In Which I Finally Run Away and Join the Circus

(Photo of me by a fellow marcher. For more photos of the Fremont Solstice Parade, check out my photostream.)

Yes, they were hiring circus freaks (harharhar) ... or overweight fake gypsies, or something. Anyway, I have been volunteering for, and subsequently marched in the Fremont Solstice Parade in Seattle this past weekend.

Fremont is a hippie/artsy neighborhood, and the parade reflects that. Indeed, it is the very height of the social season here. Rules include no words - just pictures, no motorized vehicles, and no live animals except service animals. Nudity, however, is very much allowed, and a handful of my photos are NSFW.

Despite that, it is very much a family affair, with plenty of children in the parade and the audience - all seemingly unharmed. In fact, I marched at the head of the parade, in a mixed group of adults and children waving tie-dyed streamers from bamboo stalks - and we were immediately after the topless banner-bearer girls, who were immediately after the unofficial contingent of naked, body-painted bicyclists.

This was probably a good thing, as I had been instructed that our job was to "create good juju" - i.e., get people psyched up for the rest of the parade. Between the distractions in front, and the acrobats cart-wheeling behind us, hopefully no one noticed that I spent most of the parade dealing with my own personal wardrobe malfunction. Namely, my bamboo pole kept breaking, as I frantically whirled it like an Olympic "floor exercise" hopeful, taking it down, chunk by chunk, from about 20 feet to about 3 feet.  I consoled myself that at least the waste was biodegradeable ( I think not recycling would be counted as a mortal, as opposed to venial, sin, in this neighborhood), but this did nothing to alleviate my anxiety that my attempts at discreet disposal would either impale a bystander, or cause a tragic cartwheeling accident.

Well, I didn't kill anybody - not that I noticed, anyway.  The bamboo, BTW, had actually been cut down with a chainsaw from somebody's garden by a volunteer. (I asked, because I had noticed how impossible it was to break the bamboo when I was helping to move it, and was actually trying to break it into more manageable pieces. Who knew that bamboo molecules go through a phase change in the presence of large groups of costumed hippies that make them much more susceptible to shearing forces?) Most of the pieces were so big that the parade organizers had resorted to storing them on the flat roof of the parade headquarters building, while they awaited their transformation from camouflage to art. The scarf, beads, etc., were supplied by a fellow participant to jazz up my meager travel wardrobe. In fact, I was also wearing a donated sarong made out of Kente cloth dyed by African schoolchildren that my benefactor picked up during a trip to Ghana. But, at some point, that turned into wardrobe malfunction #2, exposing the bright purple scrub pants that I had worn, in an attempt to comply with the exhortation to wear bright colors.

What can I say ... it's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

Anyway, y'all check out my photos. I just uploaded a ton of them, and they're mostly pretty fun, if I do say so myself.