not a bad pride at all.

You know, sometimes the world works in very strange ways. At first, I was annoyed I missed the parade, and spent most of Sunday with a whanging headache, but I'm kind of glad I did. That just meant my day unfolded much differently than it would have had I gone to the parade. Oh, and I got some news tonight...turns out a certain internet stalker I have cast a hex upon my weekend and said a spell, hoping I'd miss the parade and ruin my weekend.

No, really...I'm not kidding. But I'm not going to go into any details beyond that. It's just too...wierd.

Not to mention...Just A Bit Creepy.

So here is a photo essay of how I spent Pride Sunday. You can click on any picture if you want to enlarge it. :-)

I sent my friend Ryan a text message earlier in the day telling him happy Pride (it's a holiday here) and to give me a call later in the day. He called, and so I went over to his Tenderloin apartment to visit him.



That self-concious, sunburned cutie you see there is Ryan. It's hard to get a picture of him because he usually hides his face whenever someone points a camera at him. Let's just say I think he's adorable and I want to take lots and lots of photos of him. I did manage to get a few good ones...this is one of them:



Anyway, Ryan and his friend Patrick had just come from the Civic Center Pride party. Patrick was wearing a kilt.

No, really. It looked hot on him:



He's a cool guy...I want to get to know him better.

After Patrick left, I went over to the bay window:



I started snapping pictures of Tenderloin street life...these two were returning from the Pride celebration at Civic Center Plaza...they look like they were having a good time. I hope they were...everyone should have fun at Pride:



There was the obligatory Bus Stop Tweaker...this poor guy was twitching and shaking...I hope he gets help someday:



I sat down and watched TV with Ryan:



It was a Josh Hartnett picture:



A commercial came on, and Ryan got up and looked out the window. I followed him:



I asked him if he still wanted to go to the party at the Bambuddah Lounge with me. I had been planning to go, and Ryan said he would go with me. However, as the day lazily dragged on, I started rethinking my eveing activities. I was still feeling a bit off from the previous night's fiasco, and I was still having trouble keeping my balance at times. The warm afternoon breeze was blowing through the window, carrying up the streetscape ambience with it, and somehow, going to a crowded, noisy pool party in the middle of the Tenderloin seemed less and less desirable.

"Hey Ryan?" I asked.

"Yeah?"

"You still wanna go to that party?"

Ryan looked at me and smiled, walked over to the couch, and flopped down...looking at me wordlessly:



It was the only answer I needed.

We decided to go get some Thai food from Osha Noodle at Leavenworth and Geary. It's one of my favorite places to eat in town, not to mention it's my parents' favorite restaurant in San Francisco. It's the first place we go to eat when they come visit.

After procuring Thai food and chocolate ice cream, we returned to his Tenderloin palace, where we watched more TV...this preacher was cracking us up:



It was rapidly getting dark outside, so Ryan got up and turned on his arch lights:



They're cute. I like them.

We ate our food, and afterward we kind of spooned together on the sofa and got comfortable. We watched The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad...the Sunday night Fox lineup is always fun:



After American Dad, I decided it was getting late, and poor Ryan was absolutely exhausted from the day's activities. I bade him a good night, and walked home.

This face greeted me forebodingly at the gates of Chinatown at Bush and Grant:



I love walking through Chinatown at night. It's like I've been suddenly planted in some old film noir movie set:



Some of these are blurry...the light was low, and I didn't have my tripod with me:



I ran across one of my favorite graffiti tags in the entire world, Ribity...this one was beautiful:



I've been snapping lots of pictures of Ribity...he's everywhere. I know him personally, actually...if you're in New York look out for him. I don't approve of graffiti, but to be honest, I kind of like this one. I just wish he wouldn't tag murals and storefronts.

I got home and went up to the roof to just look at the skyline for a bit:



It was beautiful.

And that, my friends, is how I spent my Pride. It was actually much more fun than last year's Pride, and to be honest, I can't think of any other way I would have rather spent it. Sometimes, just the simple things are all one needs. Besides...it was nice waking up this morning not being hung over. So a personal message to my stalker who hexed my weekend to ruin my Pride...thank you. It wouldn't have turned out the way it did, and I learned something very important about myself this weekend. It was actually the best Pride I've ever had.