Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

Pittsburgh Pridefest has announced a budget shortfall due mainly to a lack of corporate sponsorship. This does have the immediate impact on events, but it also reflects a disturbing pattern of distancing themselves from our community. There is a difference between the impact of these. institutions.

Pittsburgh Pride is scheduled for June 5-7 in Allegheny Commons Park West on the Northside.

Still, I don’t think it is a crisis. It is an opportunity for the next wave of Pride to unfold.

Pride is Corporeal

Pittsburgh Pride in the 90s was pretty non-corporate. Festivals in the park, open-mike, no paid anyone. An old friend of mine would spend the night in the park to guard the stage. Security came from the leather community. The softball league staffed the grill. There were hundreds of unpaid hours invested in this community celebration. They made decisions as a committee – a big one was deciding to sell beer when so many beer distributors were anti-LGBTQ.

Prior to that, Pride was hyperfocal, funded by donations and small businesses.

Eventually, Pride evolved into a corporate event. It was inevitable, but heady like a sweet sixteen birthday party. Inevitably along comes 17 between the ‘big ones’ important but not so lustrous. The shine of that corporate investment has worn thin, revealing more of a gilded support than golden.

We are in an era where entire swathes of Americans and entire generations are revolting against capitalism, demanding we acknowledge the intersectionality of said capitalism and white supremacy. Democracy itself is contorting however fitfully away from moderate stances.

Mayor Madami has care workers on a hunger strike at NY City Hall barely three months into his term. There’s no grace period. Pittsburgh expects Mayor O’Connor to fix everything and fast because of his actual experience. There’s no learning curve and blaming the previous Mayor won’t fly.

So why would Pride be any different? Of course, corporate sponsors abandoned us. Pink washing their company was only skin deep. How many Indivisible chapter leaders still shop at Target and sip frappucinos? Too many.

Actual corporate investments would have sponsored actual LGBTQIA+ programming. It did not. At one point, I had proposed pairing corporate exhibitors with nonprofit groups to underwrite their participation – like Giant Eagle sponsoring the Pittsburgh Food Bank or CVS underwriting Allies.

There’s nothing like turning a corner and meeting a house siding salesman try to explain their presence at Pride. No thank you. If they made it possible for True T Pgh to have a robust Pride presence, maybe.

But modifying corporate sponsorship is just not doable. The destructive trauma of capitalism can’t be sieved out from the underlying

Pride is being forced to reinvent itself, to contort into a post-corporate world. That’s terrifying, but it is happening. We can embrace that change, but we cannot deny it.

Now There are Little Pridefests Everywhere

Another thing to consider is that there is no longer “one pridefest to rule them all” for the region. In 2025, I identified 50 regional Pridefests – not including all the events like drag shows, river tubings, bar crawls, movie nights, etc – and over 80 statewide.

The hyperlocal nature of Pittsburgh and the region predicted this. Each community has a fire department, a series of seasonal church festivals, a school system, even an “us against the world” mentality when necessary. I’ve lived in Manchester on the Northside for 21 years, but I’m not from here and I get it – I’m from West Mifflin where I lived for 16 years.

Last year, I blogged about this Little Pridefests Everywhere phenomena

Meanwhile in 2025, up have sprung the phenomenon I call ‘Little Pridefests Everywhere’ to capture the hyperlocal nature of Pride events in Ross Township, Mt. Lebanon, Bellevue, Dormont, Greenfield, Scottdale in Allegheny County surrounding Pittsburgh. Then move outward to Vandergrift, Connellsville, Washington, New Castle, Greensburg, Latrobe, Johnstown, Indiana, Fayette County, the Shenango Valley, Venango and more in the rural counties of  Southwestern Pennsylvania. This is very consistent with how Pittsburgh at least organizes – of course there is a Pride in Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, East Liberty, as well as Millvale, Etna, etc – communities just a few miles apart and within spitting distance of the largest community Pride event early in June. 

With that intense spread of Pride festivals it is natural that local and small business sponsors turn their attention to the hyperfocal events in their community. The same is true of individual donors.

Are we in a hyperlocal wave of Pridefests?

Perhaps this is the next wave of Pride – hyperlocal events. It is a sign of our strength as more and more of us live openly out even in the parts of Pennsylvania where there are no protections from discriminations. We are fierce, brave, and proud. We create spaces even just for one day that celebrate and affirm us, including our ties to our local communities.

Pride has evolved from a big showstopper to lots of side stages. That happened organically and it is consistent with Pittsburgh tradition. It doesn’t make the showstopper, the collective gathering, the unity any less important. It is just … different. Two things can be true at one time.

What must not be true is carrying forward outdated and harmful practices such as expecting everyone can ‘donate’ their time and resources to create a community space. That’s great if you have PTO and extra financial means. But we must not fall back into expecting our creators to give without something in return (visibility is not a satisfactory form of compensation.) We must ask those with more to give more to maintain balance. Mutual aid models are more useful than corporate sponsorships.

The needs of the community have evolved and more visible. A new model isn’t just a 90’s retread. Evolution requires growth.

I have often had sponsorship letters thrust in my face asking me to contribute many hundreds or thousands of dollars that I do not and never will have. When I demur, I’m assaulted with insults implying I’m lying about my finances. It is exhausting. So I donate strategically where $100 can have the most impact. Sometimes $50. It is rare someone asks me for a moderate donation, something I find puzzling given how transparent I am about my financial circumstances. Sometimes, no one asks at all.

That is a mistake. I would give and sacrifice to do so because I am a believer. Like my friend Jim FIscherkeller, I believe that the resiliency of Pride will manifest again and again and again.

Like many of you, I hold dear the Prides of my younger days even as I know the vagaries of reminiscing. I do not wish to go back to 1994 or 1998 or some other fixed point in that time. My wish is simply to revisit that experience, the feeling, the special nature of Pridefest that cannot be encapsulated by any one event – not one parade nor stage or set of vendors.

Now there are picnics in the park, dj’s and balloons along city streets, music floating across bodies of water, pancake breakfasts, dancing under the stars, small groups and large crowds.

I love that Pride has many faces now and I can choose which one to hold close to my own .

What will Pride look like without corporations?

We can look to history, especially the 90s. We can look around us to Washington, Vandergrift, Indiana, Meadville, and beyond. We can learn from Pittsburgh Black Pride about their experiences. There are many elders with experience and muscle memory to share.

Pride will move forward, it will. If losing most corporate funding spurs that change, so be it. If these companies have lost incentive to support us as a community – our rights, benefits, and status – that’s a much bigger problem.

A different problem that might require us to consider how our dalliances with corporate America have come with a price. Perhaps the next incarnation of Pridefest will guide the way.

I’m not suggesting anyone avoid contributing to Pittsburgh Pride, the opposite in fact. This is a time for everyone to reconsider how we show up for our community. To find resources within so we are not as dependent on those outside. That’s on each of us. You can also look at hyperfocal Pridefests.

To resist and exist.