The forecast for the opening weekend of Edmonton Pride did not look promising at all: rain across Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

We drove up Friday evening toward the foreboding black clouds, into progressively heavier rain and wind gusts.  Eventually it started coming down so hard that I could barely make out the difference between road and grass, even with the wipers going at their fastest setting.  We took the next exit which happened to bring us to one of the highway-side gas stations where we waited for about 15 minutes for the rain to ease up.

I got us there safely through all the adverse conditions, but my nerves were pretty frazzled.  Having needed to drive a good deal slower than the speed limit for much of the way, we weren’t left with any time to decompress before heading out for the night’s events.

The GPS initially brought us to the wrong location as we tried making our way to the BEEF UnderBear Party, however we sorted out this snag.  We showed up early to drop off our banner and some magazines before heading over to Buddy’s to photograph their Pink party.  I was not in much of a talking mood, so I stood by idly waiting and getting further agitated as Steve had lengthy conversations with what felt like every familiar face we bumped into.

By the time we made it back to the Bearracuda meet and greet, I felt like I just wanted to brood in a dark corner for the evening.  Steve took photos of the wet underwear contest, sponsored by BiggerBear.com and The Briefing Room, while I stood out of the way of the camera, and away from the volunteers from the audience with water guns who were soaking down the sexy contestants.

A few people that I spoke to noticed my mood was off, even though I was trying my best to mask it.  But a new acquaintance that I made that evening succeeded in cheering me up as he stood in his underwear and chatted with me.  I guess it’s hard for me to stay mad for long at a bear party.  With so many good looking, fun, and friendly people, a good mood is contagious!

The parade and street festival were on Saturday morning, and we remained miraculously free of rain for practically the whole day, with only some mild showers starting around 7pm as things were wrapping up.  Still, it wasn’t as sunny and hot as previous years, so disappointingly the beer garden wasn’t as full of bright costumes or scantily clad people as it was last year.  This was my territory as Steve took care of things going on outside of the beer garden, such as the new secondary stage, the vendor tents, and so on.

As the stage performances went, one highlight of the afternoon for me was Jeffery Straker’s set.  Ironically we had been listening to some of his music during the car ride up to Edmonton.  I really enjoy much of Jeffery’s songs for their happy and lively vibe, so as I snapped photos as I was singing and dancing along to "Slings and Arrows" (for which I know the lyrics off by heart) and his newer work "Sans Souci".

The evening was crazy, with 3 different dances happening at the same time.  Our first stop was the Loud "N" Proud Dance at the Delta in downtown Edmonton, however it was a slow start and not much was going on by the time we needed to head to our next destination.

The PURE Pride dance consumed most of our evening as we photographed and video-taped performances by Jujubee, Seth Knight, and Brent Everett.  Although personally Brent Everett isn’t my type (I prefer them hairy), I’m certain many of our readers will be thrilled by the video I captured.  At one point, as he and Seth Knight danced together on stage, Everett focused his performance toward me and my camera in the front row.  I was a little embarrassed, but the girls standing beside me were pretty jealous!  It was also really cool getting a chance to chat with Jujubee as she signed last month’s cover for our collection – she was super appreciative of our efforts to promote her, and of the event organizers for the chance to perform in Edmonton.

Lastly, we were able to catch the tail end of the big Bearracuda dance.  We had unfortunately missed it at its busiest, but we were still able to enjoy ourselves as we finished off photographing for the night.  I tucked into some of the snacks they had out, such as the rainbow-coloured goldfish crackers (very appropriate on both gay and bear levels), Pretzel M&M’s, and so on.  I felt a little sad that we couldn’t have spent the whole evening here but this is the drawback of running a magazine, and being a sponsor of all three dances that night!

The next morning’s BEEF Bear Bust BBQ had still been tentative the night before.  The weather was iffy, but the bears were able to take advantage of some tenting that one of their bear patrons had kindly offered (intended for another event but set up early).  We stuck around for several hours longer than we intended, before heading back to Calgary.

We returned to Edmonton the next weekend to catch the tail end of Edmonton Pride Week, namely the two part Gay Edmonton Pageant.  Congratulations to the 2013 pageant winners, Mr. Gay XXVI Reuben Esque, Mz. Gay XXVI Bianca Lovegood, and Ms. Gay XXVI Mary K. Car who demonstrated their worthiness through performance and speech.  Immediately after this competition wrapped up, we hopped over to Buddys where another similar event was happening: the Mr. Gay Canada - Edmonton contest, for which Executive Producer Ken Coolen himself was out.  As contestants went, there was a broad range of personalities and body types – but no stranger to pageantry, LJ Steele proved to be a major contender and in the end was awarded the title.  Congrats LJ!

My birthday was June 18th, on what I thought was going to be a very boring Tuesday.  Instead, Steve informed me a few days beforehand that we had been invited to a media event with food and drink at a downtown bar not far from the Backlot.  He tried to keep it as vague as possible, but the night beforehand I serendipitously guessed the secret and Steve spilled the beans – it was for the 20th Anniversary of the Testicle Festival at Bottlescrew Bill’s Pub / Buzzard’s Restaurant & Bar.

Not only that, as I discovered, they were also showing off their wide range of beers from around the world.  I’m not a beer connoisseur, but the Banana Bread beer, and the whole range of fruit flavoured beers from Belgium really tickled our fancy (trust the gays to go for the fruit beers).  Sampling a little from each of these beers got me feeling tipsy pretty fast, so thankfully there was a table of chicken wings, meatballs, and other such food in chafing dishes to offset that.  People at the event were a little apprehensive at first, thinking these offerings might contain the testicle meat that we were anticipating.  But that came around shortly after on trays carried by waitresses who spoke laugh-inducing lines like "would you like to try some battered balls?" or "who wants some mixed nuts?"

So yes, I tried prairie oysters for the first time in my life.  Their actual flavor was pretty well disguised by the batter and sauces used to prepare them in an appetizing way.  What I could grasp of their taste and texture was pretty unspectacular – if anything, it reminded me of vegetarian hotdog.  I would say the hype of prairie oysters is more from what part of the animal they come, rather than how they taste.  Nevertheless, it made for a "testacular" birthday dinner!

Two days after my birthday, I was driving to an awards dinner related to my day job, and about to turn into the parking lot of the Calgary Winter Club when the clouds opened up and it started pouring with rain.  Even with a large umbrella in my car, my dress shirt and dress pants were thoroughly rain spattered, merely walking from the parking lot to the entrance of the building.

As the evening progressed, a number of people had to leave before finishing their meals, as they received word that their houses were in the gradually expanding evacuation zone.  I knew we would be safe at the top of the hill on 17th Avenue, but after getting several texts from Steve about what was happening, the 14th Street Bridge I needed to use to get home became my concern.  I skipped the socializing after the awards ceremony and made a bee-line straight home, thankfully encountering no obstacles along the way.

I arrived to find Steve frantically trying to keep up with what was going on, as a state of emergency had been declared.  The City of Calgary website had been brought to its knees from the influx of web traffic as people tried to access updates.  Their blog site was already being used as a secondary backup and was also beginning to get bogged down.  The updates included a plea to all local media to help disseminate the information by posting it to their own websites and news feeds.  GayCalgary Magazine did our part by posting the updates and pushing them out to our readers by Twitter and Facebook.  A number of people told us later that they were extremely appreciative of us doing this because it became the only source they could easily access throughout the crisis.

As we watched the news that night it became clear that I would not be able to return to work as normal the next morning.  The next day, it was hard not to get emotional as we continued watching news reports and saw personal accounts rolling in on social media.  Outside we could hear the constant blare of sirens, the drone of helicopters, and the continuing pitter-patter of more rain.  It was eerie being stuck inside doing as we were told, while so much activity was going on around us.  I checked in with a number of friends who I knew to be in the flood zone and made sure they were safe and had places to stay.  I was less concerned about my mom and dad who live out in the suburbs, but I checked in with them anyway and all was good.

We were very glad to no longer be living at our previous residence, our condo on 14th Ave and 1st street, which was in the evacuation zone and without power for several days.  Aside from the GayCalgary.com website, our web servers also host the website for the Distress Centre and ConnecTeen, among others.  Although the Distress Centre offices were without power and they had to forward all calls to call centres in other cities, our safe distance from the flood and evacuation zones ensured that the websites for these services were still operating during these particularly stressful times.

Although the rain had stopped by Saturday, the city was still advising people to stay indoors in an effort to reduce the traffic snarls caused by the numerous major road closures.  With the forecast looking clear and not much we could do in Calgary, we decided our planned drive south for Lethbridge Pride was still a go-ahead.  We assessed the traffic advisories and planned a route that skirted around the edge of the city, and made our way down to Lethbridge.

It was very sad driving by High River, which from the road looked like a giant lake with houses sticking out of it.  The army had sealed off the highway exits leading into the city, and we saw a number of vehicles abandoned on the side of the road.  Some looked like they had gotten mired down in puddles in the ditch that had since dried out, while others were parked neatly on the shoulder of the road as if the owners had gotten out and tried to walk into the city.  The brief views we got of the river as we were on approach told us the waters were still raging.  But overall there were no problems on the highway.

We arrived shortly before the parade started – Lethbridge Pride’s first parade!  It only took 4 minutes to pass us, but was still marked progress for the organization.  It was a beautiful and sunny day, to the point where Steve and I got slightly sun burned as we photographed the performances at the street festival.

We learned that the headlining act, Shangela, who was supposed to perform at the dance, was not coming.  She had cancelled a day prior to the festival out of concern that she might not be able to get back home if she flew out to the middle of the flood zone.

The situation in Lethbridge didn’t seem as dire as in Calgary, and certainly not High River.  The organizers had booked a night for us in a hotel nearby the street festival and dance, that that was also housing some of the people that had been displaced by the high waters.  Nevertheless, there was nowhere near the level of panic in the local media as we had seen back home.

Between the street festival and the dance, we took the opportunity to explore the city of Lethbridge a little by car.  We traveled through the downtown a bit, and then along the ridge looking across the valley to the University of Lethbridge.  We followed a road that brought us down to a park that was near the river, at the base of the gigantic trestle bridge.  Some of the paths here were flooded out if not blocked off by fences.  I took a short hike up the hill beside the bridge to get some pictures of the sunset, and just about got eaten alive by the mosquitoes.

The whole reason for spending the night in Lethbridge was so that we could attend the evening dance for the first time in our four years of sponsoring the organization.  It was a dance of around 200 people – perhaps small by Calgary’s standards, and tiny by the standards of one person I spoke to who was in town from Toronto for his work, but for Lethbridge Pride this was another sign of progress.  Organizers were excited to tell us that their numbers were up quite significantly from last year both for the dance and the beer gardens that were at the street festival earlier.  This was despite the floods keeping so many people away - including the headliner, Shangela!

We retired to our room at around 1am as the dance was closing down.  The people in the room adjoining us, who we had decided must be flood victims, seemed to be having a jolly old time, talking, laughing and singing until all hours of the morning as we were trying to sleep.  We returned the favour in the morning by being extra noisy when we got up at 6:30am for the complimentary breakfast in the lobby.

As the week progressed and people were let back into the flood zones to assess the damage to their houses, we all began to see a better picture of just how devastating the flood had been.  Many people that we know from the LGBT community suffered major damages and losses, including some of the organizers of the Canadian Rockies International Rodeo and Music Festival.  Despite this tragedy, the show went on.

The event definitely had a more subdued energy to it this year, which was understandable.  There were many people who didn’t make it out because they were helping friends to rebuild, or working to repair their own homes.  Others needed a break from this reality – a chance to get away and have some fun after so many days of seemingly endless work.

Despite this, organizers reported an all time high for competitors, and especially for participants in the rodeo school.  To us, the number of people on the grounds seemed down, though the camping grounds seemed almost as full as the previous year; we hypothesized that people wanted to come out and camp, but had a lot tighter purse strings for obvious reasons.

The dance venue in the newly renovated barn by the entrance to the grounds worked out quite well, and meant that the midway didn’t need to be stretched out to reach the curling rink.  The Friday dance was well attended, and we were treated to the subtle glow of the Aurora Borealis overhead; the Saturday dance was bursting at the seams with cow-folk, and we got a light show from the lightning off in the distance; the Sunday dance was a little quieter but gave country music diehards a turn on the dance floor.

Though we didn’t get much time to check it out, the music festival brought a broad selection of musical performers to the stage to keep people entertained throughout the day.

To keep things brief, I will summarize in point form what’s happening this month for major events:

The next step of our refresh of the GayCalgary.com website (mentioned in last month’s column) was upgrading our photo gallery software to the latest version.  This was a bit tricky and took us two attempts before we succeeded.

One new feature that will help make life easier is the ability to selectively tag photos with keywords so that people can find them when searching.  We can tag people (such as drag performers, prominent individuals, etc.) places (such as the venue where the photos were taken, the event the photos are from, etc.) and things (such as what people in the photo are doing).

We are still sorting out some minor bugs with the appearance of the gallery, but it was worth all the trouble.  There are a number of additional features we have yet to utilize, which we will be tinkering with over the next few months.

Priape, known to many as "Canada’s Favorite Gay Store", has been a major player in the LGBT community - and that isn’t likely to change any time soon!

The news came to us that the company filed for bankruptcy protection as of June 27th, which will allow them to "restructure over the next few months and start afresh, stronger than ever in the fall," says Managing Director Denis Leblanc.

Bankruptcy protection will provide the company partial relief from their debts while they continue to operate as the same entity.  Leblanc told us that the 90 day restructuring plan includes Priape’s current set of investors stepping aside to allow some new investors to become involved – ones who are highly interested in seeing the company grow.