Red Dress Run is an annual summer event here where everyone in the French Quarter does a run for charity…in a red dress. If I had to choose just one I’d have to say my first Red Dress Run years ago - before I moved to New Orleans. Don’t miss the grand staircase, which was preserved from the original property. The interiors of the property exhibit 20th-century Italian design combined with modern elegance and mid-century furnishings. A jewel of architecture in the city’s Lower Garden District, this 1861 property boasts 75 reimagined guest rooms and a host of elegant public spaces: verandas, a Saltillo swimming pool, bars, and two posh restaurants, San Lorenzo (coastal Italian cuisine) and the Elizabeth Street Café (a French-Vietnamese bakery). Below, they share their favorite memories of Pride and the Big Easy.ĪLL PORTRAITS shot on location in NEW ORLEANS at the HOTEL SAINT VINCENT. Meet Franky Canga, Phlegm, Bouffant Bouffant, Stuart Sox, Blaine McGowan, Fatsy Cline, and the Queen of Bounce herself, Big Freedia. This Pride, Out celebrates the queer creatives who help keep this color and magic alive. But time and time again, NOLA is resilient while remaining a haven for Southern art, music, and expression. The Louisiana city has braved many storms throughout its vibrant 300-year history. The 2013 event featured more than 100 performers on five stages.New Orleans, much like the LGBTQ+ community, is no stranger to adversity. The 2008 PrideFest had record numbers at the Seattle Center with over 50,000 people attending on a 95 degree day in June, with over 100 vendors and dozens of sponsors participating. The event was compressed from three days to one, and organizers negotiated a plan with the city to pay an outstanding debt from the 2006 event. Egan Orion of One Degree Events took over the Seattle Pride Festival just six weeks before the event was held, in order to save the event and help preserve the move to the Center the year before. In 2007, sponsor Seattle Out and Proud was threatened with bankruptcy because the downtown event had been so expensive. It was decided in 2006 to move the annual parade to downtown and festival to the Seattle Center to better accommodate the growing attendance. This event formerly took place in neighboring Capitol Hill‘s Volunteer Park, but outgrew that residential location. The festival takes place on the last Sunday in June between noon and 8 pm, immediately following the Pride Parade. Seattle PrideFest is held annually at the Seattle Center over Pride Weekend. The band also later performed a reunion show at Seattle Pride in 2000, following a resurgence of interest when their album was archived at the Country Music Hall of Fame. On June 30, 1974, Gay Pride Week concluded with a “Gay-In” at the Seattle Center that featured “zany dress, general frivolity, carousing and a circle dance around the main International fountain.” The local band Lavender Country, noted as the first known openly gay country music act, also performed during the 1974 festival. That evening, a street dance was held in Occidental Park that featured music by Blue Moon, Lavender Country and Sue Isaacs. Entertainment included music and a “Gayrilla theater.” Banners from the stage read “Proud to be lesbian, Proud to be gay.” In the afternoon, activities moved to Volunteer Park and included roller-skating and a sing along at the top of the Volunteer Park Water Tower.
On June 29, 1974, a Saturday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that about 200 attended a picnic at Occidental Park in Pioneer Square. This included a poetry reading by Katherine Bourne, and music by Patrick Haggerty and Sue Issacs of the band This was followed by a one-woman show dramatizing the event entitled “Lavender Troubadour” written and performed and sung by Rebecca Valrejean On June 28, 1974, the Gay Community Center at 1726 16th Avenue held its official grand opening. On the evening of June 27 a Memorial Service was held at the Metropolitan Community Church to commemorate the victims of the 1973 Upstairs Lounge arson attack in the New Orleans gay bar that claimed 32 lives. June 26 was a discussion on transsexuality at the University of Washington Hub Ballroom. The week started off Monday evening, June 25 with an Open House and discussion sponsored by the Stonewall Recovery Center, a drug treatment program. This was the first event in the region in which the gay community as a whole came out of its collective closet. From June 24 to June 30, 1974, Seattle’s lesbians and gays celebrated the city’s first Gay Pride Week.