July 01, 2019 at 05:17AM
About four hours into the march, members of the Oslo Fagottkor, a Norwegian gay choir, were still waiting for their turn to march the parade.
Just above the start of the route, Paal Christian Gjoeen, 37, and his three friends rested their arms over the fence, their smiles wide.
The men, each in white and pink sailor uniforms, had been waiting for more than two hours.
"But we could be entering the parade any minute now, they tell us," Mr. Gjoeen said.
Neither he nor the rest of the choir seemed to mind the wait. The men had played a concert in Harlem the evening before.
"We'll keep singing until the end," Mr. Gjoeen said, acknowledging that the parade may well go into the wee hours of the night. "Until we are lying in the streets."
"And in case it starts raining, we've got umbrellas to share," he added, pulling a blue umbrella from his side. "We use them in our dance."
It would not be the Pride March without Frances Goldin, the Lower East Side radical, and her sign.
"I Adore My Lesbian Daughters — Keep Them Safe," read the aging piece of white cardboard held aloft by Ms. Goldin on Sunday at the Pride March, at the corner of 18th Street and Fifth Avenue.
The sign has become a staple at New York Pride marches, and Sunday was no different, as Ms. Goldin, 95, held it up while she sat in a wheelchair and flashed her toothy smile.
"She's been bringing this exact sign to Pride marches for 40 years," one of her daughters, Reeni Goldin, 70 said. Her mother — "a revolutionary" — first began bringing it, she said, because "she had a very real fear for us."
Throughout the march, Ms. Goldin was approached by attendees, police officers and elected officials, including New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray.
She has long run the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, representing such authors as Barbara Kingsolver, Adrienne Rich and Mumia Abu-Jamal. She spent a career fighting against overdevelopment and gentrification, including the urban renewal plans of Robert Moses.
Ms. Goldin has also been a regular at civil rights rallies and events for affordable housing and a host of other causes.
"I have a lesbian daughter too and I love her as well," said a woman who approached Ms. Goldin on Sunday. She hugged both mother and daughter, then turned away and burst into tears.
"People are drawn because it's just so personal," Reeni Goldin said. "My mother doesn't just love her daughters, she adores us. There's a difference."
"Oh, my God," a young man said, gasping from behind a barricade at the corner of Christopher Street and Sixth Avenue.
Every teenager in the crowd, it seemed, recognized the internet personality and makeup artist James Charles.
Mr. Charles, who made history in 2016, when he became the first male face of CoverGirl, walked with the group representing the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization founded to focus on suicide prevention among L.G.B.T.Q. youth.
The social media influencer, who has amassed millions of followers on Instagram and YouTube, said Sunday's march was his first-ever Pride event.
"I want to go every year, but literally, I've always been traveling," Mr. Charles said. "This is just such a special moment to be here with my community."
Mr. Charles, who was recently at the center of a high-profile conflict in the beauty vlogging community, said the day had been an emotional one.
"I literally started crying earlier while I was walking," he said. "It warms my entire heart to see all generations and all the people supporting."
It seems especially fitting that, a brick's throw from the Stonewall Inn, there is a short quaint block named Gay Street in the heart of the West Village, long an L.G.B.T.Q. stronghold.
As the Pride March passes by, countless people will notice that Gay Street was renamed — at least during the month of June, Pride month — Acceptance Street, to honor the expanding diversity of self-identification in the L.G.B.T.Q. community.
New York City installed rainbow-colored street signs below the official sign, where Gay Street meets Christopher Street.
The all-inclusive signs include such identifying markers as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Nonbinary, Pansexual and Two Spirit.
At one-block long, Gay Street is one of the shortest streets in the West Village. In truth, the street, which was christened in 1833, was likely named after a family.
With apologies to Barbra Streisand: It did, indeed, rain on our parade.
Around 3 p.m., the drops began to fall and the wind picked up, sending whirlwinds of glitter and multicolored confetti twirling down Fifth Avenue faster than marchers' feet.
"You know what it is?" asked Nina Szot, 32, trying to make her way toward the Stonewall Inn as a small drizzle began. "They're trying to make a rainbow."
As the march rolled on, organizers briefly evacuated the Pride Island music festival held at Pier 97 on the Hudson River, citing the gusts.
They re-opened the festival around an hour later, after the storms had passed through.
Along Fifth Avenue, Mike and Malenie Piscetelli, 58, had been standing near the Flatiron Building since 6 a.m., waiting to watch their daughter march.
Mr. Piscetelli wore a black T-shirt with the phrase "Papa Bear" brandished across it. Below was the outline of a big bear, embracing a smaller rainbow-hued one.
As the dark clouds moved over them, Mr. Piscetelli glanced at his wife.
"You see, my wife is not waterproof," he said, pointing to her cochlear implants.
"But I want to be here for my daughter," he said. "And for the daughters of all the other girls marching who do not have fathers that support them."
On the other side of the country, San Francisco's Pride parade was halted temporarily after multiple protesters crossed onto the parade route and blocked the street at around 11 a.m., local time, the police said.
Close to a dozen protesters laid down on Market Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares, along which the parade runs for about one and a half miles. It was not immediately clear what the protesters were demonstrating against.
Two people were taken into custody, according to the San Francisco Police Department, which said it did not have more information on their arrest.
Local news outlets reported that the group of protesters lied down on the asphalt near Sixth Street, linking their arms across what looked like rainbow-colored tubing.
Video footage from KPIX, the city's CBS affiliate, also showed several protesters tangling with the San Francisco police as onlookers shouted.
As the protest went on, the Pride parade organizers contacted the protesters, the police said. Almost an hour after the protest began, officials said, the protesters agreed to leave the street and the parade resumed.
The San Francisco Pride parade, much like New York's march, has been criticized for its ties to corporate sponsorship and the police.
Most notably, a group of Google employees asked organizers to boot their company from San Francisco's Pride events. The employees said the company, which is an official sponsor of the parade, had failed to adopt policies to protect L.G.B.T.Q. people from harassment.
Pride organizers declined to meet their request but it gave protesters a place in the parade, permitting them to march as a "Resistance Contingent," separate from Google's official parade presence.
They climbed up poles for a better view and they took cover under any shade they could find on Fifth Avenue.
The crowd perked up when Mayor Bill de Blasio's float came toward them. Free T-shirts were tossed to the crowd. People danced on the sidewalks to "Express Yourself" by Madonna.
Near a hot dog car on 11th Street and Fifth Avenue, Daniel Freidman, 33, wore a jacket that read, "I really do care, do u?" (The jacket was a nod to Melania Trump's controversy-stirring jacket that read "I really don't care. Do U?").
Mr. Freidman urged others to "recognize that there are many people in the world that are trying to find a better life for themselves."
"When we look at the situation with immigrants on the border and parents that have been separated, there's a link with our struggles," he said. "We are all are striving to be treated as human beings."
Rainbow-colored flowers, nails and sunglasses.CreditCalla Kessler/The New York TimesHanging about five feet off the ground, off metal bars of construction scaffolding, four longtime friends watched the parade pass by on Fifth Avenue and reminisced about times past.
Leonard Shaver, a 62-year-old gay man from the Flatiron neighborhood, sat with three straight friends he met 45 years ago at Johns Hopkins University.
One of those friends, Sheila McDonald, 60, who was visiting from Annapolis, Md., with her husband, Bennett Finney, 59, said, "We've been coming to Pride for years and years, and this is by far the biggest, most beautiful one I've seen."
Mr. Finney added, "We're
About four hours into the march, members of the Oslo Fagottkor, a Norwegian gay choir, were still waiting for their turn to march the parade.
Just above the start of the route, Paal Christian Gjoeen, 37, and his three friends rested their arms over the fence, their smiles wide.
The men, each in white and pink sailor uniforms, had been waiting for more than two hours.
"But we could be entering the parade any minute now, they tell us," Mr. Gjoeen said.
Neither he nor the rest of the choir seemed to mind the wait. The men had played a concert in Harlem the evening before.
"We'll keep singing until the end," Mr. Gjoeen said, acknowledging that the parade may well go into the wee hours of the night. "Until we are lying in the streets."
"And in case it starts raining, we've got umbrellas to share," he added, pulling a blue umbrella from his side. "We use them in our dance."
It would not be the Pride March without Frances Goldin, the Lower East Side radical, and her sign.
"I Adore My Lesbian Daughters — Keep Them Safe," read the aging piece of white cardboard held aloft by Ms. Goldin on Sunday at the Pride March, at the corner of 18th Street and Fifth Avenue.
The sign has become a staple at New York Pride marches, and Sunday was no different, as Ms. Goldin, 95, held it up while she sat in a wheelchair and flashed her toothy smile.
"She's been bringing this exact sign to Pride marches for 40 years," one of her daughters, Reeni Goldin, 70 said. Her mother — "a revolutionary" — first began bringing it, she said, because "she had a very real fear for us."
Throughout the march, Ms. Goldin was approached by attendees, police officers and elected officials, including New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray.
She has long run the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, representing such authors as Barbara Kingsolver, Adrienne Rich and Mumia Abu-Jamal. She spent a career fighting against overdevelopment and gentrification, including the urban renewal plans of Robert Moses.
Ms. Goldin has also been a regular at civil rights rallies and events for affordable housing and a host of other causes.
"I have a lesbian daughter too and I love her as well," said a woman who approached Ms. Goldin on Sunday. She hugged both mother and daughter, then turned away and burst into tears.
"People are drawn because it's just so personal," Reeni Goldin said. "My mother doesn't just love her daughters, she adores us. There's a difference."
"Oh, my God," a young man said, gasping from behind a barricade at the corner of Christopher Street and Sixth Avenue.
Every teenager in the crowd, it seemed, recognized the internet personality and makeup artist James Charles.
Mr. Charles, who made history in 2016, when he became the first male face of CoverGirl, walked with the group representing the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization founded to focus on suicide prevention among L.G.B.T.Q. youth.
The social media influencer, who has amassed millions of followers on Instagram and YouTube, said Sunday's march was his first-ever Pride event.
"I want to go every year, but literally, I've always been traveling," Mr. Charles said. "This is just such a special moment to be here with my community."
Mr. Charles, who was recently at the center of a high-profile conflict in the beauty vlogging community, said the day had been an emotional one.
"I literally started crying earlier while I was walking," he said. "It warms my entire heart to see all generations and all the people supporting."
It seems especially fitting that, a brick's throw from the Stonewall Inn, there is a short quaint block named Gay Street in the heart of the West Village, long an L.G.B.T.Q. stronghold.
As the Pride March passes by, countless people will notice that Gay Street was renamed — at least during the month of June, Pride month — Acceptance Street, to honor the expanding diversity of self-identification in the L.G.B.T.Q. community.
New York City installed rainbow-colored street signs below the official sign, where Gay Street meets Christopher Street.
The all-inclusive signs include such identifying markers as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Nonbinary, Pansexual and Two Spirit.
At one-block long, Gay Street is one of the shortest streets in the West Village. In truth, the street, which was christened in 1833, was likely named after a family.
With apologies to Barbra Streisand: It did, indeed, rain on our parade.
Around 3 p.m., the drops began to fall and the wind picked up, sending whirlwinds of glitter and multicolored confetti twirling down Fifth Avenue faster than marchers' feet.
"You know what it is?" asked Nina Szot, 32, trying to make her way toward the Stonewall Inn as a small drizzle began. "They're trying to make a rainbow."
As the march rolled on, organizers briefly evacuated the Pride Island music festival held at Pier 97 on the Hudson River, citing the gusts.
They re-opened the festival around an hour later, after the storms had passed through.
Along Fifth Avenue, Mike and Malenie Piscetelli, 58, had been standing near the Flatiron Building since 6 a.m., waiting to watch their daughter march.
Mr. Piscetelli wore a black T-shirt with the phrase "Papa Bear" brandished across it. Below was the outline of a big bear, embracing a smaller rainbow-hued one.
As the dark clouds moved over them, Mr. Piscetelli glanced at his wife.
"You see, my wife is not waterproof," he said, pointing to her cochlear implants.
"But I want to be here for my daughter," he said. "And for the daughters of all the other girls marching who do not have fathers that support them."
On the other side of the country, San Francisco's Pride parade was halted temporarily after multiple protesters crossed onto the parade route and blocked the street at around 11 a.m., local time, the police said.
Close to a dozen protesters laid down on Market Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares, along which the parade runs for about one and a half miles. It was not immediately clear what the protesters were demonstrating against.
Two people were taken into custody, according to the San Francisco Police Department, which said it did not have more information on their arrest.
Local news outlets reported that the group of protesters lied down on the asphalt near Sixth Street, linking their arms across what looked like rainbow-colored tubing.
Video footage from KPIX, the city's CBS affiliate, also showed several protesters tangling with the San Francisco police as onlookers shouted.
As the protest went on, the Pride parade organizers contacted the protesters, the police said. Almost an hour after the protest began, officials said, the protesters agreed to leave the street and the parade resumed.
The San Francisco Pride parade, much like New York's march, has been criticized for its ties to corporate sponsorship and the police.
Most notably, a group of Google employees asked organizers to boot their company from San Francisco's Pride events. The employees said the company, which is an official sponsor of the parade, had failed to adopt policies to protect L.G.B.T.Q. people from harassment.
Pride organizers declined to meet their request but it gave protesters a place in the parade, permitting them to march as a "Resistance Contingent," separate from Google's official parade presence.
They climbed up poles for a better view and they took cover under any shade they could find on Fifth Avenue.
The crowd perked up when Mayor Bill de Blasio's float came toward them. Free T-shirts were tossed to the crowd. People danced on the sidewalks to "Express Yourself" by Madonna.
Near a hot dog car on 11th Street and Fifth Avenue, Daniel Freidman, 33, wore a jacket that read, "I really do care, do u?" (The jacket was a nod to Melania Trump's controversy-stirring jacket that read "I really don't care. Do U?").
Mr. Freidman urged others to "recognize that there are many people in the world that are trying to find a better life for themselves."
"When we look at the situation with immigrants on the border and parents that have been separated, there's a link with our struggles," he said. "We are all are striving to be treated as human beings."
Rainbow-colored flowers, nails and sunglasses.CreditCalla Kessler/The New York TimesHanging about five feet off the ground, off metal bars of construction scaffolding, four longtime friends watched the parade pass by on Fifth Avenue and reminisced about times past.
Leonard Shaver, a 62-year-old gay man from the Flatiron neighborhood, sat with three straight friends he met 45 years ago at Johns Hopkins University.
One of those friends, Sheila McDonald, 60, who was visiting from Annapolis, Md., with her husband, Bennett Finney, 59, said, "We've been coming to Pride for years and years, and this is by far the biggest, most beautiful one I've seen."
Mr. Finney added, "We're not just allies. We're sympathizers! And empathizers!"
Mr. Shaver supported that viewpoint. "They're more gay-friendly than I am," he said. "And I'm gay!"
Mr. Shaver said he saw a striking difference in this year's parade compared to last year.
"It's so much bigger," he said. "And last night, the Dyke March must have been 10 times the size."
While the early action of the Pride March kicked off near Madison Square Park, an eager group of revelers purposefully chose to wait for the march in Greenwich Village, the center of L.G.B.T.Q. life in New York City.
Part of the march snaked through the streets of the Village toward the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, the site of the 1969 uprising between the police and L.G.B.T.Q. community. Then, the march proceeded north on Seventh Avenue, passing the city's AIDS memorial, which sits in a small park near at Seventh Avenue and 12th Street.
The march continued up Chelsea, another longtime hub for the city's L.G.B.T.Q. community, before ending at 23rd Street.
The Pride March is all about getting down and boogying, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before the second most powerful elected official in New York City busted out his trademark dance move.
About 90 minutes into the march, the speaker of the City Council, Corey Johnson, 37, prodded by an interviewer, stepped back and let fly with one of his cheerleader-style split kicks.
Mr. Johnson, who is openly gay and H.I.V. positive, has been showing off his move in recent parades. It seems to have become a standard to which other parade-dancing pols have begun trying to live up to. On Sunday, he performed it during the televised broadcast of the march.
Before he leapt, Mr. Johnson told an interviewer that "I was a closeted 16-year-old boy in a small town — I was suicidal," before learning about L.G.B.T.Q. leaders such as the Stonewall uprising pioneers, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson.
Those pioneers "made it possible for me to run for the Council," he said. "I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for them."
If his split kick was not a perfect 10, at least Mr. Johnson, who only recently quit smoking, is a better dancer than baseball pitcher. The interviewer brought up his throwing out of the first pitch at the New York Yankees Pride Night festivities — a pitch that was pretty wide of the strike zone.
"In my warm-up," Mr. Johnson said, "I was a little better."