San Diego Pride 50 listicle

In July, I got to celebrate the 50th anniversary of San Diego LGBTQ+ Pride. The first parade in 1974 had people marching with bags over their head for fear of being outed at work or home and being fired or disowned, but they marched anyway. This year’s golden anniversary parade had over 250 contingents and 250,000+ spectators, marking its way down University and turning South onto 6th toward Balboa Park and into Marston Point for the Gay Pride Festival, aka the “Fruit Loop,” for a festival, with over 50,000 taking part in the two-day festival. Pride in San Diego happens all month long, with other events like She-Fest, the Lighting of the Cathedral at St. Paul’s Episcopal, an interfaith worship service, and the Spirit of Stonewall rally and Flag Raising, on Normal St. This year’s Stonewall Stage featured headliners Todrick Hall, Rico Nasty and none other than world-class percussionist and drummer, Sheila E. Here are ten things I loved about this years festival, whether about the festival itself or things personal to me. (find pics of parade goers with bags on heads)

1) The Lighting of the Cathedral. Most people come to the parade and the festival, but there’s usually events happening the week and/or the month of, and the Lighting of the Cathedral at St. Paul’s Cathedral on 6th was just the right way to set the tone. I love seeing loving, elegant expressions of faith and love for God. Hearing many people reading part of the poem “A Prayer For Queer Thanksgiving” (link below). Seeing the Keynote Speaker from the Dharma Bum Temple crouched in a corner, teary-eyed of the room and not knowing he was the Keynote Speaker until he was announced. Seeing a young visitor reading along with the program near the archways of the cathedral, having a teary-eyed catharsis from the grief and joy we were all feeling at that point. Getting all the feels from the special rendition of “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” Having two cupcakes from the Progress Pride display. 

 

 

 

2) The Thursday of my visit was set aside to go to various places in San Diego where I lived growing up and take pictures for a book that started off as four pages but turned into 44, a few chapters of which will be published in an anthology of those who are considered “Living Lazarus” in the world of HIV/AIDS next year. This brought back all kinds of memories, good, bad, ugly and terrible, and it made for good perspective. The two places I wasn’t ready to see were the apartment complex on 44th St. in 1992 and the office building on Kalmia St. that was once the site of a doctor’s office where I learned I had seroconverted in 1990. It was a day to allow myself to be swept up in the reverie and be reminded of what life was like in the days when I broke free from abuse of many kinds, inflicted by others and myself. You can never really leave where you came from, you just take your body with you (You'll have to wait for these photos, becaue they will be included in another project, either next year or the year after).

 

3) Volunteering Friday in Hospitality. The last time I volunteered at Pride was in 2001, with CeCe Peniston as the Saturday headliner (when the MainStage was at the other end of Marston Point), but this time I volunteered in hospitality on the Friday before the festival. I helped keep the snack table stocked for volunteers working to put the Festival together. San Diego Pride takes care of their volunteers quite well and provides the kind of reciprocal experience many have been talking about in the past several years. They fed us twice during this shift and all volunteers were welcome to come back into the area to grab snacks and drinks all weekend long. Also, my complete surprise at seeing young people enrolled in Job Corps (at Imperial Beach). For reference, I was a Job Corps graduate, getting a diploma in “Office Skills.” The cherry on top was coming back to my guest quarters and having my first branzino with arugula and tomato salad from my hosts (thank you Greg and Roberto!).

4) How the flag caught the wind at just the right moment and spread out fully and the Spirit of Stonewall Rally and Flag Raising. Hearing from Toni Atkins and Christine Kehoe, early pioneers in the world of the Pride community in politics. The Spirit of Stonewall Rally was held on Normal St., in the same spot as Nightmare On Normal Street, the annual Halloween party, and arguably gayer than Pride. San Diego Pride always comes through on the Production Values tip. Still hearing the hope in people's voices about the Election in November (two days before President Biden stepped aside and handed the reigns to Kamala Harris) and the obvious Pride people felt when seeing honorees from their generation. Seeing Serafine and Tess suddenly beside me towards the end of the rally. I wanted to see many people, and these two wonderful people were right at the top of the list. 

5) Marching with Bears San Diego and helping carry the Bear flag again, just as in 2019, during the club’s 25th anniversary; carrying the flag with the new crop of Bear titleholders in San Diego and I was prepared for the humidity this time, with a rainbow parasol and Leather Pride clacking fan. 

 

The throngs of people on both sides of University is something you never get used to, especially when the parade route extends well into Balboa Park, past Upas. Marching behind the Leather community and letting the crowds see our two flags march in solidarity down the street, blowing kisses to the estimated 250-300K in the crowd. The feeling of walking down the middle of University Avenue, waving at people and feeling the love and Pride never gets old.

 

6) Volunteering Saturday in the Leather Realm as a “Play Top.” I was a Demo Top for Long Beach Pride for four years, back when they had a big Leather Tent at the festival. Being able to re-stake place into the scene after an extended sabbatical was something I didn’t take for granted. I had several dozen festival goers at my station and introduced them to various forms of impact play, talking them through the process and teaching about the traffic light signal that is used for safe words, and showing where you do and don’t make impact on the body. I usually get one or two people who really connect to it outside of the “get your rocks off” part of it, but this year I had four. No pics from this part of the experience, for obvious reasons.

7) Gay church at MCC on Sunday. If it’s Pride 50, you gotta do it up BIG. I did not expect to be recognized by Pastor Dan or be asked to stand up at all. The Pride sermon is usually the origin story of MCC, how it started in the living room of Rev. Elder Troy Perry in 1968, and has since grown into 300 churches and 30,000 members worldwide. Everything about this service was the perfect touch to Pride as God sees it and as God sees Their creation. The pews were surprisingly full for Pride Sunday, because everyone is busy volunteering and doing other things during the weekend--it's almost the one Sunday it's normal to skip, and yet, for such an auspcious occasion, it appropros. I volunteered with MCC in the festival in 2001, which was the year I came out as a Bear. Our (then) organist, Ron Erickson, saw me reacting to the Bears San Diego float as it passed by us on Upas St. and asked me "So you're a Bear?" I hesitated a second and he caught that. "Don't hesitate. Just tell us your truth."

8) “Sheila E., Sheila E., Sheila E.” Introduced by Mayor Todd Gloria, who himself was introduced by DaShawn Wesley of Legendary fame. This was my third time seeing her, and each time it’s been at a Pride festival (first in Oakland in 2014 and then Long Beach in 2018). As usual, she gives at her concert, and she performed come-through the house down boots yes gawd tongue-pop okurrr style!!! Sheila E. really connected to her audience this time, stopping long enough before the encore portion of The Glamorous Life to soak up all the love. When she plays the dance hits “A Love Bizarre” and “Erotic City,” you feel the bass from the ground up through your body. Seeing her pick up a $20 bill on the stage and put someone’s red nail in her bra to keep brought out the humor, and seeing the audience up on stage, the most flamboyant of which she put a spotlight on—so much color and festiveness, even though the sun shone right into the stage. In the 90s, having someone like Sheila E. as headliner would have been far too much to hope for, you would think, but then to find out the feeling is mutual, and that she always wanted to perform for us, as well? It doesn’t get much better than that.

 

9) How San Diego is and will always be my favorite Pride. So much of my life and experience of celebrating my gay self revolves around this festival—at least fifteen years out of fifty. I did a lot of living in those early years, and the feeling of being at home and welcomed back without a second thought mixed with memories of the impact I made on San Diego and the realization that I helped form and shape the communities I belonged to and made an impact through my works.

10) And finally, the tradition I thought I wouldn’t get to do. I walked around the festival for most of the weekend, looking for the lemonade stand. It’s always my tradition after the parade to get a fresh-squeezed lemonade and going to sit in the shade on the grass. This year, however, it wasn’t until I was about to leave the festival that I found the lemonade stand, which was moved much closer to the festival entrance. This year, it was the chef’s kiss moment of Pride 50. To have that delicious, refreshing lemonade with the straw stuck right through the lemon was just everything, especially after all the mugginess.
    

In closing, the fact that San Diego Pride made it to 50 years is nothing short of a miracle, but I say the same thing about the community at large. San Diego Pride is came along five years after Stonewall, but all major city Prides are between 50-60 years old, and the amount of work we've gotten done to secure equal rights and equitable opportunities is nothing short of astounding. We have changed the world for the better and we have to keep fighting onward and upward to make sure that we don't ever find ourselves a community in decline. The only way we keep winning is if we keep fighting.

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All pics taken by Eric Crow unless otherwise indicated.

A Prayer of Queer Thanksgiving: www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/practices/view/27924/a-prayer-of-queer-thanksgiving

 

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