Chicago has been celebrating PRIDE all month but it’s this weekend that is the big one. The street festival was Friday and Saturday, the PRIDE parade is Sunday. We couldn’t attend both the festival and the parade, we have too much to do and too little time. So, we decided we’d just do the street festival this year.

I think we made the wrong choice.

The festival wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t worth as long drive or the $14 parking. The community vendors were good, friendly and giving away lots of freebies. The merch was slim and not nearly as interesting as other PRIDE festivals we’ve been to. There was a heck of a lot of food and had we been in the mood to eat, we’d have appreciated it. There was even more alcohol and that’s not our thing.

The biggest difference between the festival in big city Chicago and small town Gainesville… Chicago has lots of pretty woman and pretty men all who had better haircuts than those in Gainesville.

Next year we’ll do the parade and wander around Halsted and Belmont for the window shopping and people watching.