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New York – Tens of thousands of raucous parade-goers braved intermittent rain and lined Fifth Avenue on Sunday for the annual gay pride parade, an event that comes just weeks after a vicious attack on a popular gay singer and the 25th anniversary of the start of the AIDS epidemic.
Outrageous and lavish costumes were abundant all along the parade route, including men in short skirts and tiaras and long-legged drag queens in knee-high boots. The floats and marchers turned Fifth Avenue into a sea of rainbows.
“Everyone else has a chance to express their affection freely, and for one day in New York, you can be free and not feel ashamed or embarrassed,” said 42-year-old Roberto Hermosilla, from Miami, attending his ninth gay pride parade.
Organizers said they were expecting hundreds of thousands to attend the parade, but the inclement weather clearly hurt attendance. The gay pride parade was one of several around the country this weekend, including a similar-sized one in San Francisco.
Thousands of festively dressed people lined San Francisco’s Market street as marching bands, dancers and floats bearing corporate logos streamed by. One float carried a bearded man, wearing a white lace mini-skirt and fish-net stockings, who sang Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” as a band backed him. A half-dozen men dressed in underwear and top hats danced behind him.
The New York parade also marked the very public and triumphant return of singer Kevin Aviance, who rolled down Fifth Avenue atop a fake pachyderm and a circus-themed float weeks after the drag queen was viciously beaten and suffered a broken jaw. Police have charged four young men, ages 16 to 20, with assaulting the artist while yelling anti-gay slurs.
Wearing a top hat and very little else other than a jacket, jewels and red stilettos, Aviance waved to the crowds, his mouth still wired shut from the attack.