Tag Archives: pride

Broadway’s Pride is back — Big crowds, lots of love at Capitol Hill street festival, Seattle Dyke March, and Trans Pride rally

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With reporting by Soumya Gupta, CHS intern

Last year, Pride returned to its rightful space on Capitol Hill with a restoration of June celebrations on Broadway and in Cal Anderson Park after two years of pandemic delays and cancellations.

This weekend, Capitol Hill Pride jumped forward, catching up with past turnout — and then some — for the celebration of love and freedom on Capitol Hill with PrideFest filling Broadway and the park with vendor tents, tables, and activities organized by members of the community and local businesses honoring acceptance and inclusivity.

Bars and restaurants shared the streets with District 3 candidates and temporary tattoo vendors. Between the Broadway crowds and the weekend parties across the Hill and Pike/Pine, some businesses did a pandemic year’s worth of business on the weekend. But the receipts were surpassed by the vibes.

Capitol Hill’s Pride is back, baby. Continue reading →

‘Carrying the torch for our transcestors,’ Trans Pride Seattle 2023 rallies for its 10th anniversary with a June celebration in Volunteer Park

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Ten years after the first Trans Pride Seattle marched into Cal Anderson Park, veterans from that June night in 2013 and first-timers joined hundreds of people in Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park to represent the strength of the city’s TwoSpirit, Trans and Gender Diverse community and allies.

“For 10 years, we’ve never let anything stop us from celebrating Trans joy, life, and love—and this year is no different!,” the organizers at the Gender Justice League wrote. “In a year of 450+ proposed anti-trans bills, spaces like Trans Pride Seattle are more important than ever. TPS continues to honor and carry the torch of our transcestors who created Pride as a means of cultural communion and social dissent.” Continue reading →

Capitol Hill Pride Weekend 2023: Trans Pride, PrideFest takes over Broadway and Cal Anderson, and a new path for Seattle Dyke March

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A PrideFest scene from 2022 as Pride returned to its rightful space after years of pandemic cancellations and delays

75 F and mostly sunny. Sounds like it is time for PrideFest. The annual free Pride festival on Broadway and in Cal Anderson returns Saturday as a centerpiece to LGBTQIA+ celebrations across Capitol Hill this weekend. Also check out our news on the important changes for the annual Dyke March. The PrideFest 2023 schedule is below along with the rest of the highlights from the weekend around the Hill. Happy Pride.

2023 CAPITOL HILL PRIDE

  • FRIDAY JUNE 23RD: TRANS PRIDE SEATTLE — Trans Pride Seattle got back on its feet in 2022 — but not in time to be part of celebrations in June. This year, the celebration of transgender freedom continues its new tradition of gathering in Volunteer Park with a Friday night rally and party. Continue reading →

The last Seattle Dyke March (as we know it) moves off Broadway and into the streets around Volunteer Park

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A rider in 2022’s march

By Kali Herbst Minino

Capitol Hill Pride weekend tradition the Seattle Dyke March is moving off Broadway into Volunteer Park to distance itself from the Seattle Police Department and to set a new course for its future role in the city’s LGBTQIA+ celebration.

“The Seattle police have a very, very long, long history of corruption,” organizer Jill Mullins tells CHS. “They don’t make a lot of people in the community feel safe.”

The Saturday, June 24 march will now begin in the park and pass along 13th Ave E, 14th Ave E, and E Mercer.

Organizers at Seattle Dyke March, the group that puts on the march and other LGBTQ+ community events, changed their rallying point of nearly 30 years for a mix of logistical reasons rooted around avoiding police involvement. Continue reading →

A new rainbow landmark on Capitol Hill, application process begins for Pride Place ‘affordable, affirming housing for LGBTQIA+ seniors’

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The green roof is covered with vegetation and solar panels

There is another type of important Pride event happening this week on Capitol Hill.

Thursday, the application process for new Broadway affordable senior housing development Pride Place opened to interested residents. Move-ins are expected to begin in September. Hundreds are expected to apply for one of the building’s 118 studio and one-bedroom units neighboring queer dance club Neighbours.

Calling its project “affordable, affirming housing for LGBTQIA+ seniors in the heart of Capitol Hill, Seattle,” developer Community Roots Housing says it is working with community partner GenPride to put the final touches on the building this summer. Continue reading →

CHS Pics | Capitol Hill Art Walk does Pride

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At Six of Pikes (Images: CHS)

Chophouse Row (Images: CHS)

Steve Gilbert Studio (Images: CHS)

Thursday night’s Capitol Hill Art Walk was just the start of a busy weekend of Pride-powered activities in the neighborhood. Make sure to check out details of Parke Diem and the Pride edition of the “second Saturday” On the Block 11th Ave street festival here.

On CHS’s walk Thursday night, we visited the JRAT show at the No Bad Days gallery, took in a little of the Palace of Peen art show at Passable, visited the Steve Gilbert Studio (hi, Steve), stopped through a pop-up DJ show at the SUM K-fashion shop, stopped in Six of Pikes Studio and Vermillion (happy 15th birthday, Vermillion), and browsed a queer marketplace at Chophouse Row. Pfew! Busy night. You can check through the Capitol Hill Art Walk listings at capitolhillartwalk.com to learn more.

Save your energy. There is plenty more Capitol Hill Pride still to come.

More images from Art Walk, below.

Continue reading →

CHS Pics | Pony spending Pride 2023 ‘on the surface of Mars’

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(Image: Pony)

Capitol Hill gay bar Pony can be hard to get into during any Pride but this June is extra challenging.

“It’s true that the Pony building currently appears to have been deposited on the surface of Mars,” the E Madison queer party spot quipped in a social media post this week. “It’s also true that we are continuing to serve drinks on Mars—you just have to go around to Union St and walk around the side of the building to get in.”

Pony, of course, isn’t really celebrating Martian Pride. CHS reported here in 2021 on owner Mark Stoner’s negotiations with the city to scooch over a smidge for the under-construction Madison bus rapid transit project.

Under the deal, the city acquired a 247-square-foot portion of the Pony property along E Madison as part of the $134 million+ RapidRide G project to provide speedy, regular Metro bus service in the busy corridor. Stoner told CHS at the time he had hoped to work out a trade with the city taking what it needed on the Madison side of the bar and Pony getting new ground on E Union but land swaps with the city are against the law. In the end, Pony’s patio got a little slimmer and the bar got some cash from the city.

Part of the deal for businesses up and down Madison through the years of construction are scenes like the one currently outside Pony as crews have ripped up pavement to do needed utility and infrastructure work along the route, put new temporary pavement down, and are again ripping the streets up as part of the construction process expected to wrap in 2024.

SDOT says the last steps include installing this new underground stormwater detention tank under 10th Ave, installing a new water main,repaving the street and rebuilding sidewalks. Then, later this year and into 2024, crews will start to install shelters, ORCA readers and rider information signs at the new RapidRide stops, and the platforms for the new center-running bus stations.

Pony, meanwhile, isn’t letting the lack of pavement get in the way of playing its part in Capitol Hill Pride festivities.

And another Capitol Hill extraterrestrial hangout is marking its fourth anniversary. Life on Mars opened on E Pike in June of 2019.

 

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CHS Pics | Seattle Pride in the Park starts a month of LGBTQIA+ celebration on Capitol Hill

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Pride 2023 on Capitol Hill got started over the weekend with a day of picnics and music in Volunteer Park kicking off the coming month of LGBTQ+ celebrations.

Just one year from the triumphant return of the neighborhood’s Pride celebrations to their rightful place in June following years of pandemic postponements, 2023 festivities began Saturday with the Seattle Pride in the Park festival, the updated version of the old Pride Picnic that now fills Volunteer Park’s amphitheater lawn with free music and dancing. The 2023 theme was Galactic Love — “all about celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community as one big, beautiful, extravagant galaxy.” The weekend also brought the traditional Pride neighborhood clean-up around Cal Anderson Park.

There are plenty more Capitol Hill Pride celebrations ahead. Check out our list below and find more on the CHS Calendar.

  • FRIDAY JUNE 23RD: TRANS PRIDE SEATTLE — Trans Pride Seattle got back on its feet in 2022 — but not in time to be part of celebrations in June. This year, the celebration of transgender freedom continues its new tradition of gathering in Volunteer Park with a Friday night rally and party. Continue reading →

QPF: Plans for ‘bigger and better’ Queer/Pride Festival in 2023 on Capitol Hill

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(Image: Queer/Pride Festival)

One of the biggest concerns amid the complaints around the annual Capitol Hill Block Party’s three-day domination of Pike/Pine is that the music festival can leave some of the neighborhood’s core communities and businesses out of the fun.

After years of focus on proposals to reshape the July music event, organizers of the Queer/Pride Festival June celebration of queer culture and Pride are, instead, embracing the Block Party route.

The 2023 QPF, as the producers are calling it, will take on closer to CHBP proportions. UPDATE: Burgess points out the footprint of the festival will remain constrained to 11th Ave — far from Block Party’s much larger footprint that extends across an area stretching from Broadway to 12th.

“QPF returns this summer bigger and better than ever,” producer Joey Burgess of the Queer/Bar family of businesses announced Tuesday about plans for the 2023 event. “We’re lighting up our stages with some of the hottest artists from around the world, and we’ve expanded our overall footprint to include a larger stage, bigger screens, and more food and beverage offerings.”

This week’s lineup announcement doesn’t quite rival the Block Party’s 2023 acts dropped last week — but the QPF party is clearly growing. Continue reading →

CHS Pics | Triumphant September return readies Trans Pride Seattle for future Junes

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Volunteer Park and its new amphitheater proved a worthy host for the return of the annual Trans Pride celebration in Seattle. September also held up its end of the bargain.

Friday night on a gorgeous late summer Seattle night, hundreds gathered in the park for a return of the important LGBTQ celebration that organizers decided to move back to September to provide an easier logistical and financial restart after years of pandemic postponements.

CHS reported here on the effort to bring back Trans Pride Seattle and its move to Volunteer Park, a Capitol HIll setting with a long history providing a space and center for queer events and rallies including its part in Seattle’s first Pride celebrations in 1974. Continue reading →