LONG BEACH - Former '80s new wave band A Flock of Seagulls is the scheduled headliner tonight at Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride, but that musical choice has ruffled some feathers in the gay community.
Long Beach Pride festivities are 11 a.m.-10 p.m. today and Sunday at Marina Green Park and Rainbow Lagoon along Shoreline Drive.
Tickets are $20 per person each day. Parking passes also are for sale online ( www.longbeachpride.com ).
The 2 1/2-hour Pride Parade kicks off at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at Temple Avenue and Ocean Boulevard and marches west to Alamitos Avenue.
One person squawking about A Flock of Seagulls is Long Beach-based video blogger AJ Stacy. She posted a blog on her "Tuna Talk" site ( www.youtube.com/askajanything ) titled "Gay Pride Seagulls?"
"I love '80s music, and I love bad '80s music, but there's a point to the hate I have to Flock of Seagulls headlining Long Beach Pride. What are they Flock of Lesbian Seagulls? Nobody wants to see them," Stacy said.
I haven’t fished a match, as such, for more than a decade but a competition that did grab my attention was the UK Angling Masters Championships. What an event this was and how sad that it didn’t become a permanent fixture in the angling calendar.
David Marle launched the concept at his Great Linford Lakes complex in a fanfare of publicity. The aim was to elevate the status of angling by pitching the best of each discipline against each other, competing for a huge prize and broadcasting the event on TV. He invited anglers who had either performed outstandingly the previous season or were angling ‘legends’ whose skills and achievements over many years had made them household names.
The invitees included the winner of each of the National Championship matches (there were five divisions back then), the Matchman Of The Year winner, the King of Clubs Champion, the John Smiths, Fish’O’Mania and P&O Classic winers, the Thames and Trent Champions, the Drennan Cup Winner, the three guys who caught the biggest bream of the season, the three who caught the biggest tench, common carp, mirror carp, barbel, chub, roach, pike and so on, in other words the most successful anglers in the sport.
They would be go head-to-head on a 250 acre estate containing 10 lakes and 2.5 miles of the Upper Great Ouse. The competition was divided into two stages:
1. A 38-hour roving competition commencing at 6pm on Friday evening running through till 8am on Sunday morning during which time you had to score points by catching big fish in nine different categories.
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