Slideshow: NYC Pride 2009

We had a great group of NYC bloggers march with us in yesterday's parade, but holy cow that thing took forever. We lined up at 11:30 am, didn't make Fifth Avenue until 2:30pm and finally crossed the finish line in the West Village around 6:30pm. SEVEN HOURS on our feet. But the crowd reacted great to us, the announcers at the reviewing stands gave us great shout-outs, and the weather could not have been better. As we were placed behind the Latin dance spot Club Atlantis and the Peruvian Feather Explosion (or something), the dueling sound systems at times felt like we had a different iPod in each ear. The DJs of both groups favored Pitbull's Calle Ocho (I Know You Want Me). They favored it a lot.

Special props go out to the 20 or so lesbian bloggers from Auto-Straddle who were rallied by Grace Chu of Grace The Spot and who marched with us most of the way. And major snaps to our own Curly McDimple, the lone female in our group of 40 who hung on to the end. Kudos to Father Tony for putting it all together and to his husband C, who was our group marshal and cat herder. Thanks also to all the JMG readers I met along the route! We sure didn't expect it to take so long and missed a good portion of the Pier Dance (boo) but had a fantastic time there anyway (yay.) Full-screen versions of the above photos can be found here. Please feel free to share your own photo links in the comments.

UPDATE: Wayne Anderson at World Of Wonder has a great gallery of our day, as does Stash at Spamwise.