When it comes to Pride celebrations in Tampa Bay, I’ve witnessed an interesting evolution over the years. In a time when some are questioning the need for Pride celebrations at all, our region has had an explosion of them.
We are all looking forward to the flash and glitter of St Pete Pride this month, but smaller festivals can be just as much fun. They often hold even more meaning than their bigger cousins as well.
Pride has sprung up in some pretty unexpected places, some of which aren’t known as bastions of LGBTQ+ inclusion. Pinellas Park, Lake County, Polk County, Pasco County, Dunedin, Gulfport and more have recently hosted Pride celebrations. They’ve grown into annual traditions.
I haven’t had the pleasure of attending all these smaller affairs, but I can use my own community of Gulfport as an example. Our Pride started here as a collection of programs put on by the LGBTQ Resource Center of the Gulfport Public Library. About that time the Friends of Dorothy march was born.
In just a couple of years the event rapidly outgrew its founders and now operates as an independent nonprofit. It is now a fully staged Pride celebration and attracts the masses in what has become one of Gulfport’s largest events. I know we have the reputation of being a queer city but the speed of which our little Pride celebration is evolving is remarkable.
Pride celebrations in small towns destroy the myth that small town America is great for everyone except LGBTQ+ people. A rural or small-town celebration is the epitome of what Pride was at the beginning: a defiant statement of who and what we are in the very face of those who might oppress us.
In some Florida cities with larger LGBTQ+ populations like St. Petersburg, we have multiple Pride celebrations, with the most recent expansion being Winter Pride. Each of our city’s events have become incredibly successful and prove that at least in St. Pete, there is plenty of room for multiple Pride events. Orlando celebrates in their own ways every June and October, too.
There is the question of why there seems to be rapid growth in smaller Prides. I was discussing this with my therapist and he coined a phrase that I think explains a lot: “The St Pete Pride Effect.”
I think what he meant by that was that up until St Pete Pride began, there wasn’t really a good local model of a successful Pride celebration and the impact it can have on a local community. When St. Petersburg came up with that model and hundreds of thousands of visitors with hundreds of thousands of dollars started flooding the Sunshine City during Pride, other communities started saying “Hey, we could do that.”
Honestly, I’m not sure that there has been any increase in acceptance, but let’s follow the money. There certainly has been an increased awareness of how financially viable a celebration can be for a community. The last I heard St Pete Pride contributes about $65 million to the local economy. I can see why other cities might want to cash in. The color of Pride is always green.
Another issue that those who live in the north don’t face is that it’s like a blast furnace here in the traditional Pride month of June. As a founder of St Pete Pride let me remind you again that we were traditionalists when we put the event together. We wanted to use the late June date because that’s when Stonewall actually occurred.
It was our hope that we could use that to educate people on LGBTQ+ history. I had the experience of speaking to a reporter from the Tampa Bay Times who asked me why the event was held when it was so hot. When I told her it was because of Stonewall, she had no idea what I was talking about and I had to use the next 10 minutes to educate her — so our plan worked!
Having said that, I can understand there are those who would like a Pride celebration when it’s a bit cooler. Many of these local smaller Prides are doing just that.
So is this just a Tampa Bay phenomenon? I can’t speak for all over the country but I ran this by a gay frat brother who lives in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus has a similar dynamic in that they have a massive central Pride celebration and the city is surrounded by dozens of suburbs. Some may know the city as the “Gay Capitol of the Midwest.”
My frat brother confirmed that in the Columbus area there were many local smaller Prides in these suburban communities. He also told me there had been a schism in the Columbus Pride organization and there were now two “official” Prides. I guess Pride “drama” extends everywhere.
When it started, Pride was just for the big boys like L.A., New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Soon it was thriving in gay destinations like Key West, Provincetown or West Hollywood. Eventually Pride spread to smaller medium size cities. Places like Memphis, Orlando, St. Petersburg, Tampa, Columbus, Austin, Boise, Portland and dozens of others.
Now Pride has essentially come to Mayberry. It proves to me, and others, that being “here and queer” is not just a matter of size!
Greg Stemm is a longtime resident of Pinellas County and a founder of St Pete Pride. He is an outspoken activist on many issues, including HIV/AIDS education.
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