Canal Pride
This weekend is gay pride here in Amsterdam. Highlight of four days of festivities is a parade of barges through the canals of the city. I took this picture from the Magere Brug (Narrow Bridge) across the river Amstel, about an hour and a half before the parade was about to pass. These boats pictured here are just lying and waiting for the show to start. The police were frantically trying to create a passage through the river Amstel for the 80 barges to pass. A cheer went through the crowd whenever someone took to the water.
I’m glad to see that Canal Pride, as the parade is know, gets more political every year. Gay rights were taken for granted the past years and a lot of work needs to be done to recreate those rights. So a lot of political and social organisations take a stand and participate in the parade, which used to be a float of free publicity for dance clubs and the likes. This year, for example, the mayor of Amsterdam leads the parade and performs a civil marriage on a barge of four Dutch-American couples, to make a statement to US society where same sex marriage is not a given. I also noticed a guy wearing a t-shirt, commenting the California proposition, saying “I never got to vote on straight marriage”.
It’s Gay Pride here in Brighton, in the UK, too! No canals, so we have a carnival.
Street Photographer
August 1, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Great photo Olaf! Sorry I missed it. Vancouver pride was Sunday. What I noticed with our event was that there were so many (I’m assuming) straight people, who were treating it like any other festival and bringing their kids, etc., and watching the parade for fun, which was great. You don’t see people like Christian groups holding up signs damning homosexuals, which I remember seeing more than 10 years ago. Maybe people are better educated these days.
Shane
August 3, 2009 at 5:43 pm