World Cup Viewing in Dupont Circle

So DC was wild this weekend, no? I haven't seen the streets that lively since the whole town went berserk for the Obama inauguration. I love it when some event(s) gets this town all riled up though, since it's usually so damn conservative. I wish it were that interesting every weekend! Although I'm not sure how crazy it was outside of Dupont since that's pretty much where I was most of the weekend. Between the Gay Pride events and the World Cup viewing in the circle, this weekend made for a hot and sweaty mess of sports fans, pride supporters, flamboyants, drag queens, and everything in between.

My original plan was to do the SeerSucker ride hosted by Dandies and Quaintrelles on Saturday (6/12). View photos here-some awesome, hoighty-toity fashion to be seen. But if anybody registered for that, you'll know that they didn't send out the ride info until late Friday afternoon, which I thought was kind of lazy and might have hurt their turnout for the event. I don't know about anybody else, but I would have liked to know where I needed to be and what the route was at least a couple of days beforehand. They sent out all the relevant info less than 24 hours before the event was supposed to take place. So, with all the other stuff going on this weekend I just decided to vetoe that event and head to Dupont for the outdoor World Cup viewing and Pride celebrations.

And, as expected, the DuPont area was NUTS. It was HOT. And there were TONS of people there. I got there about 10 minutes into the USA/England game and started to get a little bit nautious heading into the crowd, as the event wasn't exactly conducive to sobriety...or a hungover state of sobriety as my case was.

Taken from outside the madness of the circle

Viewing the game in the circle was certainly exciting. I would love to get another opportunity to do it and try to get there early to secure a shady spot close to one of the screens. There were only two screens set up at, so it was difficult to maneuver ourselves into any position where either of the screens was wholly visible.

This was about the best we could do and there was still a huge tree blocking the view.

It would have been more fun with some drinking...although I don't know how my body would have handled heavy alcohol consumption with the heat. I saw at least a few girls who seemed to be having trouble with that combination. They had actually run out of bottled water at the Cosi off the circle.

Many were in the fountain...

All were sweaty...

The high point was the USA goal of course.

The billowing flags and chants of U S A made it all worthwhile.

I had to head to work in the evening so I regrettably missed the Pride parade. I sat outside at James Hoban's later on that night with some friends and people-watched. Wow, so many people were out and in rare form. People dancing in the streets, some guys only wearing underwear..girls in just some form of lingerie..lots of people drunk beyond comprehension.

It was what one of my favorite crazy Catholic aunts would have called a "den of iniquity."

But I thought it was a riot and gay pride is a beautiful thing!

It was a very fun day, indeed.