St. Pete to show its Pride colors this weekend

St. Pete Pride has become known far and wide as the state’s largest LGBTQIA+ celebration.

Last year’s parade reportedly brought 500,000 people downtown. Those are Woodstock-nation numbers, and the influx of hotel and restaurant money into the local economy is considerable.

The 22^nd annual parade, which kicks off at 6 p.m. Saturday along Bayshore Drive, is the centerpiece of Pride Weekend, which is itself the centerpiece of Pride Month.

All those people, says Dr. Byron Green-Calisch, president of St. Pete Pride’s 10-member board of directors, come to celebrate gay pride, and the freedom to express it in public.

“I think the queer experience is understanding joy as resistance,” he says. “This idea of showing up and living as your true, authentic self, is a political statement. Being queer in the public discourse is now – specifically here in the state of Florida – an act of resistance. To show up as yourself. For me and my husband to raise our child together. For trans people to live their life.

“It is an act of defiance to the legislation that’s being passed, or is being debated, or engaged with, that they want queer people to kind of shrink back into the shadows.”

But Pride is so much more than a political act. It’s a shared experience – a strong percentage of the participants in the parade, and in the weekend’s other events, identify as straight.

“That’s one of the biggest joys I’ve had in this position – not only creating spaces for queer people, but creating spaces where our allies and our accomplices feel welcomed to celebrate with us.

“There’s never been a social or civil rights movement in this country that has been won only with the group that has been disenfranchised. It has always taken coalition-building to move the needle forward.”

Dr. Byron Green-Calisch, president of St. Pete Pride’s board of directors. Pride director Nicole Berman is the only full-time employee, he says. “We are so, so, so blessed to have so many volunteers that are ready to jump in and help us with one event, two events, or all 14 of our events. And they do a phenomenal job.” Photo provided.

Pride Weekend begins Friday with a Jannus Live performance by Sasha Colby, a California-based drag performer, actress, dancer, trans advocate and activist. Colby won Season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race; the evening features local performers, too, along with the newly-crowned St Pete Pride Court. Tickets are here. (It’s recommended for 18+).

Saturday brings the free Pride Parade Day Festival, 2-10 p.m. in North and South Straub parks. Here you’ll find  multiple performance stages, food trucks and beverage gardens, a family area and more.

Saucy Santana. Facebook photo.

Mainstage performers include Tori Flame, Kamarion, Queen Sheeba, Roxx Revolt, DJ Nightwing, Jared Vasquez and HYM, among others, with headlining rapper Saucy Santana taking over at 9 p.m.

See the full list of performers here.

The link also includes the opportunity to purchase reserved “glamstand” seating for the parade, which steps off (north on Bayshore Drive) at 6 p.m. The Trans March starts things off at 5:30.

Eleven blocks of Central Avenue (from 2000 to 3100) will be closed to vehicular traffic Sunday, from noon until 5 p.m., for the annual Grand Central Street Fair (admission is free). The celebratory, family-friendly block party includes live entertainment, vendors, food, street performers, community partners and – new this year – a Family Fun Zone.

For Calisch, remembering the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 is always an important thread in the tapestry of pride celebrations. On June 28 of that year, New York police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar, and violence erupted.

Stonewall is considered the galvanizing moment in the gay rights movement.

“I feel that we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors at Stonewall – both Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, and all of these queer activists really laid the way for us to live the way that we currently do,” Calisch says. “To have the freedoms that we have. And it would be disingenuous of me to lead a Pride organization that is a commemoration of the work and fight that they did, and not continue to lift them up. And the advocacy that they did do.

“I hold onto that every day that we continue to fight forward, because I know that my kid and their kids are going to benefit from the work that we do today.”