Tacoma Pride/Narrows Bridge

So the weekend of July 14th (Happy belated Bastille day everyone) was my first golden weekend of residency. It was a beautiful weekend overall, hot, summery, sunny at just the right times.

Saturday was Tacoma's 10th annual Out in the Park - their Pride festival. I had heard it wasn't much to see, but I had heard wrong. The event was actually very well attended and had lots of good entertainment and a great variety of vendors. I think it probably matched what Motor City Pride was a few years ago - before they got their climbing wall and bigger musical acts. It paled in comparison to Boston pride. But it was nicely tucked in Wright's park and was totally doable solo (while Boston pride is a behemoth city-wide event that may swallow you whole without reinforcements).

The highlights, of course, were the drag queens. There were some great numbers, hip hop, R&B, Tina Turner with huge hair and big moves. The live musical acts were so-so. The Art Festival definitely had better music, but, admittedly, I was only there for a couple hours of the 6-hour event so may have missed some better acts. I could hear everything from my windows all day, though it was difficult to tease out what was live and what was pre-recorded for the drag shows. The had bottled water that was encased in rainbow bottles which was tons of fun. They also had a very comprehensive HIV/AIDS multimedia display, chronicling the history of HIV/AIDS via mostly photo and print. There was also a group of LGBT car collectors and aficionados who brought a few vehicles to show off their wheels.

I met a woman who is starting up a community clinic for LGBT patients. She is an N.D. (naturopathic doctor) and very cool about allopathic medicine working with naturopathic medicine. She's not anti-vaccine, or anti prescription and was really interested in having some help with her clinic. It's only been officially open a almost a month and she's still struggling. It appears she's in need for an MD to do various procedures, paps, colposcopy, and other things. If this clinic gets off the ground (and I can get approval from my program or when I get my license) I might be able to arrange some volunteering (or moonlighting) later on.

Saturday night, after pride was over, almost precisely when the music stopped, my medschool classmate, Jackie came over. We had dinner at one of the restaurants along Ruston Way and crashed to get some shut eye before the Bridge Run the next day.

The Bridge Run was to benefit the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Mary Bridge (the peds hospital at Tacoma General - where I work and where the premature and sick babies I deliver go right now). The run/walk was across the new Tacoma Narrows bridge.

Most everyone has heard of the Tacoma narrows bridge at one point or another. You've probably seen footage of the old bridge's collapse in physics class. The old bridge - nicknamed Galloping Gertie - would ripple and sway in the wind and ultimately fell into the 200 ft deep narrows below. A new bridge was built nearly 50 years ago and now a second bridge has just been finished. This is the one we ran. It's a spectacular suspension bridge. The event was HUGE deal drawing tens of tousands of registered run/walkers and about 60,000 people overall. Click here for a short article talking about the bridge. And click here for an awesome picture gallery that includes some great aerial shots! It appears from those pics that Darth Vader was there and I totally missed him. Ah well.

Some highlights from "The Span" were bagpipers that did the walk - all 5K, playing as far as I could tell. People in fun outfits - dressed as fairies or wearing homemade "Narrows Bridge" hats (see left). There was one old dude who was power-walking, listening to his walkman, and belting out the parts of the tunes he knew. Great fun! The race finished with a few sign-holders asking us to repent, an interesting and totally unexpected surprise. I took a lot of pictures and will upload them to snapfish and share it with many of you.

After the bridge walk Jackie and I treated ourselves to a yummy breakfast at the Old Milwaulkie Cafe (small joint, checkered table cloths, friendly wait staff, hot maple syrup, divine scrambles).

Then Jackie head back to Seattle and I crashed on my couch. All in all it was a great weekend. I hope all my golden weekends are as fun-filled!

For footage of the old bridge's collapse (and to refresh your memory because you know you've seen it) click here! Or, for a less dramatic footage but more dramatic telling, see this old 1940's newsreel - but it doesn't do the oscillations justice - click here!