THE BAY SNAPSHOT
“The Bay Snapshot” is a series from The Bold Italic that showcases the current mood of the Bay Area in a picture. If you have a tip for a future post in the series, email us or DM us on Twitter or Instagram.
Pride Month has always been an especially celebratory, joyous, effervescent time in San Francisco — a city commonly described as the “gay capital of the world.” Even when SF was firmly grasped by Covid-19 last year, Pride moved forward.
There were digital dance parties; the Queen Diva herself, Big Freedia, headlined SF Pride’s 50th-anniversary festivities; the cruising at Corona Heights Parks was, alas, a non-existent affair. Twin Peaks lit up with some 2,700 LED diodes, each emitting a purple hue and assembled in a way to resemble the city Pink Triangle installation.
Now for the second year in a row, Illuminate SF — the organization behind the Bay Lights and other bright art projects around the region — has again worked its magic to remain the pink tarp installation as a piece of public light artwork. Though the display had begun glowing during test runs in late May, the Pink Torch Procession, which saw Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf begin the handoff that eventually concluded with Mayor Breed and others atop Twin Peaks, was performed Tuesday to mark the start of Pride Month.
Because San Francisco is “The City by the Bay,” after all, Karla the Fog was in full force Monday evening, blanketing the hillsides at Twin Peaks with a thick haze. But not even her misty vail was enough to block out the spectrum of visible light glowing from those activated LEDs.
Pictures taken from last night’s procession show a kaleidoscope of smiles and bouts of alleviation; the feeling of release that this year will see a somewhat normal Pride Month was nearly tangible — beaming right out from the images and videos, themselves.
Per SFist, Nancy Pelosi was in attendance; Mayor Breed was pictured right by her side; other political figures like Senator Scott Wiener and District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman were also seen at the procession.
The current Speaker of the House used the opportunity to wax about the Equality Act, which was introduced and passed by House Democrats. She later expressed solidarity between the LGBTQI+ community and House Democrats — adding that “we will not be silenced,” the latter collective pronouns used in a way to express communal support with minority groups.
“We remember those who have been victims, we work for those who still can be victimized by all of this, we take pride and we will end the discriminatory legislation that we see rearing its head in certain parts of our own country,” Pelosi said in her words to the present crowd.
The pink triangle was used as a mark of those who didn’t fit into Aryan norms and denoted a death sentence for homosexuals in Nazi Germany. Alas, the symbol was later reclaimed by the queer community to symbolize strength and resilience. San Francisco’s large-scale pink triangle has appeared on the grass on Twin Peaks since 1996 as a reminder of the community’s inherent strength of character.
And now that said robustness is currently mirrored as an illuminated beacon of hope along San Francisco’s steepest slopes.
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