|
|
 In the foreground are Paul and Edgar, two of our out-of-town visitors from Ottawa. To the right is another out of town visitor from San Diego. |
Wow, what an incredible day! What an incredible weekend!! I'm completely exhausted, having been working constantly for many days getting ready for all this, and although it will be several weeks before my house is restored to some semblance of order, what with Pride stuff all over the place, I'm quite pleased at how things went. I really think this was the best Pride we've ever celebrated with TNT!MEN.
The fun started Friday night, with the Big Gay Naked Party. We had 70 men, the largest we've ever had at a private party, and it was a wonderful night. The weather was great, and we had a lovely view from the balcony. The decorations by a new volunteer, Irwin, really made a nice impression, and the men were the nicest you could ever want to meet.
|
Pride Day Pictures
|
Then, on Saturday, we had our Nearly-Naked Dance at the Barn. As you may know, last year a few cops charged the Barn with "permitting disorderly conduct" for letting us be naked. This is clearly silly, and in fact the Liquor License Tribunal of Ontario ruled back in 1980 that mere nudity, without violence or public disturbance, cannot be considered disorderly. Unfortunately, since liquor licenses are now subject to police inspection, we have to go through the regular courts to reach the same decision. We expect to finally resolve the matter in September, and resume our naked bar events shortly thereafter.
But despite the fact that we had to wear some sort of cock covering, we had a wonderful crowd of 251 men! There were a lot of visitors from out of town, and it was really a fun party. It's not quite the same as dancing nude, but dancing in your undies can be almost as fun.
Here's one note we received about the dance:
From: Darin (Toronto)
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 18:47:02I wanted to send off a genuine thank you for hosting such a great underwear party on Saturday. It truly was the highlight of my Pride weekend. I could tell who the men of TNT were just by their openness and how great they were with each other. I really envied the camaraderie. Maybe in time, I'll take a big step and come to a naked event.
"A few who participated in the parade went without clothes, but did bring wheels." - Toronto Star, the photo is borrowed from their website |
Today I was up at 7:40am to get ready. Once again my partner Peter coordinated and did most of our preparation work for this day, including preparing costumes, signs, and stuff for the booth. My boyfriend Daryl helped as well, along with a few other key volunteers.
When we arrived at our site on Church St., there was a lovely little crowd of eager volunteers to help us set up! Despite being twice as large since we had a double-sized booth this year, setup went remarkably quickly thanks to all of those wonderful men. Thanks, fellas!
Long before we were ready, though, we started getting questions and posing for photos, since we did most of the work in our lovely little heart-shaped cock-covers, courtesy of Peter.
The booth was quite busy during the entire day. Once again, photo labs around the world will be printing pictures of happy smiling tourists getting their photos taken with happy smiling nudists!
The parade started at 2pm, and we were there with plenty of time to spare, long enough to pose for a whole variety of photos at the staging area on Bloor St., including some with other parade participants.
We started by all wearing the lovely hearts that Peter made, but as time wore on most of us took them off, until by the time we started, 14 of the 15 of us were naked. Once the crowds saw us they started to cheer and clap and whistle in an extremely encouraging way. At the end of the parade my face was sore from smiling so much!
We marched at a much more reasonable pace. We had two scooters with us and we took turns zipping around. For us, that really was one of the high points of the parade. Every time we would zip ahead of the group, the crowd would suddenly spot a naked man on a scooter and the reactions were phenomenal. So many people, especially women, told us how much they admired us, and how brave we were.
It was a long parade route, going down to Dundas St. before heading back north on Church St., but we didn't mind it at all, though my feet are complaining about it now! And for the first year, we stayed naked all the way back to the booth, although that took a long time, since we had to pose for hundreds of photos.
It was a great day. I'll start putting photos online when I get the chance.
Here's a letter I received from two of the men who came down from Ottawa to march with us:
From: Paul and Edgar (Ottawa)
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 00:39:21Hello David! Newly arrived back in Ottawa, we just wanted to pen a quick note to say what a fantastic time we had marching with TNT!MEN in the Pride parade! We had an absolutely fabulous time, and God willing, we'll be back with you next year (we'll certainly hope to be joining in on other TNT events before then of course). It was the most wonderful feeling being able to wander around downtown Toronto completely naked, not to mention marching past hundreds of thousands of screaming people right down Yonge Street! What a thrill!
A huge thank you to you and Peter and Richard and whoever else for organising the day. It was great to meet everyone, particularly the folks from other parts of North America. Inspiration for the fledgling Go-Nuts in Ottawa. . . maybe even by next year we'll be out there!
Many thanks for providing such a great website chockablock full of useful information for we folks out in the hinterland.
From: Paul and Edgar (Ottawa)
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 09:06:27Hi again! Just saw the website page on Pride--great photo of the Ottawa contingent!! Looking forward to more when you have the chance.
This was the first Toronto Pride Edgar and I have ever done--what with the Nearly Naked dance, the parade, and just general nudity everywhere, what a fantastic weekend!!
Huge thanks again, Paul & Edgar.