fremont solstice parade

I've had lots of people ask me to take pictures and pass them on.

Well, my digital camera is pretty old.  The button sticks, so I have to press it hard.  And then I have to jiggle it to get it to come back up to take the next picture.  This makes the pictures come out a little blurry sometimes.  Well, most of the pictures came out pretty blurry.  These are the ones that didn't.

Further, my memory card isn't very big.  They don't even make this kind of memory card anymore.  So I ran out of memory at one point.  My phone has a camera, but it has its downsides too.  The biggest downside being that for every picture I take I have to press a whole lot of buttons and I miss the parade!

I wish I had one of those new fangled video cameras.  Then I could just video the whole thing!

So here is what I have ...

The parade starts of with about 70 people on bicycles.  Some naked.  Most painted.

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There were about a dozen "Waldo" people. 

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I think the first pic is the official beginning of the parade.

The second pick is a sort of "hey gang! let's make a marching band!"  It was great!

Kids on stilts with flowers!

And then some kinda beast that is supposed to have something to do with bottled water.

A beast and my friend Jacqueline on stilts! 

Next up came pyramid parts.  They took all these big blocks and built a pyramid at a nearby intersection.  I couldn't see the completed pyramid very well, so I didn't take a pic.  Being a freaky tall guy, I was the only one in our area that could see the pyramid at all, so I was describing it to everybody.

I turns out that my friend Giovanni was carrying pyramid parts, but I didn't see him until after the parade.

pyramid innards.

This next pic is important to me.  Some slick guy standing nearby said something to his friend like "I think some of these people should keep their clothes on."  I think that guy just proved that this woman has 20 times more character than he does.  It also shows that this guy is just a letch and has no idea what this parade is about.

This is about art and having fun.  There is a touch of erotic here, but I think it is more for the participants than the spectators.  I think that to go through the parade naked is a personal triumph.  At the end of the parade, that person knows something about their own strength of character.  This is a lifetime achievement. 

And the letch is just icky and should go away.

Check out this contraption.  It is a human powered fan on wheels.  This guy only moves when the fan is blowing.

Another pic of the amazing fan contraption! 

And look at the green woman in the foreground.  She did some sort of amazingly erotic dance of the pendulous breasts.  The white things she is swinging around are even more pendulous and somehow add to the eroticism.  She is a true artist in a space I have never encountered before.  About 30 seconds later she had a "wardrobe malfunction" and raced to cover herself while grinning huge and looking shy.  I wish I had a video camera. 

Look at the feet under the tall purple woman.  She has some sort of amazing gazelle-spring-feet contraptions.  She was running at one point.  She could probably move faster than somebody on a bicycle.  At one point she fell, but she was able to get back up pretty quickly.

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This is at the end of the parade at gasworks park.

There was lots of other stuff I wish I had taken pictures of.  There were the amazing walking tree costumes.  And there was the pageant afterward.  And the super cool cars (I have pictures of those from last year).  And ....  on and on and on ...

If anybody else was there and took pics, please add them here!  I have turned on the ability to add pictures.

Today is summer solstice.
Are they having that parade again this weekend?
Are you going?

The parade is tomorrow.  I'm going.  I have a new camera. 

http://www.fremontfair.org/


Anybody else going?

Here's a couple photos showing interesting body paint jobs - though not the best camera. One of the bicyclists shouted to a friend in the crowd near us that there were 500 nude cyclists this year.

Oh, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster surrounded by Pastafarians dressed as pirates. 

Even the crowd gets into it!

The art car show was amazing. Here's "Attila the Fun."

And one more crazy car.

Here's another reason to conserve water by not washing your car.

A lot of my pictures didn't turn out. 

(rant)buncha damn fools that couldn't stay behind the yellow line wandered out into the street and blocked the view of everybody else and made it hard for the cyclists to get by - I wish I brought water ballons! .... grumble grumble grumble .... so I could only take pictures from a small window at first (/rant) - and then a parade staff came and ran them all off.  Ahhhhh .... much better ....

So it turns out I must really suck at taking pictures because almost all my pictures came out blurry.  Or I have really clear pictures of pavement.

My car pictures turned out good - but Jocelyn covered all the ones I took pictures of.

So here are a few that came out ... first, the cyclists ....

next, here is a woman that bucks tradition in the fremont solstice parade!

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So what's up with the pastafarians being pirates?

I have lots of fuzzy pictures.  And lots of pictures with too much shade or something else.  I also have a couple of video clips - but youtube might be weird about me uploading them.  If there is interst, I'll try.

They must have some sort of parade rule where text is not allowed.  Which is a plus and a minus.  There is, therefore, no commercialism.  On the other hand, for some of these things it might be fun to learn more.

What!?!?! You didn't know his noodlyness's preferred attire is that of a pirate?!?! May he forgive you of your ignorance! You must know the fact of global warming being due to the decrease in the number of pirates, right?!

Apodcast in which Paul and Jocelyn talk about the Solstice parade: https://permies.com/permaculture-forums/1831_0/meaningless-drivel/fremont-solstice-parade