The Weekend Ahead

If you are completetly totally 100% offended by LGBT people, don't read this post.  If you're not offended, go right ahead.

Saturday, 25 June 2011, is the 33rd Annual Pride Parade and Festival in Montrose. The largest lgbt event in the southern US, an estimated 150,000 people will watch as it goes through the Montrose district down Westheimer with a festival featuring over 200 vendors, multiple stages of performances, and plenty of places to eat, with restrooms easily accessible.

With the groundbreaking 2009 election of Annise Parker as mayor, a shockingly progressive move for a conservative southern city, Houston became the largest city in the world with an openly gay mayor, making international headlines and nearly every major American newspaper from the Seattle Post-Inteligencer and Houston Chronicle, to the St Louis Post Dispatch and even the locally owned Advocate right here in Baton Rouge. Since then, the city has constantly made headlines around the world, which when considering its goals of eventually hosting the summer olympic games is a very good thing, and has seen a boost in its economy, helping to drive the local unemployment rate below 8% and making it yet again the nation's wealthiest city home to its strongest economy, and the nation's number one city for college graduates.

Whatever your moral stance on gay rights is, you must admit electing a gay mayor was arguably the smartest decision the city ever made, increasing tourism to levels never before yet seen in Houston. Not in a long time has the city shined as much as it does right now. Oil, Gas, and Energy companies are making record profits as oil slowly but surely surpasses $100 a barrel, tourism is at an all time high, the museums are doing well, the performing arts scene is great as always, and its public schools are outperforming all others. If the rumors of governor Rick Perry running for president are true, we may be witnessing the birth of America's next great cultural mecca as Houston finally reaches its full potential.