Don't bring around a cloud . . .

Yesterday was the 41st Annual Chicago Pride Parade, and it was very fun as usual. The weather called for major thunderstorms all day, but as with the Cubs game last week, the weather forecasts were wrong. Though a pretty severe storm ripped through the city in the morning, by late morning, it was hot and sunny.

I met up with some friends and just had a great time watching this celebration. The parade is always entertaining, sometimes poignant (as when an elementary school contingent marched by, all organized by the kids). This year a couple of important new additions to the parade represented a big step forward for people's perceptions, I think. First of all, the Chicago Blackhawks had a float and Brent Sopel (despite having just been traded) brought the Stanley Cup along. Hockey would be the last sport one might expect to be represented in a gay pride parade, so this was a very cool new float. (And then about nine more floats had some sort of Blackhawks theme, all of them playing "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis, the official Blackhawks song this year.)

And the Cubs had a float as well! The new owners of the Cubs, the Ricketts family, said they wanted to be "good neighbors," since Boystown is basically the same neighborhood as Wrigleyville. And if it weren't cool enough that the Cubs had a float, Mr. Cub himself, the legendary Ernie Banks, joined the new owners on the float. Sadly, my camera's memory stick chose this moment to stop working, so after a few seconds of trying to fix it, I had to pull out my iPhone and snap a quick shot before it was too late. Sadly, it was more or less too late. But there is Ernie, sitting on the front of the float:

So it was a hot and humid, non-stormy day full of fun, friends, cocktails, and celebration. And seeing how many floats there were and the types floats this year made everyone a little hopeful for the future.