Do you know the gays in San Jose?

This just-passed weekend was San Jose Pride. But frankly, this city doesn’t really show much of it, which is puzzling.
I’m used to Pride activities in DC, where the parade starts at Dupont Circle and makes its way all the way down to Pennsylvania Avenue, nearly 2 miles. Pennsylvania Avenue is usually closed to traffic for a big street fair between the White House and the Capitol — talk about ironic, considering the people who work in those two buildings. And it’s all free and attracts thousands of people, gay and straight.
In San Jose, the parade goes about 5 blocks. The festival is about a dozen little booths where organizations hand out brochures and a few crafts are sold; there are some food wagons and a stage for some low-tier musical acts. And it costs $15 to get in.
The story in the Mercury News was that “hundreds” attended.
What puzzles me is this: DC proper has a population of 553,000 people (and a whopping 5 million if you count the entire region all the way to West Virginia) — San Jose has 1.7 million. San Jose is also in what many would consider to be a far more liberal area. So where are all the gay people hiding?
There are only a handful of gay businesses here, far, far fewer than in DC. There are more than the average number of gay couples living on my street, but there were no pride flags flying and they stayed home.
So, I wonder. Does the gravitational pull of San Francisco (which, incidentally, has a population of 800,000 in the city itself and 4.9 million in the urban area, which overlaps San Jose’s area) mean that people from here just go up there?
Here’s one theory I had: San Jose, even though it is larger than San Francisco, is considered a suburb of SF; the single, young, and vibrant gay scene is in San Francisco, and when people settle down and are in a relationship, they move here for their little house with the white picket fence. They don’t go to bars, they go to Target. They don’t watch drag shows, they watch Oprah.
My other theory, which I hope is true, is that being gay here in the Bay Area is uninteresting and not looked down upon as it is in other places. I mean, I was pretty amazed (and a little uncomfortable) seeing lots of teens at Great America making out in the lines, both straight and gay — you would never see two 16 year old boys making out back in Virginia.
So, maybe there is a donut hole in the Pride phenomenon. In places where gay people are not considered mainstream, the Pride festival is big and fun and family-friendly, like in DC. In places where they are mainstream, the Pride fest is lackluster because it is on it’s last legs. And in places like San Francisco, where gay people have real political power and are a relatively large portion of the population, Pride becomes a huge party with a wide spectrum of participants, from the family to the debauched.
I assume that a lot of people from San Jose go up to San Francisco for Pride instead. I’ve been invited up there in two weeks myself, so the social research will continue!