I danced in the Fremont Solstice Parade today for the first time; last year I was a crowd monitor, and Zorg has been a crowd monitor for several years.
Being in the parade was amazing. The crowd along the route is only about five rows deep; you see every face, and I saw dozens of friends and was able to wave to them as we danced by. I was in Delilah's Visionary Dance Studio belly dance troup. Here's a picture from the Seattle PI of Dahlia Moon, one of the teachers, leading her Gawazi (Egyptian) troup. Dahlia's group wore striped jackets; we wore more traditional "cabaret-style" costumes, all in hot pink.
While the parade (performers and audience) is very much Fremont artists, hippies and yuppies, the crowd that turns out to party at the growing number of bars and nightclubs in Fremont, and listen to bands on the Fremont Fair stages, is something else -- younger, more commercially oriented, and louder. The parties along N 34th as I walked back to the car at 4 p.m. looked more like grad school spring break than the Fremont Solstice Festival; the insiders had gathered down at Gas Works Park, where there was a strong scent of ganja and naked people were taking pictures of costumed ones.
Both crowds seemed to be having great fun.
Parade pictures were already flooding onto Flickr.com at 5 p.m. Here are some of my group:
Peace bra.
Lineup of belly dancers.
Following Delilah.
Henna tattoos.
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