Dapper Day: Captain Dapper's Lazy Day Pride Parade Recap

Captain Dapper likes his Sundays smooth and easy. Even Pride Sundays.

While I wanted to be a part of Chicago's Pride Parade this weekend, I'm not a fan of teeming masses, thumping music and hot sunshine. I wanted to find a way to attend the parade while keeping it relatively mellow and low key. With The Mister as my date, we succeeded in doing just that.

We set off on our bikes with cameras and water in tow. The Mister showed his pride with a rainbow tote.

We rode the bikes from our home neighborhood, Rogers Park, down to the intersection of Montrose and Broadway. This turned out to be the magic spot for our lazy day Pride viewing. It's here that the floats and other parade marchers kick off. North of Montrose, on both Sheridan and Broadway, marchers were killing time while they waited their turns to step off. We were able to walk through and see all the marchers up close and personal.

Marchers and larger floats were also stepping off on Montrose west of Broadway and Sheridan. We were able to see the floats glide by while we stood mere inches from them. No barriers, no crowds, just a few people sitting on the curbs and sidewalks as the floats passed by.

This turned out to be a popular place for families with young children to watch the parade go by. It's always fun to see kids at parades. They're there to wave enthusiastically and cheer over the bright colors and sparkly costumes. It's great to see the parade through the eyes of innocence.

We did make our way a little deeper into the parade route so that we could get a brief experience with all the other revelers. Of course, by the time we made our way through the crowd, we were a dozen people deep behind the parade barrier. We couldn't see much of the parade itself and were quickly swept up in the joyful vibe.

We didn't stay in the crowd for long. As I said, I'm a bit crowd averse to begin with and Pride is one of the biggest mass of folks we see in Chicago. We retreated to a nearby restaurant for Bloody Marys and snacks while the parade made its way past.

For every parade there's a long trail of garbage. For the Pride parade, that trail involves a lot of feathers, streamers and glitter.

As we made our way back to our bikes after the parade, we came across the small army of folks tasked with cleaning up the parade route. As trashed as the route gets, it get cleaned up quite quickly, thanks to the hard work of these folks.

And so we wave goodbye to Pride for another year. May we all keep the spirit of love and acceptance of the Pride parade all year long.

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Images: Jason Loper