2017 Chicago Pride

  I have a few posts lined up in the draft chute, so I reckon I ought to get this one out. -No pun intended!

  So as I mentioned in a previous post, there are several thousand images of the 2017 Chicago Pride Parade posted elsewhere online, but not too many of interest for my needs, and of the images I'd like to use on Now and Zen, only a few of them listed a photographer.


  Here are the noteworthy photos I procured to share here with you.

   The parade was with brimming with absolutely fabulous balloon art. Above is one of the Conrad the Unicorns. He had several walking representations in this, his second year of participating in the Chicago Pride Parade. I'm not into unicorns, but Conrad was my favorite as far as the balloon entrants go.

  I don't know who this gentleman is, but he was inspiring. He would wheel himself for a stretch, then stop, and stand up for a few seconds. Shaking and exhausted, he'd sit back down and wheel away to repeat his feat.

   The Cubs parade entry was cool if you were standing on the north side of the street. Over there, one could glimpse the Commissioner's Trophy as it rolled by. I, however, was standing on the south side of the street which meant I had no idea the trophy was right there in front of me. Augh!

  The hate preacher on the loudspeaker outside the front of our building, on the last block of the parade route. He's out there every year. Each time he started bellowing, the 'Make Love Louder' mantra folks chanted over him. He's not nearly so loud outside as he is inside. The woman in the black t-shirt is Orange is the New Black actor Lea DeLaria, Grand Marshal of the 2017 Chicago Pride Parade. She had a couple of choice words for Mr. hellfire and brimstone. I was standing about 20' beyond the right edge of the photo.


  So that's it for the photos I plucked from the interwebs. There were a few other parade marchers that I searched for and wanted to share here, but I did not find them among the mass of images available. Over all, I saw nothing shocking or lewd, well except for the things the preacher was spewing. Teachers, schools, churches, politicians, fire departments, police departments etc... even the FBI had a parade entry. One FBI agent gave me a high '5'. -I had an encounter with a Secret Service agent last October, and for the record, the FBI is way cooler. When I first went out to line up on the parade path, there was a FBI agent wearing bomb disposal gear and eyeballing the parade route ahead of the marchers. It was a pretty cool day!