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July 4, 2008
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 3
Cleveland and Columbus to swap Pride dates next year
by Anthony Glassman
Cleveland-Pride festivals in Cleveland and Columbus will switch weekends next year, making Cleveland's the final Ohio celebration in June 2009.
Columbus Pride will be a week earlier, on June 20. Because of construction at the festival's usual Bicentennial Park site, the 2009 event will be held at Goodale Park, traditionally the parade's stepoff point. The
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the numbers of protesters dwindled this year, the throngs of LGBT people of faith and their religious allies have multiplied from previous years.
"It was incredible how many people of our faith community came out to support us," Columbus City Councilor Mary Ellen O'Shaughnessy told the audience at the festival.
"Over half of the marchers and floats in the parade," she continued, "were faithbased."
O'Shaughnessy was one of the parade judges this year.
"This was a truly incredible parade," she told the Gay People's Chronicle. "The turnout was phenomenal. At first I was worried about the weather, but it turned out great. The diversity and the creativity was just phenomenal."
The Most Creative Float award went to the Columbus Gay Men's Chorus. Most Outrageous was awarded to Exile Niteclub, Most Inclusive was the Girth and Mirth
20 years of parades
Here is the entire history of Cleveland and Columbus Pride parade counts that the Gay People's Chronicle has reported.
The numbers represent only the people that marched or rode floats in the parades. Many more have watched from the sidelines or gone directly to the festivals, where attendance is much greater than the figures below.
Both cities had their largest marches in 2006. This year, counts were down, most likely because of rain forecasts.
This is the 20th year of Cleveland parades and festivals, and the 27th year for Columbus, although the Chronicle did not begin counting them until 1994. Figures before 1995 aer rounded up to the nearest hundred.
Year
2000
Cleveland (date) 2008 1,710 (6-21) 2007 2,473 (6-16) 2006 3,022 (6-17) 2005 2,327 (6-18) 2004 957 (6-19) 2003 698 (6-21) 2002 863 (6-15) 2001 1,037 (6-16) 1,020 (6-24) 1999 1,324 (6-19) 1998 1,103 (6-27) 1997 1,234 (6-28) 1996 1,260 (6-15) 1995 832 (6-17) 1,000 (6-11) 1993 600 (6-19) 1992 600 (6-20) 1991 1,000 (6-22)
-Brian DeWitt Columbus (date) 4,813 (6-28) 5,152 (6-23) 5,620 (6-24) 3,758 (6-25) 4,312 (6-26) 4,036 (6-28) 4,230 (6-29) 3,463 (6-23) 2,510 (6-24) 3,652 (6-27) 4,334 (6-28) 3,533 (6-29) 4,051 (6-30) 2,431 (6-25) 3,100 (6-19) (6-27)
1994
1990 600 (6-16) 1977 200 (7-9)
(6-28)
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date change is to avoid conflict with ComFest, which fills much of Goodale on the last Saturday in June.
To prevent unnecessary competition, Cleveland Pride will move later, from June 20 to June 27.
"We currently have a request in to the city of Cleveland for the following week," said Cleveland Pride board president Todd Saporito.
He is optimistic the date change will be approved, although Voinovich Park's
organization's, Best Contingent was given to the United Way with King Avenue Methodist Church coming in a close second, and Best Float went to Wall Street Niteclub with the "Would Jesus Discriminate?" float being given an honorable mention.
The main stage entertainment included performances by the Flaggots, the Capital City Pride Band, the Columbus Gay Men's and Columbus Women's Choruses, along with other local entertainers.
In addition, one of last year's favorites, the hot local queer band the Fabulous Johnson Brothers also performed.
As in past years, the festival offered HIV tests in addition to more aggressive education about safer sex and STD prevention. Also returning this year was a family area where children of LGBT families could play and be kept safe in the very large crowds.
But shortly after 4 pm, a line of thunderstorms moved in, ending the festival with an hour of rain. Unlike at Cleveland Pride a week earlier, there were no high winds.
Festival is a week earlier next year Stonewall executive director Karla Rothan said that a crowd of over 120,000 was expected at the festival and early estimates were that the goal had been met. Parade participants were slightly down to 4,813 this year, possibly due to the threat of rain.
The estimated cost of putting on this year's parade and festival was approximately $85,000. That does not included thousands of hours volunteers contribute. A bulk of the cost goes towards paying the Columbus Police Department to provide security and to set up facilities like the vendor tents and 65 portable toilets.
This year's headline entertainers like original Dreamgirl Jennifer Holiday are also paid to perform.
According to Rothan, this year's Pride grossed about $100,000.
She said that the biggest challenges in putting on Pride this year was working with the Main Street bridge construction near Bicentennial Park.
"The city was very good to us,” Rothan said, "in helping us work with the structural issues and moving people around in this area."
"Parks and Rec were phenomenal in making it all happen this year she continued.
This year, like in the past, Stonewall Columbus urged people at the festival to donate $5 at the several entrances to the area.
"We've had some controversy this year from the community," Rothan explained, "over people having to pay to get into the festival."
"We have become much more organized this year in trying to collect the money," she added, "but we need to let the people know that this is not some big money grab on our part."
"Everything costs money. Besides, we do allow people in if they cannot afford to pay. If people can pay less or more it's all great," she said.
Pride contributes a significant part of Stonewall Columbus' annual budget of $465,000, which pays for all their programming, events and two full-time and three part-time staffers.
Rothan said that next year's Columbus Pride Parade and Festival will be held a week earlier, on June 20. Bicentennial Park will be closed for two years to be renovated as part of the Scioto Mile riverfront development. So, Pride will be held at Goodale Park a week earlier, to avoid conflict with ComFest.
The route for next year's parade is yet to be determined.
transition from city to Port Authority control may hold up a response.
This year's Cleveland LGBT Pride festival, which started out tens of thousands of dollars in debt, may have actually been aided by its rocky beginning and rainy end:
In January, the executive committee went through a slate of reductions to expenses, cutting about $60,000 from the budget.
"For someone who came to Pride, almost everything was happening the same, but we spent little money on it," Saporito said.
They did not have an assistant Pride coordinator contracted for the year, and many of the performers donated their talents or reduced their fees.
"Usually we pay them out of the gate, after the fact, and this one time only, we were able to pay them before the festival," he said.
He insisted, "This was the year the community took ownership of Pride." He said that they had gone to the community for help, and they stepped up and accepted the challenge.
"The community responded by bringing unprecedented dollars to meet the needs of the community," he said. "The cool thing about the festival this year was we had a lot of people from various sectors of the community coming to the table-Tina Haddad sponsored bringing Bitch and Ferron in, the Cleveland Kings and TransFamily fundraising for Josh Klipp."
Saporito and other board members were especially pleased with the strong line-up of performers from Northeast Ohio, which included former American Idol contestant Melissa "Cha Cha" Figueroa, rock band Audiblethread, Oberlin College faculty Backbone, Cleveland Heights' titanic trio Early Girl, cover masters Jane Deans, Mary Player and Swank's sultry sounds, with many others.
"Local bands are always expected to donate their talents to Pride festivals, and I don't think they get thanked nearly as much as they deserve," Saporito enthused. "They promoted the festival to their fans and gave great performances, and really made Pride the great day that it was."
Those acts also contributed to the diversity of the crowd enjoying the festival. Saporito pointed out that Cha Cha's promotion of the show to her fans, coupled with outreach through the Black, Gay and Proud committee, resulted in what is estimated as the largest African American turnout for Cleveland Pride.
Saporito also said that it was the largest amount of LGBT and allied youth in recent memory, partially due to the campus, outreach and online social networking of board member David Essi, a student at John Carroll University.
He estimated that one-quarter of volunteers were 25 years old or younger.
Even though a rain and windstorm brought the festivities to an early end at 5:10 pm, people were unwilling to call it quits.
"We had more people heading towards spaces to ride out the rain," Saporito recalled. "I think we had 300 people under the beer tent during the monsoon, partying. They're laughing, they're drinking their beer, they're still buying beer."
"It was one big party under that tent," he continued. "The performance stage was packed all day, even during the monsoon."
Even with the deleterious effects of the storm, Pride will prosper. The board took out standard rain insurance, which kicks in if a half-inch of precipitation falls, and paid a small amount extra for "weather watch," which measures the rainfall at the festival site, instead of the nearest National Weather Service station.
That slight added expense may well have paid off in a major way. Th nearest reporting station is Burke Lakefront Airport a half-mile away, which registered 0.4 of rain, just shy of that half-inch threshold. Even though Hopkins Airport showed 1.3 inches, the insurance would have gone with Burke's figure, were it not for that "weather watch" feature. So, the 0.9 inches that fell on Voinovich Park was "far above what was insured for," Saporito said.
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