bliumchik | the belated mardi gras post

now that my legs are no longer waging revolt upon me. I would post photos but did not take any, so I shall have to post a thousand words to make up for it!

I showed up in my stylish massively oversized official blue t shirt and dad's old black leather bumbag at one pm and found

bentley (c.f. Jack) and Ricky, both of whom I had met at Cassie's birthday party but were at least familiar faces and in my group. There I got black duct tape applied to said t-shirt and then discovered I had it on backwards. ...it really was massive, I should have gotten an XS. Anyway, we got our names ticked off and broke for lunch, which seemed a little pointless considering I'd woken up at eleven thirty and dashed to make it there by one. I was grateful for the chance to get a burger though as I hadn't had breakfast. Then me and Ricky hung out at Comics Kingdom for a bit. We finally reconvened and trooped over to our post on the Clarke St entrance to the southern float marshaling area to attach cable ties to barricades and... sit around some more. Good fun. Finally people started trickling in and we got to inspect wristbands and stuff.

Sadly I did not get to see most of the floats as we were stationed directly in front of the Mature Age Gays' doubledecker bus, so until they finally headed out all we saw were some wandering drag queens and the front end of Gay Camping NSW.

astridthemighty and

mishka_jane wandered over briefly from Gay Labor in their bridesmaids outfits, too. We did however engage in some puerile "rating" of passersby - nine to the girl with the amazing hips in the jingly skirt, seven to the shirtless guy in the bright orange shoes, three for Inevitable Random Buttless Trousers Guy. We were in luck when one of the parade groups showed up, probably Brazilian themed or something, I have never seen so many glittery abs in one place in all my life. They had big shiny headdresses on. And tiny, tiny shorts.

One girl hung around for a bit just outside our barricades, posing for a photographer - she was basically wearing a bikini and a lot of make-up, and she looked like a frightened rabbit, which pretty much ruined that outfit's any chances for actual hotness. Turns out she was actually in the parade, too - right up near the end, on her own, behind some people whose theme seemed to be... gangsters? O.o Idk.

My actual main role on the day was to shout at people who were standing in the middle of the road taking photos of I-don't-know-what because until a couple of drag queens came out to camwhore it was just us and the Mature Age Gays, and they weren't all that sparkly. Okay, the banner they hung on the bus was pretty sparkly. Anyway we were supposed to keep the area clear for pedestrian movement so yeah... we did a lot of shouting. There were about two megaphones between us and one was permanently attached to Justin, the team leader (who was also wearing blue bunny ears and was Tiny, so presumably needed the extra heft), while I only got the other for about twenty minutes until another guy in a high viz vest (who therefore outranked me) confiscated it so he could direct people to Hyde Park. Admittedly there were a lot of people looking for Hyde Park and with Liverpool St. blocked off the route there was somewhat counterintuitive. But I got a little hoarse by the end of it. I also spent a lot of time yelling at people to go to the viewing area via Clarke st instead of going to the corner of Liverpool and Elizabeth, which a) had large black barricades blocking the view and b) had a crowd crush incident very soon.

You would be amazed at how many people can just completely ignore somebody in an official t shirt standing there waving her arms at them and clearly, drama-class-taught Projecting "PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE DOWN ELIZABETH STREET. THERE HAS BEEN A CROWD CRUSH INCIDENT. PLEASE GO DOWN CLARKE STREET AND TURN LEFT. DO NOT GO THAT WAY. YOU. YES, YOU, SERIOUSLY, STOP AND TURN RIGHT, YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY. YOU WILL BE SQUISHED. LIKE A BUG. DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU. PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE DOWN ELIZABETH STREET FOR SAFETY REASONS. AND STOP FUCKING STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS." I tried to flag down people with children specifically.

Our other main function was to guard the gate against unauthorized entry. Mostly we were on the watch for false positives like people with wristbands in the wrong colour and clearly from some other event entirely trying to bluff their way in (plus one random drunk guy I had to actually physically stand in front of until Justin showed up and who later came up and fucking whacked my megaphone into my teeth, thanks so much you prick), which made us a little abrupt with the false negatives like people who had the wrong colour wristbands because their float was in a different marshaling area and they had of course chosen to collect all their participants on the wrong side of oxford street. We had to escort a bunch of them through so we could tell other gatepeople "it's okay, we got confirmation on the radio, they're official." Not to mention the undercover cop that I thought looked really shifty but turned out to just be trying to show me his badge really covertly so nobody would guess he was a cop. Whoops! Somebody should have given the man a wristband!

I also occasionally served as a general gopher for the team leader, so I did end up seeing some of the floats while ducking and weaving between white-clad drummer boys, old ladies (...mostly ladies) with anti-drug signs, flamingos on a stick, bikes (dyke-ridden and otherwise) and men in humongous wigs in order to dig up somebody in charge of a certain float so she could come and identify the sheepish wristbandless kids claiming to be under her command.

When the lot was finally nearly empty we cut the cable-ties and marched up behind these guys, followed by a cordon of team leaders in yellow vests and cops to prevent actual contact between the parade and the viewers spilling over the barricades behind us. My feet were utterly killing me by this point from standing on them all afternoon and evening, but I staggered on to Moore Park where I collapsed in a heap on the grass and was given a lollipop, which was the first thing I'd eaten aside from the burger all night. We were all congratulated heartily and then I heaved myself up again to go catch the complimentary bus back east, feeling glad I did not buy a party ticket even at the discount rate, as I may not have survived either a night of partying or wandering around the city trying to sell the damn thing on those splintery logs I had for feet.

On the way back my bus-mates randomly started arguing about John Howard and then one guy in a pirate hat somehow offended some woman (I didn't catch the argument, but when we got off at the last stop she was calling him a racist and there was dramz).

It was good fun and honestly I saw almost as much of the parade and definitely got equally sore feet to last year, when I was on the sidelines but through a series of frankly typical events ended up late, three people back from the barricades on an extortionately priced stool. Would volunteer again! Hopefully next time I will either sign up as a gopher in the first place or my section will get extra megaphones!