But the glut of performances could render you perplexed. Does this store’s tiny, odd, rainbow-colored thingamabob painted in the corner of an enormous window mean it’s less supportive than this other place, whose windows are so rainbowed that you can’t even see inside? And does a place with rainbow-nothing mean that nothing gay matters? And does having rainbow anything obviate having to ask that question at all? Is this store doing apathy or neutrality? And is that O.K.? Oh, and does so much consumerist ubiquity mean that what the flag symbolizes is now less political or are those politics just more widely endorsed? Are we being “pink-washed?”

It’s a migraine-inducing quandary: Is there such a thing as proper pride? After decades of all kinds of neglect, here was a luxury: Could gay people now have too much support? It became a question so big that it had to be worked out in two separate parades — the enormous, high-energy, emotional, eternal official one (WorldPride NYC) and the rougher, rawer, entirely confrontational, sponsor-free (and not tiny!) protest event that preceded it. That was the Queer Liberation March, which is more fun to say and, among other things, objected to the presence of corporations and cops. Both were powerful. Both moved me. And, eventually, even though it didn’t seem like the massive official one really ever would, both ended.

Suddenly, you’re back in Kansas. And yet the show does go on. I was cursing a bleating ambulance on Monday (I know; and may God forgive me). I cursed it until its swerve onto 40th Street revealed a pair of rainbow flags whipping in the rear, like wings, like afterburn. So to be fair to New York, its Oz is always showing. (Even the emergencies can seem queer.)