From the Vault: Happy Pride Month
And you know it's from the Vault because the posts aren't just about Pride Month... but Yahoo!'s Pride Month.
Vault Entry 1:
Two Conversations at this year’s SFPride
Published date: June 29th, 2006
Conversation #1:
(Cut to a car full of gays passing by the rather infamous Becks Travel Lodge)
Brian: Oh, look. Beck's Travel Lodge. Or as I like to call it, "WHORES R US." Hugh, Brian's partner: Uhm, hon, didn't we stay there for a weekend a while ago?
Jason: Oooh, so maybe it should be called "WHORES R U."
Ernie: Ding! Ten points.
Conversation #2:
Jason: Oh look, it's the parade float from Wells Fargo.
Ernie: Hey, that float seems familiar... wait a minute… DUDE, THEY TOTALLY RECYCLED THAT FLOAT FROM THE CHINESE NEW YEAR’S PARADE.
Jason: Shut up.
Ernie: No, they absolutely did. Those are the golden horses from the Year of the Horse! All they did was add a giant inflatable rainbow at the end of it!
Brian: They probably had a ten-thousand-dollar budget for the Chinese New Year's parade and, like, twelve dollars for gay pride.
My hope is that they march in the St. Patrick's day parade with that same float, but they keep the gold horses, the inflatable rainbow, and add little green shamrocked bowler hats to those horsey heads.
Oh, and an open apology if you were in the gay Google contingent and you heard booing, or at least, loud yawning noises somewhere around 7th and Market. Most likely it was coming from me or one of my gay co-workers - we were trying to be catty, but honestly, we're just jealous that Yahoo! didn't march in the parade.
And a part of me was secretly hoping that one of you would turn around, throw up Google gang hand signs. We would retort in kind, of course, and then we'd go into a dance-off like in the movie You Got Served or one of those West Side Story-like dance routines; CNN or Valleywag would pick up news of a fantastically gay nerd rumble, blood and pulled hair and pink feather boas and slide rules flying in the air.
If it's any consolation, you guys are seem young and pretty and are probably dating each other, while I have folks with Yahoo! IDs like xxx_lumberjack_4u asking me why his Yahoo! Mail doesn't work.1
That is all.
Vault Entry 2:
Support the deaf circuit queen association of Northern California
Published date: May 5th, 2005
The scene: My two gay coworkers and I are discussing the possible formation of a Yahoo! GLBT group, with its first formal meeting scheduled for the next day.
Sean: Are you going to go?
Ernie: I'll go if you go. What's it about?
Jason: Recruiting and marketing, probably. It'd be a chance to be in the gay pride parade, I suppose.
Sean: How would a Yahoo! float look at a gay pride parade, anyway? Ernie: Who knows? Hopefully, they would place it somewhere ironic, between the Schmirnoff float and Daddy's Bar. I wonder...
(Cut to gay pride parade coverage on KRON 4. Insert generic footage of circuit boys covered in gold glitter dancing badly to house music here.)
Drag queen host of Pride Parade, whose name escapes me2: (reading from script) That was DCQANC, the Deaf Circuit Queen Association of Northern California, simultaneously dancing and signing the lyrics to Madison Avenue's club hit, Don't Call Me Baby. What do you think, Jan Wahl?
Jan Wahl: I HAVE A FUNNY HAT.
Host: *sigh* Next up, we have, oh. Tech behemoth3 Yahoo!.
(cut to 25 gray cubicles with purple and yellow trim on a flatbed truck, slowly moving at two miles per hour.)Crowd: …
Spectator #1: Uh, is anyone even on this float?
Spectator #2: I… I think they’re in their cubicles ohMYGOD are they wearing HEADPHONES?Voice from flatbed truck, most likely mine: FOR FUCKS SAKE, IS THERE A WI-FI ACCESS POINT ANYWHERE ON THIS FUCKING PARADE ROUTE
Vault Entry 3:
Y! Gay
Published date: June 9th, 2006
Yahoo! Celebrates Gay & Lesbian Pride. Or, as I like to call it informally around the office, Y!Gay. And yes, it's exactly what you think it is - a gay portal site from Yahoo! (Although with all the World of Warcraft I've been playing, when I think "gay portal," I imagine Hearthstoning into the Castro, for some reason.)
I was one of the engineers on this project, where I was on what is called an all-gay, all-volunteer tiger team.
This is the part where I would make a clawing gesture and make the gayest growling sound you've ever heard, but I figured I don't have much dignity left to lose.
This was my first experience actually working on a team where everyone was gay. It's pretty much exactly what I expected:
Gay Male Project Manager: (Wrapping things up) Okay, we're almost done - thanks for all the hard work, everyone, and thanks for having this meeting during lunch.
Everyone else: No problem.
(Gay PM leaves the room. Everyone else pauses.)
Gay Design Manager: Oh no, she did NOT call for a lunch meeting and bring her Niçoise salad in while we were sitting in a room, totally starving. Ernie: Oh, but she TOTALLY DID.
Gay Web Developer: Rawr!
You'll notice how, for better or worse, I ended up being featured as a featured gay blogger on the Yahoo! Pride micro-site. Some of you might be assuming that I volunteered for it. Well, I guess I technically did.
Technically.
Gay PM: So… we need a gay blogger.
Everyone else: (looks directly at me)
Ernie: What? You know, you guys are gay, too.4
Gay DM: But we haven't been in the Advocate.
Gay PM: And we know with 100% certainty you won’t post X-rated photos of yourself in the blog.
Ernie: …
Everyone else: …Ernie: FINE. I’LL DO IT.
We may be updating the featured blog on the Pride microsite to make it more of a group weblog. You know, something that's actually useful. We'll see.5
I will never forget the very first Yahoo! ID I had to do support for while on Yahoo! 360 - a charming man with the Yahoo! ID of, shit you not, whiteholesforblackpoles. You never forget your first.
Her name was Donna Satchet. See, OpenAI told me it was Heklina. Never trust AI in 2025, kids.
Shhh. It was 2005 then. We didn’t know.
Also, not me misgendering either because literally everyone else in that room was a dude. Actually, what’s up with that? Also, why was I the only minority there, and not me having a whole moment about the irony of diversity in the footnotes of my vault blog posts.
(LOUD WHISPER) THERE WASN’T ANYTHING USEFUL.