PRIDE - from Celebration to Fear

Omaha PRIDE was this weekend. It truly was a celebration down at Lewis and Clark Landing in Omaha, NE. I went down on Saturday evening and would have brought my camera – but it was raining when I left and since I didn’t know how long it would be raining – I decided against bringing it.

People of all sorts were down there. It’s been a few years since I was able to attend and since I am not a big fan of crowds, I really liked the amount of space we had to celebrate. There was a couple of musical acts (okay), some talking and some drinking. After hanging out for about 2ish hours, I decided that my knee was hurting enough to sit down and luckily my friend Pat O and his band was performing at Rick’s Boatyard – so I went up to sit and enjoy for a bit. It was fun watching the crowd leave as the PRIDE celebration died down – some heard Pat and his band and joined us up on the deck to listen and dance (I wasn’t dancing, lol).

Watching the people leave I realized how far away my car was, where I was parked and how dark it was. Initially I had every intention of staying to listen to Pat’s band until about midnight when I planned on heading home and fairly quickly I became a little nervous. I was in a downtown, close to a park heavily populated with all types and interests and I was leaving a gay celebration. There has been such a focus this year on the violent crimes against gays in this day and age. I decided I didn’t want to be one and waited for a large crowd to leave the PRIDE celebration and walked behind them to my car, with my keys poking out defensively in my left hand and my phone in my right with 911 typed in and ready to push send if anything happened. Funny, no, I take that back, Sad how a celebration can turn dark so quickly.