Furries have always been present at Baltimore Pride. They can easily be spotted walking in the crowds, entertaining children, adults, and pets alike, even walking down the side of the pride parade route. For the first time ever, though, the Furries will be participating as official entrants in the Baltimore Pride Parade. 

Mid-Atlantic Anthropomorphic Association, the 501c3 charity behind the Fur the More Convention, reached out to the Maryland Furs community a couple weeks ago to invite fursuiters and community members to join them in the pride parade. Accompanied by ThatCorgitude's Rainbow Dash Mustang car, the furs will walk the one mile parade route along North Charles Street from Art Museum Drive this Saturday June 25th. The parade starts at 1:00pm as part of a week long celebration in Baltimore, MD.

A historic U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage created intense emotions and record crowds at San Francisco's 2013 Pride celebration. I was informally told the parade drew 1.5 million. Imagine pushing through them in the hot sun with inch thick fur on!

Video by Mallius
For dozens of local furs, the great fun and positive vibes of Pride 2012 were small compared to this year's enthusiastic turnout. If it grows as much in 2014, it'll be awesome to see.

San Francisco hosted the 14th annual How Weird Street Faire last weekend, with the theme "WEIRDI GRAS: Carnival of Peace." An informal fursuiter outing was organized through Meetup.com and its active Bay Area Furries group (independent from the mailing list), which runs many local events each month. I offered changing space at a nearby apartment, and scored a pair of "Disco Pants" for costuming, direct from the office of local web-based fashion startup company Betabrand. Afterwards, Betabrand was cool enough to post photos of modeling the pants on their "Model Citizen" section. (There's more photos on Reddit.)

Left to right: Kitten, Meerk, Patch. Background: Ty Cougar.

Any news media story that covers furries is likely to focus heavily on fursuiters, and their striking visual appeal and fuzzy glamor. Fursuiters can't represent the whole of furry fandom, when "furry" is a vague and broadly defined umbrella over anything related to anthropomorphic animals- but I think it's OK to consider fursuiters the expressive, theatrical soul of furrydom. There is an element of "ambassador" role to their hobby. Without the 15-20% of furries who wear fursuits and costumes for role-playing, you'd just have regular unglamorous nerds saying "meow! I'm a cat". That's what crazy people do.

Keep your eye out for the 2012 Golden Hairball award winner for "Best Dressed" at 6:56.

Video by Poxy Wolf.

The 42nd anniversary of San Francisco Pride happened this weekend. People from all over the world filled the city to celebrate. It was too large and fabulous for words, so I can only personally comment about fursuiting at some street parties. There was no organized furry event or mission, just a good opportunity to wear a costume.

The last organized furry participation was a float in the 2005 Pride parade, arranged via BAF and its mailing list. (I heard that there was some negligible drama about connecting furries + LGBT, but it stayed internal, with positive reactions elsewhere.) Due to logistics and cost, it hasn't reoccurred.

However, one of the organizers posted on Facebook: "The SF Pride committee bugs me every year to bring the Furries back, and that's just what I am going to do for 2013! That's right, for the 2013 pride parade there will be a Furry float!" (Yay!)

Here's almost twenty minutes worth of video with 1044 fursuits from Anthrocon 2012.

Watched the whole thing? Pick out a couple of neat moments or original and cool suits and post them in the comments. — See more: Another view from the other side and :20 earlier.