San Francisco Pride: Party Or Police State?

Wow. Check out the Nobody Passes blog an expose on how SF Pride has been getting more steadily corporate and militarized by an aggressive hetero presence. Its very well written, and you can practically see the eye-rolls in the colorfully frank piece. I heard glowing reports from people who went to the Dyke March in Dolores Park (a lot of whom are still glowing from the hot sun), but who went to Pink Saturday?

here's a quote from the blog:

Get this: the security staff yells at us that we need to form separate lines for “men” and “women”-- I kid you not! Binary gender lines at a queer event in San Francisco, organized by a bunch of queens who dress as nuns. The security staff is frisking people and making people throw away water bottles, asking us if we have any drugs or sharp objects -- wait, I thought this was a public street, I didn’t realize we were visiting our friends in the tank at 850 Bryant.

this other example of over-policing is of note:

But there’s more -- just as Hilary and I are trying to make our way through the crowds to get to one of the exit checkpoints, we spot a few friends, and guess what? This year, the Dyke March got stopped at 17th and Sanchez, stopped by the line of straight male security guards who demanded that all the dykes walk single-file through the frisking station. That’s right -- on the one day of the year when dykes actually flood the Castro, it’s important to make sure there’s extra security! Outsourced security, no doubt.

Yikes.

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