yet known what he will be wearing but crowds can expect to see plenty of glitter, feather boas, sequins, bare bodies and all things queer among the 136 floats taking part in the parade.

Included in the parade will be a special tribute to assassinated American politician Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to office in California.

Thousands of spectators are expected to line the route of the parade, which kicks off at 7.45pm (AEDT) from Hyde Park.

They werent kidding about thousands of people. I think more like tens of thousands. 

I thought it was one of the coolest things ever, and here is why…gonna go on a little rant/reflection.

This was an incredibly powerful event. It was a gay event, but I think almost undoubtedly there were more straight people there than gay. To see straight people cheer, yell, and scream for gay people being themselves, not holding back, not CONFORMING to what society or conservatism or anybody thinks was just so refreshing. And I’m not saying they were making out, or gay sex was happening in front of me and people were cheering. They were just truly happy to have a night for themselves, to express themselves, show themselves off to others without embarassment, and for the crowd to have such acceptance and love for these people was AMAZING. I couldn’t help but think that this would never happen in America. Or at least 75% of America. 

One of the most powerful parts of the night and the float that spoke volumes to me was a boring old white bus that drove by. It had a simple banner on the side that said Sydney Hillsong-Proudly Supporting the Gay and Lesbian Communities. For those of you who don’t know, Hillsong is a HUGE church in Australia, and is attended by over 20,000 people each week. This is how we as Christians should be. Welcoming, accepting, loving. What is more powerful than being part of a parade that was once a protest march for human rights by the gay and lesbian community, and saying “We support you.” Shouldn’t Christians be FOR human rights for all? Shouldn’t we be loving of ALL people? And it probably wouldn’t hurt to apologize for the ways that our Christian brothers and sisters have treated them. Seriously, I think it would be impossible to find a homosexual that was NOT disrespected by someone who called themselves a Christian. What we need to do is to show what being a Christian is actually like-and by entering their float, I believe Hillsong was exemplifying this. I’d love to hear comments from those who disagree with me. 

The Hillsong Bus. You can't see it, but to the right it says"Proudly Supporting the Gay and Lesbian Communities" Just realized that this was also from Hillsong Church. Now THAT is the message!

Toward the end of the parade I attempted to meet up with my friend Joanne, but she was on the other side of the street and it was nearly impossible to get over there. I witnessed about three or four drunken fights (interesting how entertaining they are. I heard that some would happen, so I just kinda stayed and watched, and watched the police run around like idiots trying to stop it. It was probably bad of me, but it was so…interesting, how humans can so easily revert to their animalistic, uncivilized ways.) In one a chick started headbutting a guy, and the guy just took off into the crowd, and was chased by two police. CRAZY. 

Finally made my way to Joanne, and then we just kinda walked around and tried to meet up with other peeps. We sat on the steps of a bar and watched hundreds of people stream by us on the sidewalk, it was just incredible, the diversity that was there. We met some of her friends at a bar, then decided to head to another club. The streets were incredible, just FILLED with trash. Well, mostly beer bottles, cans, and other alcohol bottles. The streets were closed down, and people would literally drink and toss their bottles to the curb. Not kidding, but for blocks there was literally a 2-3 foot “pathway” of trash. And cause some of the city is hilly, for much of the night I heard glass beer bottles rolling down the street…its a very distinct sound.

The street after Mardi Gras. See all the trash on the curb? It was like that everywhere! (This is where we met Joanne's friends.)

I met another group of friends! Joanne met some peeps in her class, so she introduced me to them. I spoke quite a bit with a (cute) girl named Meredith, who has a fascinating story. She’s South African, then moved to the UK, and has lived in Sydney for the past five years. She’s the coolest person, and it was just awesome talking to her about South Africa (yeah, talked a lil about racism and apartheid, apparently the racist additudes are getting a lot better) then about how she wants to be a primary school teacher. Made a new friend!

We made it to a hotel/club, went upstairs to the dance floor, got some drinks and boogied down! The whole crew was older, I’d say the range was 21-28, so it was a lot of fun chillin with them, peeps who are more responsible with drinking. I was talking to one of the guys, and apparently he was “this” close to moving to Portland, from the UK, but for some reason got a job or something in AUS. Pretty crazy. 

We left at about  2 or so. We were gonna crash at one of the girls’ places in Hornsby, but we found a bus (Joanne and I) to our place. Longest trip ever, took over an hour. Then we waited forever for a taxi, and she ended up calling a friend who picked us up at 3 and took us home. We gave a ride to a random Italian dude named Gino, kinda cool. (Dude, Gina, you should totally marry this guy. Not that I know anything about him…) I ended up getting to sleep at 4:45, waaaaaaaay too late. 

OH, almost forgot. On the way into town I met a Chinese dude, and we talked a little bit. I mentioned Beijing and started talking about how terrible the air quality was there, and how the Olympics were kind of dangerous because of that, and this guy across from us, just ripped and in perfect shape, said “They actually cleaned it up pretty well.” We talked to him a little bit about it, and I asked how he knew about it…He is on the freakin New Zealand national soccer team. Playin club in AUS. So crazy. So I talked soccer with him, and a little bit of rugby. Told him about how soccer was still pretty unpopular in America, and he said, “But didn’t Beckham bring a lot of popularity to it?” I said no, we really don’t care all that much about him, and pretty much told him what I’d heard from BR and Edi about Beckham, how he really wasn’t that great anymore, kinda  a joke, and didnt even start in the World Cup. I FREAKIN TALKED ABOUT SOCCER WITH A WORLD-CLASS SOCCER PLAYER. We talked a little bit about the upcoming World Cup (he said that Spain were the favorites), and as I left, I wished him good luck. FREAKIN WISHED HIM GOOD LUCK. 

K, that was so long, and I have more to write, so I’m gonna just start a new post…My longest to date I think! 1746 words. More pix are below, and here.

Look at that! Just look at it! So amazing, strobes on the skyscrapers!