Puddle jumper

From Surfers Paradise to Castro’s down in Wollongong, it feels like I have travelled the globe over the last couple of weeks. The time that I was back in Sydney I was lucky enough to tag along to the launch of the Mardi Gras slide show.

I know what you are all saying, you haven’t been to a slide show for years. I remember having to sit through hours of slide shows of my grandparents’ holidays to such exciting destinations as Gin Gin or Rockhampton, with constant commentary from my grandmother: Oh, they say it’s a big bull, but it didn’t look that big to me, or This woman was cheating on her husband, and he didn’t know, but I did. Riveting stuff that was made bearable only because of the bottomless glass of wine that would also accompany it.

There was plenty of booze flowing at the Mardi Gras slide show launch, but to be honest there could have been just tap water and we all would have enjoyed it just as much.

Mardi Gras: The Slide Show is a projected slide show in the shopfront of 72 Oxford St, directly across the road from the Snakebean restaurant. It starts every night at 8pm until 8 April and depicts the recent Mardi Gras festival. The slide show is produced by renowned photographer Robert McGrath for New Mardi Gras. He recruited a team of photographers from the Sydney Photobloggers group and final year and honours students from the Sydney College of the Arts, as well as the Star‘s Ann-Marie Calilhanna. Each of them brought their unique style to a fabulous photographical piece to light up Oxford Street. Among the drag queens, dykes on bikes, grandparents marching, volunteers, children with parents, bears, leather boys and girls, it seems that almost everyone who was enjoying the Mardi Gras festival, parade and party has been snapped. These photographers have really captured the experience and they make you feel as though you are back in the midst of it all.

Bearing in mind my continual crusade to try to make Oxford Street safer, I think such displays of huge smiles and positive energy can only help our strip. It is so hard to have any one picture to represent a community, especially ours -“ we are so diverse and that is why it is so great to be apart of it. You can be who you want to be and that is okay. So instead of using just one picture, why not use a thousand and show everyone that this is a happy community that is happy all the time, not just one day a year?

I truly hope that either New Mardi Gras or Sydney City Council sees the positive effects that such a slide show can have on Oxford Street. Maybe we should have these slide shows of positive gay images all through the year.