Today is the highlight of the annual Gay Pride Festival in Amsterdam with the traditional day-long parade of boats along the Prinsengracht in the center of the city.
We tend to be there most years but today’s been the start of a work weekend. So I had to give it a miss.
But I did manage to catch some views of the terrific scenes broadcast live by AT5, Amsterdam’s news channel. In fact, I shot a quick 2-minute video clip of the TV broadcast with my Nokia N70 to give you a sense of the atmosphere and the things going on downtown this afternoon. (I’m getting good practice shooting video with this cameraphone.)
Tempted though I was to just post that clip here, AT5 makes it very clear on their website that copyright applies to anything they broadcast. So I’ve dropped them a note asking for permission to post the clip. If they say yes, I’ll post it.
As with previous years, hundreds of thousands of visitors descend on the city for the three-day festival:
[…] More than a quarter of a million visitors are expected in Amsterdam this weekend for the annual Gay Pride festivities culminating in the traditional canal boat parade. “We are expecting to see between 250,000 and 300,000 visitors despite the fact that we got under way late,” organiser Raymond Borsboom told AFP.
In the Dutch capital the high point of the Gay Pride is the canal parade of some 50 boats through the historic canals of the town centre. “This year the theme of the canal parade will be Rembrandt and we already know of several groups that have taken the theme to heart,” said Borsboom, who added that there would be a “Pink Nightwatch”. This year is the 400th anniversary of Dutch 17th century master painter Rembrandt van Rijn.
A pity to miss it. We were last downtown watching the boat parade two years ago (see TypePad photo album) and it really is a terrific spectacle.
[Update 11 Aug] I received an email from Yeliz Bozdag at AT5 giving permission to post the video clip. So here it is…
7 responses to “Gay Pride Amsterdam”
So… in the spirit of total transparency… Neville are you gay? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I would think that for your readers you’d want to put the whole Hobson & Holtz affair in perspective.
Funny you should ask that, Amanda. When writing the post, I thought maybe I’d include aomething along the lines of “BTW, I’m not gay.” But I didn’t think anyone would really care.
Anyway, to answer your question – no, I’m not. And thanks for looking out for the interests of transparency!
Well, two grown men “podcasting” as much as you do and then this… maybe it’s just not been consumated.
Just a thought.
Neville, it was a great boat parade this year! There are a few photos already at Flickr, no doubt more in the next few days.
Well…. see some pics I took at the website !!
http://tinyurl.com/lmrab
Nice pics, Ed. BTW, I edited the URL in your comment with Tiny URL as it was just too long – it stretched across the screen in the Current Conversations list in the sidebar.