Pride Weekend In Portland, Oregon!

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This past weekend was Pride Weekend in Portland, Oregon. A weekend full of block-parties, parades, queer dance parties, marches, and lots of gay shit! This weekend is about celebrating queer spaces and queer bodies, however that may be.I started out this weekend at Crush bar for the Neon Pride Black-Light Dance Party, DJed by DJ Aurora. The night was filled with queer bops like Lady Gaga's Born This Way, and The Weather Girls' It's Raining Men, as well as amazing neon costumes and body paint. One of my favorite things about Crush is their wall of queer icons, which was highlighting Stonewall this month. There were photos of Stonewall heroes such as Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. One of my favorites was a large print of a group of activists holding a banner stating, "Stonewall means fight back! Smash gay oppression!". Crush also has a large selection of mixed drinks, my favorite being the "A Little Switchy", a bitter citrus and hibiscus concoction; however, I am also a big fan of the "Lavender Lemon Drop"!
Saturday was the first day that the festival was in full swing downtown at the waterfront. The festival is hosted by Pride Northwest, who was celebrating their 25th anniversary, concurrent with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.There was an $8 suggested donation to enter the festival, in order to keep it open to anyone, regardless of economic status. There were a lot of people there, but there was no line to enter the festival. Inside, there were about 200 booths there ranging from our local small businesses like the Clinton Street Theater, to larger local companies like Portland Gear, to big corporations like Nike and Adidas. Personally, I thought this year's Pride festival had an appropriate small businesses to big businesses ratio. I think that it's important to have that corporate sponsorship for civil rights movements like this, especially those that actually give back to the LGBTQ+ community, on the grounds that it sets the precedent for other larger corporations to openly support LGBTQ+ issues, because 20 years ago big corporations would not openly support queer people at all. Nike was selling their shirts for $30 which was a bit steep in my opinion, and I'd much rather give my $30 to a local queer vendor; but I did appreciate the original eight stripe pride flag designs that they created in collaboration with the Gilbert Baker Estate. I also appreciated some companies offering Pride discounts, like Portland Gear, who normally sell their stickers for $4, were selling them for $2 at the Pride festival. My first day at the Pride festival was about a 4 hour day, and we were able to see pretty much every booth, as well as watch some of the performances on the main stage.
The Pride Parade kicked off at 11am on Sunday, and my friends and I were able to get a spot on the second floor of a parking garage on First and Davis, with an absolutely fantastic view of the parade!
We saw Mr. and Ms. Gay Pride Portland, and Darcelle XV, and local organizations like the Portland Gay Men's Chorus and The Portland Lesbian Choir, in the parade, as well as big corporations like Intel, Alaska Airlines, and Nike. While I don't support the idea of rainbow capitalism, I was happy to see so many big companies openly supporting and celebrating the queer community in Portland. I also really appreciated seeing many different pride flags in the parade, not just the rainbow flag, including Bisexual flags, Non-Binary flags, Lesbian flags, Trans flags, Pansexual flags, Asexual flags, Genderqueer flags, and many others. We stayed at the parade for about an hour and a half, then we decided to get some brunch and head down to the festival. The second-day festival was much more busy and the line to enter was quite long, but it went quickly. There are many booths inside the festival which sell all sorts of pride flags; one of my friends was looking for a pride flag with a Star of David on it, and she was finally able to track one down for $20 at a booth near the front. We did a few more photo booths, and basked in the queer energy for a while, and we left the festival after about an hour.
This whole weekend was full of love and positive energy, and I felt so glad to be able to attend and meet new people and enjoy the queer energy. It was lovely to see so many queer people in one area enjoying life and being proud.

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