February 2007 |
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It was a beautiful summers evening when we wandered in to Centennial Park for a celebratory picnic for Tim Young's birthday and to watch Casino Royale as part of the Moonlight Cinema. Champagne, cheese, nibbles and a big bean bag out under the stars. A very pleasant way to spend the evening. We also got along to see the Scissor Sisters perform at the Entertainment Centre. Certainly a lively show although the sound was a bit average. I'm assured that in subsequent shows they sorted everything out. It was a bit slow to start (who the fuck was the DJ who was on as support?) but after a while the audience started getting moving. It was an interesting mix in the crowd. Lots of gay boys but also a surprising number of middle age couples (not including Greig and myself). I think I could sum the show up in just one word though. "Camp" Rod and David held their annual party, with a huge number of guys gathering in their yard to eat, drink and generally have a good time. There always seem to be a few people that se only catch up with at these events, promise each other that we'll catch up more often and then never see each other until next year. I'm guessing it'll be much the same this time round. I was a little surprised to turn around at one stage only to find someone with their pants around their ankles getting a head job. Actually, that's a lie. I wasn't surprised at all. Late last year Greig and I went out for a dinner with Ma and the lovely Michael. (Michael would like me to point out that they are not a couple.) At the dinner the question was put to us "What would it take to get you two involved in a Mardi Gras float next year?" Greig and I have gone off doing floats because that are way too much hard work. Greig was clever. He thought he'd suggest an idea that would be far too expensive and too much trouble to even consider. He suggested a huge dancing group of hundreds of dancers and two trucks with synchronised lighting and sound. Ma agreed. Fuck! Rehearsals for the dreaded Kylie 2007 Mardi Gras Float started early this month. We chose not to attend. There were however quite a few meetings of the core group of organisers, trying to coordinate 250 people and over $10,000 worth of costumes, hired sound, lights, trucks, generators and glitter. What have we done? We only went to two Mardi Gras Festival events this year. The first one was Fair Day, where thousands of gay boys and girls explore the huge carnival atmosphere. Luckily, many of the cuter gay boys are prone to taking their shirts off, so it's always a very nice day out. I'd actually spent the entire day before going to Fair Day at the beach, so I'm looking pretty tanned. Greig spent most of the day hiding from the sun. The second event that we went to was the Azure Party on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour. Unfortunately the weather was a bit against us for the early part of the party, so we decided to arrive late. A little bit of rain didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the thousands of people that attended the party. It also didn't dampen the enthusiasm for the large contingent of police and "drug sniffer dogs". Really. Detecting drugs on a gay boy at a big dance party is a bit like shooting depressed teenagers in a barrel. I think I could safely say that the majority of the 3,000 guys in attendance would have been carrying drugs. The highly trained noses of the alleged sniffer dogs detected drugs on twenty six of them. That's an even worse result than the 20 - 30% success rate that the NSW Governments Ombudsman quoted when he recommended that the sniffer dog programme be scrapped.  The friendly welcoming committee at Azure. Even worse, after detecting drugs on twenty six people, the police secured a warrant to have the party closed down. That kinda struck me as odd - after detecting 220 people at the 2004 "Big Day Out" (of which 81 were charged for possession), no action was taken. Why was the Azure party different? You can only wonder. You may get the feeling that I suspect that the sniffer dog campaign is a farce. You'd be right. Anyway, Greig and I managed to get a few hours dancing in before the announcement came over that the party had been shut down two hours before it's scheduled ending. After a few moments of disbelief the crowd quietly left and headed off to clubs or other venues to continue. I might add that quite a few of the police were also very surprised, embarrassed and apologetic about what had just happened. Obviously the order had come from higher up, from someone in the force with an axe to grind. | ||||
