a deeper love

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Amsterdam_airphoto.jpg Amsterdam has the only gay pride parade on water. The Prinsengracht (The Princes' Canal) forms most of the four hour route around the city, its multitudinous historic bridges lined with half a million people. This year's boat was to have a Roman theme, our intrepid crew in white underwear and makeshift togas of various fabrics. The boat was a well-improvised pastiche of dramatic post and lintel archetiture(with Styrofoam and 2x4 'friezes' and PVC pipes wrapped with corrugated plastic siding to represent columns, swathed in red fabric and bearing several discount palms and ferns) took no heed of the limitations of low-hanging bridges. This presented the most comical aspect of my four-hour tour of Triple X City: the large triangular arch and attached columns would need to be disassembled by the crew, lowered and squeezed under all of those crusty old bridges. Thankfully, the one thing I had really worried about, rain, only made a brief appearance to inaugurate our trek. After that, we only had to break out the umbrellas a few more times. And all of the speakers and DJ equipment were hastily protected under tarps so my electrocution fears abated. The biggest surprise was the aftermath: all of that tedious arches were left by the side of the road for the homeless/muncipal council, except for what could be packed into a rental van, inclusing myself. I still have the platforms that me and 25 others danced in my first-floor entranceway.