Pride run amok
Last month Ed at Guy Dads wrote about how the Stanford Band got kicked out of the San Francisco Pride parade for unruly behavior. I know, when is the Band not unruly? Unruliness is their raison d’être, pretty much. Today Ed called my attention to Leah Garchik’s column in the Chronicle, where the story got picked up:
The Stanford Marching Band, which runs this way and that instead of marching in precision formation, got kicked out of the Pride parade for slowing down the action. The band wasn’t a registered participant, but marched along with several gay and lesbian groups from Stanford. Ed Jones, who with his husband, Eddie Reynolds, was with a Queer University Employees at Stanford contingent marching near the band, says a parade monitor with a “cold, hard heart,” warned the musicians three times, then called in security to barricade the street and force them out of the lineup. The monitor must have been a Cal grad, says Jones, noting the irony of tight control of a parade about freedom.
The band’s Michael Priest said the band has issued an apology to parade organizers, and is hoping that time heals this wound. “We hope to be back next year.”
Way to go, Ed! Go Cardinal! (No doubt the paper will be getting letters from Cal defenders.)