San fransisco gay pride parade
All of these people don’t seem to know anything about their history. “Now it has a whole different shape because it’s so gigantic. “Serious elements vanished in the 1990s,” said Chase, who marched in the parade’s first decade and witnessed people die of AIDS in the second, then stopped participating. Meanwhile, money and budgeting woes grew and attendance skyrocketed. Things took a turn in the 1990s when Pride hired administrative staff, including an executive director, and made efforts to diversify and expand, and solidify funding.Ĭelebrity grand marshals were established, as was a program to help community groups create floats that could compete with lavish contributions by corporations. “We were lost,” Jones said, “but we marched.” In the late 1970s into the 1980s, he points to attempts to challenge the system, to make Pride a gathering “not just about pretty boys” organized by incestuous leaders, but educational and inclusive. That wasn’t the case in 1972, when artist-filmmaker Ronald Chase, 85, made “Parade,” a 10-minute documentary of the modest San Francisco gathering in which he interviewed gay people about their experiences (screening online in this year’s Frameline Showcase with a Q&A on June 25).īut at the onset of AIDS, things changed from a party, to fear and shock, said LGBT activist Ken Jones, the first African American president of the board of directors, whose tenure included controversy over whether to add the word lesbian to the then-named Gay Freedom Day Parade. Though SF Pride’s parade and Civic Center party aren’t happening for its 50th anniversary this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival has a $3.5 million budget and bills itself as “the largest gathering of LBGT people and their allies in the nation.” Last year’s parade included nearly 300 contingents before this year’s cancellations, 1 million people were expected to attend. “Pride goes in cycles,” said Teddy Basham-Witherington, SF Pride’s first executive director, who served in the position from 1997 to 2006.Īs the event evolved from, “boys dancing onstage to a “real multicultural festival” during his tenure, he said, “We took heat, but we were glad.” Ever-changing and ever-growing, San Francisco Pride has had its share of ups and downs, celebrations and challenges.