Utah Gay Pride 2005

Pride started out for me at 6:45AM as I dropped off the volunteer check-in forms for the Pride Run/Walk/Roll. It was very early for me, but I was excited for the day to get started. I made a special CD with special Pride songs including "Instant Replay" by Dan Hartman, "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani, "Heaven" by DJ Sammy, and a few Keane and ABBA songs. Sure, it was a weird mix, but it was my "Yay (!) for Pride" music. Unfortunatly, Jackson does not recognize burned CD's very well so it took it a long time before it started playing the first track. I've got to get a new CD player installed.

There's so much to write, but I'm having a hard time remembering all of it. I was really busy the whole day so I'll write about major events or thoughts.

First, I have to say that I had some amazing volunteers to help me. Besides Megan (who was the best volunteer and helped me realize that my job needs two people), there were people who just stayed after their shifts ended and kept on helping. I loved these people! Whether we were short staffed or they just wanted to volunteer more, it was amazing to have people keep on working. It made my job less lonely.

When you are in charge, you must solve everyone's problems and that's what started to happen. People were coming to me asking me to solve problems that I had no idea how to solve. One community partner came up to me because she didn't have a table and said, "This is totally unacceptable! We need a table!" I was very annoyed because she was wearing a pink staff t-shirt like me, yet she wanted my help and was upset! Next year, community partners who do nothing for Pride should not be allowed to wear staff shirts and bother me.

The time I was most worried about was when the gates were going to open at 11:00AM. I supervised my volunteers and trained them on how they were going to take tickets, wristband people, and check bags. It was a fairly simple process, but it had to be done right. This was the first experience that people were going to have with Pride being fenced off and having a charge (in previous years, Pride was free and not fenced). Originally slated for ice duty, Brian, Scott and Nathan accepted their reassignment and were going to be cashiers (cashiers could only be people who I highly trusted). Not only were they amazing volunteers, they are amazing friends who really helped me out.

At 10:50, Brian started selling tickets and I thought I was about to lose control. I told Brian to stop and he did. The almost early-start of Pride unnerved me and set a mood: I was going to feel out of control the whole day.

The other "benefit" of being in charge is that you are responsible for anything that goes wrong, whether it is your fault or not. This was the first year that pets were not going to be allowed on the festival grounds and I knew this was going to cause an uproar among pet owners. I was even mad when I learned of the rule two days before Pride. I saw a lesbian couple bringing three dogs and I stopped them and told them about the rule. They immediatly blew up and told me that how dumb that rule was. Although I agreed with them, there was nothing I could do. I told him that I could refund their ticket or they could take their dogs home and come back. They wanted a refund and told me that they would make a complaint.

Immediatly after the mean lesbians, I told a woman with a bassett hound puppy that pets were not allowed. Instead of getting mean, she nicely asked, "How can you turn a puppy away as cute as this?" She told me to pet her puppy and change my mind. Evelyn (the board director of the GLBT Center) came over and told me that she was letting pets in because people were not aware of the new rule. I immediatly ran toward the street in hopes of finding the mean lesbians I had just sent away but they were nowhere to be found.

Life Lesson: When you are nice, good things happen to you. People are more willing to help you. When you are mean, bad things happen to you. People are less likely to help you and more willing to not help you.

Twice today did I find myself managing an angry crowd concerned with drink tickets. At big events, people must by tickets that are worth $1 each. When someone buys a drink for $3, they give them 3 tickets instead of cash. It's a system that controls where cash is going and better accounts for it.

The first time was in front of line of almost 300 people. The booth that sold the drink tickets ran out of drink tickets and was waiting on new ones to come. I arrived (to check on the volunteer) just as she ran out of tickets and was at the mercy of a crowd that wanted to get drunk. I immediatly requested more tickets on my radio and told the crowd that they would have to wait momentarily. Most people were nice and laughed about the whole thing; I grabbed a case of water and handed water to these people and thanked them for waiting. One guy, who the water did not appease, got in my face and started making irrational suggestions (You better have 50 stations selling beer tickets next year!!). As I was about to suggest he write up his concerns in an email, he walked off. Lots of people yelled at him saying, "Be nice at Pride!" It was great.

The second time was near the end of the festival after we closed down the booths selling beer. Some people still had drink tickets they hadn't used and were pissed off. Before I could start talking to people (cause they were only yelling at me), the police showed up and escorted the crowd out of the festival.

At around 1:00PM, I was about to cry because I did not feel like I was in control. My volunteers were late, some weren't showing up, and I felt helpless. I had to take a walk away from everyone and breathe (incidently, I listened to Richard Simmons yesterday NPR do an over-the-air exercise; I was stressed at the moment and did exactly what Richard told me to). After my moment, I found Megan and we walked around a bit. She helped me put my head back on and get back to work.

One thing I do have to say is that gays as a group are really, really dumb. There was a bad injury that took place (a ladder fell on two people) and I had to have my volunteers surround the injured people and EMT's who were treating them. If you saw a big group of volunteers in bright yellow shirts standing around ambulances, would you walk right through them? Lots of people did and all I could say was, "Excuse me folks! Please walk this way. There is someone obviously injured."

After the event ended at 6pm, about 42 people from JobCorp came to clean up. When they first contacted me about volunteering, I was enthusiastic! 42 people cleaning up would make the work go extremely fast. I was disappointed when only about 20 of them actually worked and helped out. Many of them had bad attitudes and I wanted to just send those people home. Once, when were were rolling up a flag, a girl wasn't doing her job so I yelled at her and said, "You aren't doing anything! I need you to move and have someone that can do the job replace you." It felt so good to yell at someone who was wasting my time.

There were some great volunteers in this group and I wanted to thank them in a special way for their help. I think it's really hard to be a hard worker in a group of people that don't want to work hard. When they first arrived, they expected to get volunteer t-shirts, but I did not have any left over. I told Sherry (the head honcho) and she said we could give out shirts that we sold during the day.

As the JobCorp's volunteers were about to leave, I started handing out shirts to a few volunteers and purposly not giving them to other volunteers. After I did this, I announced to the group that these people were very hard workers and I appreciated their effort. When I was done, I gave them to the rest of the group--even to people that I know did not do one damn thing.

We cleaned up the grounds until about 11pm because I did not have enough volunteers to clean up--My biggest mistake of the whole event. Next year, I will require a community partner to help and clean up.

By the end of the night, I was exhausted but I kept on working because I knew things needed to get done. One of the things we needed to do was to put stuff into a Budget truck and take it to a storage unit. Valerie (the only person with the key and security code into the storage unit) gave the key and code to me and told me not to lose it. Well, on the way to the storage unit, I lost the code and started freaking out. The stuff needed to be put into the storage unit tonight and I did not want to look like an idiot in front of Jere, Sherry, or Valerie. Then Megan, the ever-wise woman that she is, said that she thought she remembered the code.

When we got to the storage unit, she tried the code that was in her head. It didn't work. Then she tried another number and it accepted it! I was elated! Unfortunatly, the gates were permanantly closed for the night. I still thought it was cool that Megan remembered a number that she had used a week before only 3 times. She's amazing!!

The other person who is amazing is my boyfriend Brian. Not only did he help the whole day, he helped with clean-up. That's exactly the kind of man he is! While he really did not want to help, he did because I wanted him too. I hope I can do the same thing for him when the time comes. I love him so much!

When you are in charge, you get a walkie-talkie!

Tsssss..... I'm hot!

The first big truck I've ever driven!

Me directing volunteers.

My boyfriend's butt is really nice.

My boyfriend was the cutest guy at Pride!

Megan's feet hurt, so she iced them down.

Brian and Jesse.

Some gays can't just wait until they get home.

My cute boyfriend helping load a truck.

People who stayed until the bitter end!
(L-R): Sherry Booth (Pride Coordinator), Jere Keys (Logistical Coordinator), La'ura (Website & Entertainment), Valerie Larabee (Executive Director of the GLBT Center), my boyfriend Brian, yours truly, Eleata (Super-volunteer), Emily (Super-volunteer), Megan (Supreme volunteer and the best assistant ever!!)