“The crowd has dissipated a little bit. I went and talked to the commanding lieutenant Sean O’Donnel. He and other officers were trying to figure out how to open up Fifth Avenue and open up Pine Street again—they’re blocked with people. They estimate the crowd at 6,000, but it’s hard to say how accurate that is based on everyone who came and went during the march. O’Donnel said, ‘The crowd has been very polite and cooperative.’ And then he turned to another officer and said, ‘We’ve got to figure out a way to open up Fifth Avenue.’ There are still thousands of people here. A lot of them have headed into the Westlake Mall food court, where every table is full. It looks like the Broadway Grill on steroids.”
Christopher Frizzelle was The Stranger's print editor, and first joined the staff in 2003. He was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2016, and edited the story by Eli Sanders that won a 2012 Pulitzer... More by Christopher Frizzelle
Mmmm I think SPD is underestimating the size of crowd, and the crowd is underestimating the capacity of Westlake Park especially with 3/4 of the lanes on 4th closed for the protest. When I was there it looked like people just needed to get moving to the back by the Seattle’s Best Coffee at 4th and Pike and then everyone would fit fine but the march was bunched up at the 5th and Pine That’s my take from walking around anyway.
Great protest! Now for the job of re-directing our beautiful indignation into the long term effort it’ll require to get people to see how un-American marriage prohibitions really are.
I saw U. Cool camera.
Wouldn’t that have been a great time for a lot of male gay couples to get married?
Were there any marriages performed?
What percentage of the crowd was in a married relationship?
6,000? It seemed like more than 10,000 on the march, but a lot of people left as soon as we got to Westlake.
I was somewhere in the middle of the march, and stopped to talk to a friend who was working on Broadway for 10 minutes before the end came and I joined the march again. When we got down to around Boren we slowed down, and it took a long time for us to actually get down to Westlake. I was super hungry at that point and had to leave.
Yay marriage equality!
100% of my husband and I were married
westlake mall upset me: they were asking people with signs to leave. the guy next to me on the balcony had a huge american flag that he let over the edge, and i was helping hold the other side. a security guard came up and asked up to leave or remove the flag. he said westlake does not allow protests for or protests against anything on their property.
it upset me even more to think of how many people were going to eat at westlake today, and to think so much money is going to them, but they cannot take a obvious stand on such a clear issue.
Wouldn’t that have been a great time for a lot of trolls to get married?
Were there any marriages performed?
What percentage of the crowd was in a married relationship?
that dominic, what a sweety. he listened to me bitch about kyler powell’s mormon-ness and even took notes.
would have been nice tho if he plugged my organization here– support gay families at COLAGE.org!
thanks,
Becca
GOOD WORK SEATTLE!!!!!!!!! this is one of the best issues one could fight for, and i feel seattle came out in force to protect one’s right to love who one loves…damn impressive.
can u believe some of us thought at most it would be a couple of hundred people just a few days ago?