Hey maybe we won't have to go to Erie, PA to have family time with other families like our....
Keep us informed...

I have to say that we brought our kids to Pride Fest last year and were pleasantly surprised. There was a huge area with blow up games and rides and an arts and crafts area. Kudos to the Pride group for thinking about the kids!

I am happy that many organizations are thinking about the gay community and their family. Some of us have the little ones and some of the events don't think about that.

Yes, the GLCC did a great job with creating kid-friendly spaces at PrideFest back in 2003 when I first volunteered. They even had a teen space with henna tattoos and entertainment. Each year, it keeps getting better. Good that the Delta Foundation kept this piece of Pride alive and growing.

I'm glad to see the GLCC continuing that tradition of supporting families with KidFest.

Who plans Pride? The GLCC or Delta group?

Pride has rotated hands for many years. For awhile, it was independent and had its own committee. I believe in 2001, the GLCC stepped in when the Pride committee threatened to go under. They ran it for several years, got it stabilized financially and took the event out of the park into the streets/parks.

The Delta Foundation took over the event in 2007 I believe. That's when it moved to Liberty Avenue.

Important to remember that Pride was at some points 4 people working day and night (in addition to their own jobs) to scramble an event together. History and herstory are very important parts of Pride. It hasn't been a "straight" evolution, more of a zig zag. It was downtown, then the parks, then Shadyside, then downtown again. It emphasized out of town performers, then local, then out of town again. It had sponsors, then it didn't, now it does.

In the 1990s, it was a week long series of official Pride events. In 2004, it wasn an entire MONTH. Then it was back to a week, then a day, now back to multiple weeks.

So many people deserve credit for stepping in when needed to keep Pittsburgh Pride a vibrant community resource. The GLCC is very good about acknowleding their role as a partner in the event and not take credit for the work of many, many community volunteers who came before them.

Again, KidsFest is a great step forward to honor their contributions to Pride.

There is an article here

http://pittsburghpride.org/?p=1048

Was that Billy Hileman's newspaper?