Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Chicago VeganMania Shows Its Pride!


This past Sunday, we sent a small but enthusiastically received contingent of VeganManiacs to the Chicago Pride Parade. It was a gorgeous day, a huge crowd, and a bunch of fun. We had five costumed characters including myself as a giant asparagus (it doesn't really show up in the photo, but it was more than 10 feet tall), as well as a giant cherry, a giant broccoli, a giant bunch of grapes, and young Justice as a space alien in his CVM flying saucer. Justice, in particular, was really a hit. He waved like a celebrity, spun little spaceship circles and zig-zags all over, and had his image captured on at least a thousand different cameras. Us veg-heads were a hit as well. I high-fived hundreds of asparagus loving fans and posed in dozens of pictures. I felt like a rock star. We handed out all 2,500 postcards we brought in the first four blocks, and could have easily handed out four times more. Many in the crowd were very excited to hear about the event, and everyone wanted more info. The whole parade was a big lovefest (well, for some people it was probably more of a big humpfest, but our group and most people we encountered along the way kept it pretty clean).

Big thanks to Heather and everyone at Mercy for Animals for letting us march with them.

Watch for our veg-heads as we pop up around town throughout the summer. We are also building the event right now, and we have a lot of fascinating and exciting people and groups who are signing on to be a part of it. This will truly be the biggest and coolest vegan party Chicago has ever seen.