American actress Lily Tomlin shouts “I want to see glitter and sequins and feathers,” as she pumps up revelers ahead of Sydney’s famous and irreverent Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
“I want to see you basking in your own glory!” she yells as the gay pride parade, an annual event which has enjoyed a growing international profile in recent years, kicked off under rainy skies.
Comedian Tomlin was a celebrity guest at this month’s Mardi Gras and one of thousands of foreigners joining what has become a major cultural event in the Asia-Pacific region.
Photo: AFP
“It’s welcoming, it’s fun and entertaining and slightly irreverent,” says Mardi Gras chief executive Michael Rolick of the raucous parade of some 8,500 people — dressed as everything from bikers to angels — which was watched by tens of thousands more who lined the streets.
The parade is known for its outrageous costumes and scores of participants dressed as brides and grooms in support of gay marriage, while others wore cheerleading outfits, chain mail, hot pants or, in some cases, not much at all.
Rolick believes that for the past 10 or 15 years, the parade has been Australia’s best known cultural event, and a must-see for tourists along with the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge and Bondi Beach.
“There aren’t too many gay pride festivals which happen at night time at summer and stop the middle of the city like this, and have the support that Sydney does and I think that that’s something they want to experience,” he said.
Sydney is best known for its spectacular New Year’s Eve fireworks, but the gay pride march — one of the world’s biggest — also draws crowds. Last year it pulled in 22,000 foreign tourists.
Officials say the pink dollar is also lucrative, with those who come to Sydney for the Mardi Gras spending on average more than other tourists and depositing A$30 million (US$30.4 million) in the state economy each year.
The event held its own during the global financial crisis and indications are that its audience is being increasingly drawn from Asia, although the US and Britain are the largest markets by a big margin, accounting together for about 40 percent of foreign visitors.
Rolick said the two main markets were followed by New Zealand and western Europe, but acknowledged there was “an increasing interest from our own backyard.”
“The tourist numbers from that part of the world [Asia] are starting to increase,” he said, but added that foreigners have long taken part in the march, which has been a feature of Sydney for more than 30 years.
Among the Asian participants this year was the famous transvestite group Tiffany’s Show Pattaya, whose exquisitely adorned models danced on a giant peacock float which ended the parade.
“This was something we’ve talked about for a few years,” the group’s creative director Ken Smith said, adding that Sydney’s Mardi Gras was well-known in Thailand.
The Mardi Gras began as a “fun” human rights protest in 1978 — but police cracked down heavily on marchers and more than 50 were arrested in the brief riot which followed. However, the event helped bring legislative change, including the decriminalization of homosexuality in New South Wales in 1984.
Rolick says it also helped bring the community together during the worst days of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the years that followed, but has lost none of its relevance even today as it highlighted calls for same-sex marriage in Australia, which bans gay marriage.
“The parade is very much an amplifier, like a microphone, for what our community wants to say,” he said. “If you look at the event over the years, that has gone from ‘we’re equal and we’re not criminals’... to not stigmatizing us with HIV, to changing the age of consent and the right to same-sex marriage equality.”
However, the tone is always light, with this year’s march featuring a huge figure of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard — who has said she believes marriage should only be between a man and a woman and who remains unmarried herself — in a bridal gown.
Peter Murphy, who took part in the first Mardi Gras and has been involved in many parades over the years, says the event has always been “a big party.”
“It began as a Mardi Gras, it wasn’t so much an act of defiance as a way to shift from a fairly routine type political protest to something that was more cultural and much more open and disarming,” he said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
RSS