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Posted by Matthew McQuilkin

https://www.fruitcakeenterprises.com/blog/2025/6/28/indigiqueer-festival-seattle-2025-amp-trans-pride-seattle-2025

Ever since they re-opened Pier 62 to new event programs, I've been very impressed with the diverse array of events that Waterfront Park holds there. I only recently learned of the "Indigiqueer Festival," celebrating queerness and pride in Indigenous communities. I was subsequently surprised to learn that this has been an annual event there at least since 2022.

Part of that, I suppose, is that it gets scheduled on Friday of Seattle Pride weekend—and that means it overlaps with Trans Pride Seattle, which ever since 2022 has taken place as a festival at Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. (Prior to that, it was at Cal Anderson Park, and included a march, which they have done away with ever since re-starting the event post-pandemic.) But, since Pier 62 is an easy walk from my office, I figured this year I could pretty easily check both of them out. And, since Shobhit wanted to get steps in anyway, he walked to meet me down there.

At first, he was going to meet at my office at 4:30. But then I decided I would leave early, at 4:00. My end of the office was a ghost town by 3:00, and yesterday was the first day all week that was not overwhelming with shit coming at me from all directions all day. I decided, fuck it, I'm leaving half an hour early!

I texted Shobhit to suggest we just meet at the pier and he was good with that. He wound up getting a couple of blocks past the pier to the north by the time we actually ran into each other. He had a cocktail made for me, and had already drank most of his own. I originally planned to take the cocktail to Trans Pride to drink with Laney, but Laney had to cancel: she tripped in a crosswalk and sprained her ankle. As I write this, I don't even know if she'll manage to meet up with me at PrideFest Capitol Hill as planned either. I'm kind of expecting she won't. At least this year Shobhit is not busy with work shifts, so we have the whole weekend together. He's even marching with SAG-AFTRA Seattle in the Pride Parade tomorrow, as part of the MLK Labor contingent, and I'm going to march with him. I marched in 2023 (part of Shobhit's Seattle City Council campaign), and watched last year; I'm okay with marching again, especially with no one else to watch it with this year as a spectator. (Laney doesn't tend to do the parade anymore, as I tthink it's too crowded for her.) Anyway, Shobhit said there was security at the entrance to Pier 62 and wasn't sure if we'd get our drinks in. I drank half mine but then we arrived, and I just put the tumbler bottle inside my backpack. Then the security people just waved us through the fencing.

So, we got there right at 4:30. The event page says it was from 1:00 to 8:00, but at 4:30, very little was going on—and we were on the pier only about half an hour. There were maybe 15 booths or tents set up, and not all of them for vendors—one, for instance, was the "Sensory Tent," for people seeking tranquility. No one was in there when it started raining for a few minutes, and Shobhit went inside to stay dry. I turned around one minute and then he was gone, but then he called me into the tent. It was very pink inside. And also a pretty nice place to pass ten minutes or so.

There were live performances scheduled for later in the evening, but none happening while we were there. If I try going again next year—PCC will be at the new office location by then, but that's actually closer to Pier 62 (0.6 miles versus 1 mile)—I may try better coordinating so that I get there a bit later in the evening. I might even go home first. Even home is only a mile from where the new office will be, albeit in the opposite direction.

Anyway! I still got an 18-shot photo album out of it, even if very few of the photos are all that interesting, thanks to so little actually happening (much like at Georgetown Pride last weekend). Thirteen of the shots were actually taken at the pier. I took a few more from the Overlook Walk when Shobhit and I walked up from there, either of the pier only, or wider shots the pier is either fully or partially in.

Shobhit had thought at first that he would want to walk from Pier 62 to Volunteer Park for Trans Pride—a 2.5-mile distance—but in the end, after having already walked a long way down to the waterfront, he changed his mind. We conveniently got to the bus stop at 4th & Pike only a few minutes before a #10 bus pulled up, and that bus goes straight up Pike and then Pine to Capitol Hill, and right to our building on 15th—but it also turns left on 15th and goes straight up to the east side of Volunteer Park. So, we just stayed on the bus and rode all the way up there.

I mentioned this last year, and I'm going to again here: Trans Pride Seattle is the only outdoor event, to my knowledge, still billing itself as "masks required," and I think it's stupid. There are signs all over the place among the lines of booths that say THIS IS A MASK REQUIRED EVENT, and Shobhit and I were among the maybe 5% of the people there who ignored them. Call us assholes if you want. I even sort of understand the argument that there is a lot of disability in the trans community, and that's the reason behind them having this policy. And it is well known that I am not nor have I ever been "anti-mask," and indeed to this day I wear masks on public transit, on airplanes and in crowded movie theaters. Hell, I even wore a mask when I went to see FI last night (once I was done with the chai I brought, anyway).

But those are all wildly different environments than an outdoor event at a park. It has been well known since the height of the pandemic that risk in outdoor spaces is minimal. Okay, sure, this event was much more crowded than most outdoor spaces, but I still operate in probabilities rather than possibilities. It may have been possible to transmit viruses, or even covid, at this event, but it was not especially likely.

It is also fair to observe that 95% of the people there had easy access to masks and wore them. It wasn't a hard thing to do. But I would still bet anything that they will be forced to abandon that policy sooner than later. Masks are basically over now. It's been five years. And yes, even I still wear masks in some places. But wearing them in outdoor spaces is something I just find really dumb. Half the people there were still taking masks off to eat or drink anyway, so, come on.

We happened upon the booth for the Seattle Gay News, which allowed me to pick up a hard copy of this weekend's edition—something I don't think I have done since I left that paper, at the age of 24, in 2000. It also has my byline in it for the first time since then, the first time in 25 years: a personal essay on what it meant to me to be at WorldPride Washington D.C. earlier this month. (I have already noted that all of that same writing was broken up and pasted, as photo captions, as well as expanded upon, in my travelogue about WorldPride.)

The bad blood between myself and George Bakan being such ancient history, and him having passed away five years ago, made it easy for me to be delighted to see my name in the paper again. My time there being in many ways a wound in my memory faded long ago, and the people there who resented the stunt I attempted to pull (organizing an attempted strike in 2000) are also long gone. Renee, pictured with me above, is now the publisher and has been for a year. She started as a freelance writer at SGN at the same time I worked there, many years before she transitioned. I can't even remember how long ago she did transition, but it was years ago, and we were already Facebook friends at the time.

She had suggested I send some of my photos and maybe even write up something about my experience at World Pride, and so I did. I did not expect it to be so easy to get the piece published, basically with notable copy editing changes that I can find. I even sent in a couple of my own copy editing changes after initially submitting it, and even those changes were incorporated.

So Shobhit and I chatted with Renee for several minutes, and I asked to get a photo with her, holding up my piece in the paper. Shobhit took three photos with my phone, and SGN had their own photographer at the booth, who took their own, much higher-quality photo.

Renee always seems happy to see me, which is nice. And she encouraged me to submit any other writing I might like to. We'll see about that. Maybe. Either way it was nice to see her. She also got a chance to speak briefly on the amphitheater stage a little while later.

Shobhit and I made the rounds to all the booths. With Laney, we likely would have found a spot to sit in the grass for a while, and watch some of the entertainment. This year I got just this one brief video clip of a lip sync performance. Otherwise we just walked the booths, and actually, that helped me get more photos than I might otherwise have gotten. This year's Trans Pride Seattle photo album has a total of 31 shots in it, six fewer than last year but far from the smallest number I have ever gotten. Anyway, Shobhit spent some time at the UW Medicine booth, where he found out their contract with Aetna ended, so that sucks—we can't switch. We're stuck with a medical center that is affiliated with a church, and I hate that. Also a guy at that booth kept saying, "Would you like a mask?" No, not really. I did take one of the rainbow masks, but just walked away.

We were there from about 5:45 to 6:45, so only about an hour. We caught another bus back home on 15th Avenue. I put on my rainbow mask to get on the bus, but as a standard medical mask it felt pointless and so I switched it for one of my KN95 masks.

Anyway, I'm still really glad I went, as always. I haven't missed a single year of Trans Pride Seattle since 2015. It's important to me. I'm just ready for them to get rid of that mask policy, which I figure they will do within the next few years. Even Renee, while trying to chat with us, removed her mask, saying, "You don't have masks, I'm going to take mine off." (I guess we're bad influences.) She made it pretty clear they were only wearing them because of official policy for vendors at the event, even though probably a good third of the vendors at booths either had no masks on or their masks were hanging below their chin or off the sides of their faces.

Anyway, Shobhit and I are going to take a long walk now, before we later head up to the Capitol Hill PrideFest on Broadway. In the meantime I will close with this button, the coolest thing I saw at Trans Pride Seattle this year.

[posted 12:53pm]

https://www.fruitcakeenterprises.com/blog/2025/6/28/indigiqueer-festival-seattle-2025-amp-trans-pride-seattle-2025