More Las Vegas Pride
I don’t attend Las Vegas Pride every year to watch a parade. I’ve seen enough as a local, and they mostly comprise a bunch of casinos, banks and nightclubs showing off loosely decorated flatbed trucks populated by boys only in their underwear dancing to wretched diva pop. Much like the Dykes on Bikes—my favorite part!—at the very front of our queer community cavalcade, I make an early appearance and a relatively early exit, if only to get to Snick’s and have a Stella in hand before the post-parade rush.
But seriously, Las Vegas Pride—I’m referring specifically to the parade, just one of several events during the weeklong celebration—is nonetheless a worthwhile activity for a few reasons: It’s one of the only nighttime LGBT Pride parades in the country. It’s great to see the conservative tourists at the Fremont Street Experience awash in a sea of gayness. And most importantly, it’s one of the few times all the letters of the LGBT community come together and make themselves completely visible to Las Vegas—and to each other.
The gay community is remarkably integrated into the greater Valley. We don’t have a so-called gayborhood; we’re hanging out in Downtown or at Town Square, hiding out in Summerlin or the southeast. We’re all over the place and rarely in one place—except during Pride. That’s where we all, ahem, come out. And it’s endearing to see gay Las Vegas gathered together. The elderly members who lived to see such an open celebration of queerness. That one dude you always spot on Grindr but have never seen in real life. Lesbians in every direction, so many that you wonder if they were bused in from Portland by the Pride committee. And high schoolers braving their first Pride, only looking up from their phones when the next float passes by.
After the parade, we’ll all fill Downtown, turning First Friday into a glorious human mess. And the next day, we’ll fill the Clark County Government Center Amphitheater for the festival—not because we want to see more people impersonating Britney Spears, but because we want to see us.
