This Saturday marked the end of the Stockholmian Pride week, which - as always - means there would be a parade. Despite rain and thick clouds a lot of people marched or viewed the parade. The parade started in the north side of Stockholm city and went through the middle (Gamla stan), ending in the south side, and lasted for appx. three hours, during which 152 groups marched, attracting "a little fewer" ((According to Stockholm police, says Dagens Nyheter.)) than 50000 who marched and 300000 who watched.

X and I watched the parade together with Rade and Rivan who joined us. Standing there for about 1,5 hours, we saw everybody and everything from trannies in traditional Spanish dance dress, butch motorcycle dykes, body-painted queers, a mini-train filled with "rainbow families", floats with parents of gay kids, a lot of organisations (e.g. "gay doctors"), political parties ((Apart from the christian democrats. Did anybody even consider their absence?)) and even utterly tasteless companies who just wanted to advertise their merch. You can find a lot of pictures from the parade here.

Trucks went by with music blaring, mostly hi-energy gay pop e.g. eurovision stuff and BWO's anthem for this year's celebrations. Yeah, Stockholm had an official Pride anthem. Hang on: being anything other than heterosexual has an annual anthem attached? On the other hand, does heterosexual carry any glamorous connotations?

I think the best thing about the parade is that it cared toss-all about sexual preferences or asexualism; of course, the parade is there because of the divides between heterosexuals and other sexuals, but I wasn't thinking that way. I felt the parade was a celebration for being a oneness. OK, I'll stop myself before I start sounding like a pathetic version of the end of a Bill Hicks show.

Here's a video I snapped during the parade:

Following the parading, we ran away from rain to Tiffany's, a restaurant on Götgatan by Slussen. The place was full of people, yet we managed to secure a table for six; one of Rivan's friends was expected, and so was our dear friend Kuba! We sat down and ordered food from a waiter who rushed back and forth like a smurf on speed. Rade got himself Frutti di mare while Rivan and I chose the same dish, namely ravioli filled with ricotta-cheese spinach. Rade's food was good according to him, while mine (and thereby also Rivan's) was bad; as I cut one of the raviolo open, its contents exploded in a small cloud of dust, that clarified anybody's eventual doubts on whether or not the dish had been frozen prior to service. Yuck. Dry dust in a bowl of half-dry pasta with tomato-sauce from a tin. I washed that slap down with Guinness and tried to forget all about it.

Kuba and Rivan's friend showed up and we had fun talking for a while after which we paid and gladly left for Gondolen, which may be the best bar in Stockholm. Going from Tiffany's to Gondolen is probably like eating shit and then dining at El Bulli; the bartenders at Gondolen are so good, professional, quick and service-minded it's scary, and the drinks they serve are out of this world:

Left to right: Silvia, Sloe Gin Fizz, Mai Tai

Needless to say, we all had more than one drink. Every drink was definitely worth its price and more. Fresh fruit and great ingredients...what more's needed? We soon came up with the answer to that one: SingStar.

So we all went to buy lots of soft-drinks to mix with vodka and what have you not, packed our feeble bodies into a subway-cart and went to X's and my abode, where we sang the night away. It wasn't that late, though.

X, Rivan and Rade SingStar'ing the night awaaaaaaay!

Rade kicked my ass at singing Motörhead's "Ace of Spades" while I loved singing Blur's "Girls and Boys"; other hits included Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Rade picking Poison's "Unskinny Bop", which I hadn't heard for years. I haven't laughed at Bret Michaels' name for that long!

People went home, and we went to sleep. Wonderful day, wonderful friends.