B-14 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE PRIDE GUIDde 1997
Cleveland Pride to be a lesbian-gay family reunion
by Melissa Soto
Cleveland-June 28 is the ninth annual Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Pride Parade and Festival. Festivities start with a parade to the festival site at Voinovich Pier Park. The parade will assemble at 11 am at E. 22nd St. and Euclid Ave., with a rally beginning at 11:30. The parade will step off at noon, head
Park this year. Don't forget to bring blankets, sunscreen, and Frisbees.
The festival features two stages, one for entertainment, the other for dancing. There is a vendor area with over 90 vendors, a food court, and a beer garden.
GIGI KAESER
This year Pride is proud to be sponsoring the exhibition of Love Makes a Family, a traveling photo exhibit of gay and lesbian families. The exhibit will be on display Saturday June 28 during the festival.
The Fleishman family photo is part of the “Love Makes a Family" photo exhibit.
west on Euclid to East 9th St., then go north to the park at the end of the East 9th St. Pier.
The festival is free, open to the public, and runs from 12:00 to 7:00 pm. The site is just north of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
Pier Park is a beautiful location bordered on three sides by Lake Erie. The park offers lot and lots of grass, a hill, park benches, and cool lake breezes. The Pride committee is pleased and excited to be returning to Pier
Building on this idea, the Pride theme for this year is a "Pride Family Reunion." Far too often lesbians, gays, and bisexuals are discriminated against or excluded from our own biological families, so we often look to our supportive friends and allies to re-create our extended families.
Well, this year it's time for a family party! Leave
bigoted Uncle Joe and self-righteous Aunt Josephine behind. Instead grab your supportive brother, sister, mom, dad, grandparents, step-siblings, straight friends, and work colleagues to join your queer family in celebration. As Sister Sledge and K.C. and the Sunshine Band sang respectively in the 1970s: "We Are Family," and "It's time for a celebration."
Pride is about our coming together to celebrate and affirm our identities and lives
as lesbians, gay men, or bisexuals. Pride allows us to literally take to the streets in political opposition to the conservative forces that would like to silence us out of existence.
The great thing about Cleveland's Pride Parade and Festivál is that it gives us the opportunity to do two critically important things simultaneously. First, it allows us the opportunity to participate in the democratic process by protesting in the streets and making statements attesting to the validity of our lives and our needs for civil rights protections.
Second, it allows us to come together through all of our diversity and affirm our humanity, love, compassion, and pride with and for one another.
But let's not forget that Pride is a festival too, and as such it has many things to offer. The festival offers speakers, music, enter-
tainment, food, vendors, and dancing.
Featured festival activities this year include the Love Makes a Family exhibit, magician Eric Brouman, special musical guest Anne E. DeChant, and other musicians including Wedge and Dierdre Mackey. The main stage emcee this year is Dana Austi, who emceed this year's lesbian variety show.
In addition to the main stage there is also the dance stage with a lake shore breeze behind it and a beer garden next to it.
Whether your idea of fun is dancing, shopping, being entertained, talking politics, eating, building community solidarity, hangin' with your queer family, marching in the streets, or playing in the sun, this year's Cleveland Pride Parade and Festival has got it all.
Melissa Soto is a member of the Cleveland Pride board.
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Jamie Moore surrounded by his celebrity loved ones.
by Walt Waskawicz Cleveland-Elvis? Whitney Houston? Dolly Parton? At Pride Family Reunion '97?
Celebrity sightings will be plentiful at this year's Pride Festival at Pier Park thanks to Jamie Moore and his cast of life-size celebrity puppets.
Watch some of your favorite performers come alive as the masterful Moore brings them to life with his witty and entertaining stage revue. With more than 4,000 performances to his credit, Moore and his famous friends
have been seen on national television on Live with Regis and Kathy Lee. He has also appeared at Bally's in Las Vegas and alongside Vince Gill, Conan O'Brien, and Tiny Tim.
When not on stage with his famouscounterpart puppets, the Warren, Pa. native makes appearances at schools, colleges, and corporate motivational programs.
Pride '97 is pleased to welcome Jamie Moore and his "Stuffed with Love" puppets to our mainstage this year for the first time. Get ready for one more Elvis sighting.
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