Late last summer, when it was announced that the Seattle Pride Parade would be moving off Capitol Hill and into the streets of downtown, there was something of a gay-ghetto uprising. Individual gays and lesbians who claimed to speak for the entire community howled about the planned break with tradition, saying the impulse to mainstream homosexuality had gone too far. The owners of gay-friendly businesses on the Hill spoke furiously of betrayal, saying they would lose a Pride Day income boost that they felt they deserved for serving gays every other day of the year.
On a warm evening last August, reporters, myself included, crammed into a contentious meeting held in a room beneath the Lifelong AIDS Alliance offices—probably the first time a television camera had ever recorded Pride Parade deliberations—and watched as a theater of the absurdly fractious unfolded. Grievances were aired. Tears were shed. Threats were tossed around. Vows to hold a parade on Broadway, no matter what, were made. And then a funny thing happened. After the meeting was over, and after all the stories about a major disagreement within the gay community had been written, the parade committee, Seattle Out and Proud, went right ahead with its plan to move downtown.
Fundamentally, the debate over the parade route had always been a clash between gay factions—with the gay-ghetto loyalists, the homo-separatists, the doubters of Seattle Out and Proud's competency, and the Capitol Hill business interests all in agreement that the parade should stay on the Hill. They were arrayed against the gay integrationists, the volunteers at Seattle Out and Proud, and those community members who thought Seattle should join other major cities, such as New York and San Francisco, that have pride parades through the center of town. By pushing ahead with its plans, the Out and Proud committee had called out the question: Whose vision of the parade would the gay community follow?
The answer came last weekend. On Saturday evening, the business-backed rival parade on Broadway, meant to be a finger in the eye of the Seattle Out and Proud committee, turned out to be little more than a whimpered lament grafted onto the normal night-before-Pride dyke march. Then, on Sunday morning, under a hot sun, more than 200,000 gays and gay-watchers voted with their feet, gathering along Fourth Avenue to watch Seattle's first downtown Pride Parade. The sidewalks were clogged and the spectacle was well-received. The appearance of so many homosexuals (and their fans) in the heart of downtown Seattle accomplished its un-ghettoizing aim. And afterward, the Seattle Center grounds were packed with celebrants. A dykeish-looking female police officer was spotted dancing in the Center's main fountain with a large group of half-naked homos. Gay families pushed strollers and searched out shade. And a beer garden (an impossibility in Volunteer Park, the old site of the postparade celebration) raked in money for the perpetually cash-strapped Out and Proud committee.
"Why shouldn't we be able to do what The Cuff does?" asked Weston Sprigg, the treasurer for the committee, referring to the gay dance club on Capitol Hill that usually does a brisk postparade business with its popular beer garden.
Out and Proud hopes the Seattle Center beer garden and other cash-producing features of the new event will one day allow them to pay a staff to help organize Pride—something Seattle Center officials, who have agreed to host the event for the next two years, are urging them to do.
"It seems to have gone off well," said David Heurtel, director of marketing for Seattle Center. "But there are a lot of challenges for this organization if it remains volunteer-based. This is a big event now. It's a major event. And it's a lot for an all-volunteer organization to handle."
Another thing the organizers obviously need to work on: the lackluster floats, which will suffer until a meaningful cash prize for best float is offered.
Meanwhile, there was little sign that having a morning parade and an afternoon celebration down at Seattle Center had led to smaller evening crowds at The Cuff and other gay bars and clubs on Capitol Hill. The ghetto and the parade, it turned out, could both survive a re-centering.
Gay State Representative Ed Murray attended the downtown parade—he pronounced it "the best of the 22 I have been to in Seattle"—and spent time at the Seattle Center event afterward. "It was a huge improvement over Volunteer Park and it holds the possibility of greater things to come," Murray said. But like a lot of gay men, Murray ended up in The Cuff's beer garden by the end of the day."The best," he said of the scene there. "Or maybe it was the beer."
