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Is Gay Pride passé?
Attendance steady across U.S., but some say events becoming obsolete

JOEY DIGUGLIELMO
Friday, June 29, 2007

Declaring Pride parades and festivals passé, out of vogue, boring or irrelevant is the gay equivalent of “Is rock dead?” — a perennial consideration that doesn’t ever seem to die.

Ever since Lisa Simpson responded to “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” with “We are used to it — you do this every year” back in 1989, and perhaps before, there’s been a sense that Pride has lost some of its luster as gays in America increasingly find mainstream acceptance.

A New York Observer article two weeks ago quoted several Big Apple gay residents who said they’d rather celebrate at more sophisticated private events and mentioned a pre-Pride rally that drew a small crowd of just a few hundred when 8,000 had been expected.

Washington also experienced some of that. Capital Pride’s opening party with Wicked Jezebel at Hard Rock Café June 1 had a dismal turnout. But numbers for the parade and festival the following weekend were in line with that of years past — about 200,000 — according to Capital Pride organizers. 

Although there’s no evidence that New York’s Pride parade suffered this year — as with any Pride event, exact numbers are impossible to come by but estimates place New York attendance at about 1 million — some say the New York event is experiencing growing pains.

New York Pride didn’t include a festival for the first time in years because a permit couldn’t be secured to move it from the West Village to Chelsea.

Others speculate that New Yorkers have become so accustomed to living openly that Gay Pride seems unimportant.

“We have a much different social climate than New York,” said Kevin McAlpine, director of development for the Triangle Foundation, the group that stages Detroit’s Motor City Pride event each year. “There are so many social options for the GLBT community there that perhaps they don’t see the need to gather for Pride. Here in Detroit, it’s seen as a really big deal. It’s seen as an event that you need to experience.”

Detroit’s event, which doesn’t include a parade, drew an estimated 25,000 this year, McAlpine said. That’s about half the number that attended the last few years, though McAlpine said heavy rain most of June 3 kept many away.

Richard Pfeiffer, parade coordinator for PRIDEChicago, said there’s always been a contingent in the gay community that’s seen Pride as passé.

“You’ll always have the fashionistas and the people who think everything is so five minutes ago or whatever, but I think that’s the exception, especially here in Chicago,” Pfeiffer said. “We have about 100 Pride-related events and they all are really well attended.”

Pfeiffer estimates about 450,000 attended the Chicago parade Sunday, a number he says is up slightly from last year.

There’s also a contingent of gay people who never have attended Pride because they say it celebrates gay stereotypes. But among those who’ve attended in years past, have things changed?

Depends whom you ask and what part of the country you’re talking about.

Even in some of the country’s largest metro areas such as Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Detroit, some who attend say it’s still a big deal to show one’s face at Pride. And in the Bible Belt and Midwest regions, some of those who attend say they find a sense of unity.

“I think the focus has changed some because of more acceptance and more mainstream exposure, but remember, we are in the Bible Belt, so equality has only become a relatively recent thing for us here,” says Michael Doughman, executive director of the Dallas Tavern Guild, the organization that plans the annual Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade each September, one of the few big-city Pride events that doesn’t take place in June. The group changed its Pride to September in the early ’80s to commemorate an early victory in overturning the sodomy law there.

“I understand the gay meccas are feeling a bit of lethargy, but North Texas is still quite inspired by the feeling of Gay Pride,” he said.

And Pride fatigue could be more of a perception than reality as few if any big U.S. cities are reporting soft numbers for this year’s events.

Organizers estimate San Francisco’s turnout rivaled New York’s with about 1 million.

“Some people complain that it’s gotten so corporate,” says Brad Erickson, a long-time gay San Francisco resident who has attended Pride there for years. “Well, I’m old enough to remember when we were bitching because there weren’t corporate sponsors, so sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.”

San Francisco isn’t one of the top 10 U.S. cities in terms of population but it has a disproportionately high gay population and boasts one of the largest Pride events in the world.

Chris Clarkin, an administrator of Christopher Street West Association Inc., the group that organizes Los Angeles Pride, said online ticket sales were up 42 percent this year and many of the pre-Pride events boasted high-than-ever numbers.

“We call that a success,” Clarkin said.

But since Pride attendance is notoriously hard to gauge, could organizers be more gung-ho and upbeat than some events merited?

Maybe.

Nick Brins, a past president of Pride Houston, which organizes the Houston Pride Festival and Pride Parade, said despite some rain on June 23, about 150,000 attended this year. That’s a bit shy of last year’s estimates, but Brins blamed the weather for that.

“I think the energy level was really high this year for everyone who came,” Brins said.

But lifelong gay Houston resident Lionel Vargas says among his circle of gay friends, Pride has a seedy reputation. He hasn’t attended the last three years.

“It’s changed a lot, I think, just as Houston has changed a lot,” Vargas said. “It’s still a really huge event. It’s the second-largest parade Houston has after the Thanksgiving parade, but it attracts a lot of vagrants and freaks. Just a lot of freaky people. I know lots of people who’ve gotten disgusted with it and aren’t going. It’s just not a class of people some of us want to be around.”

Vargas said classier events like Houston’s annual Black Tie Dinner, an annual formal gay event, and Human Rights Campaign dinners, are his preference and that of many of his gay friends who’ve established successful careers. The Observer story suggested there may be a socio-economic gap between those who attend and those who don’t.

That raises the question for some of whether Pride parades will eventually become obsolete as activists forge ahead in securing gay rights equality.

“I don’t know. I could see it going either way,” Erickson says. “I think it will just depend on how much it can evolve from being a protest into being a celebration, which, to some degree, it has.”

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