Paris Pride

You can take the girl out of San Francisco...

What a welcome surprise to find myself in Paris for Gay Pride!  It was not planned, it was a welcome surprise and I loved it.

The "home" I felt wasn't just in familiar expression of love and self, it was in how universal it is.  If I closed my eyes and spun around ten times in front of Raidd in the Marais where I was standing after the marching that I did, and opened them up pretending not to know that I was in Paris, I could have easily thought I was standing in the middle of the Castro in San Francisco.

Rainbow colored crosswalks, boys in undies with rock hard abs dancing in the street, the universal colors flying and floating and painted on happy bodies, it was all so familiar and so beautiful to witness.

I don't know the temperature of gay pride or appreciation in Paris, I'm just dropping in and I will soon find out, but I can tell you that the celebration that I saw and participating in was a welcome I won't forget and one that I am proud to have here in my new home away from home.