"We've got folks who wish we had done more and were disappointed that we couldn't put on the parade and festival, and totally understand that. If you want to have a backyard party, great, do that, let's help you celebrate that," López said. "If you want to stay home and just listen to some great LGBTQ artists and entertainers from the safety of your living room, do that. The hybrid model, López said, is a way to meet as many people's needs as possible. "It was a good old fashioned protest."Ĭarlo Toribio Participants marching in San Diego Pride's Resilience March on July 11, 2021. We started in Balboa Park, and instead of a quarter million folks, we had about 16,000 march into the heart of Hillcrest," López said. And instead of marching out of Hillcrest, let's - it's all about restoration, right? It's all about resilience - so let's March back into community. So we said, you know what, let's do something for the folks who really want to get out there and celebrate. We just didn't have that logistical time. "Parades take a ton of planning and coordination and hundreds of organizations and nonprofits. It started last weekend with She Fest and the Resilience March - a pandemic era stand-in for the parade. This year, the event is spread out: across virtual and on-site platforms, and also over a ten-day period, with approximately forty individual events, López said. Pride is the largest single day event in the region, and - again, in a typical year - López said that only a third of the attendance is local. A 2018 study by San Diego State University's Center for Hospitality and Tourism clocked this figure at $26.5 million - more than double the impact from four years prior in 2014. Pride's July events and the resultant sales, tickets, hospitality and tourism in a typical year routinely result in a major economic impact for the area, said López. I think folks are just ready to come back and connect," López said.
#SAN DIEGO GAY PRIDE 2021 PARADE FREE#
So we wanted to give folks as many options and opportunities as possible, for as much as possible, as long as possible and keep those events free and open to the public because we've all been through it this year. And with the Delta variant, that is super understandable. Some folks just aren't feeling safe and ready to come out yet. Some people aren't able to get vaccinated.
Include some virtual components because some folks aren't yet vaccinated. "Rather than bring together a quarter million folks in one space, we said, okay, we're going to find venues all throughout the county. As the vaccines rolled out and Pride's July event date approached, the organization honed in on that middle ground. They considered a trio of potential budgets for various stages of lockdown, reopening or something in the middle. As we were also enduring the impacts of COVID-19, trying to foresee the future was nearly impossible," López said. "While we're trying to plan and prepare, we're also losing loved ones and friends and being severed from our employment and the places and people that we love. Plus, community-wide, there's a lot of grief.
While the San Diego event industry has begun to barrel ahead full-steam, large-scale projects like Pride didn't really have enough time for the necessary advance planning.