San Francisco goes HARD for Pride, but those of you who attended in 2017 probably noticed that it was a little different from other years. Indeed, for obvious reasons, this year’s Pride parade was more politically charged. As such, this year’s photos from the parade are awesome, gay AND woke.
These photos are from June 2017, and that year's parade carried a particular charge. The previous summer, a gunman had killed 49 people at Pulse, a gay club in Orlando, on its Latin Night; it remains the deadliest attack on queer people in American history. Months after that, the country elected Donald Trump, and his first Pride season as president found the community still grieving and already bracing. San Francisco answered the way it does, with more noise and more glitter and no apology, grief and celebration crowded onto the same stretch of Market Street.
Nine years later, the city marches again under a second Trump administration, this time behind the theme "Resistance in Action," with trans rights under federal attack and the community's safety back in the news. That is exactly why these images still hold. Pride here has never been only a party; it is the city insisting, in public and in color, that queer life is worth defending. The people in these photos knew that in 2017, and it is worth remembering now.
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