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Too straight, white and corporate: why some queer people are skipping SF Pride

Imagine you go to your nearest 4th of July parade this weekend and there's 100 floats of which 70 of them are large corporations who have slapped a logo and a flag onto a pickup and trailer, and bused in a bunch of employees there only to sit and wave at you and maybe hand out pencils with the logo on it.
KPMG, Hyatt, Tyson, TD Ameritrade, GAP, JP-Morgan Chase, Comcast, Walgreens, Aon, ORBITZ, Boeing ...

That's what nearly all Pride Parades have become. Painfully boring. A giant two hour long commercial. Totally unrelated to the point of the parade.
Everything else that's interesting has been condensed into a few couple floats: LGBT veterans, marching bands, Dykes on Bikes, drag queens. You blink and you miss them.

It's so not worth it.

(* And actually, the 4th of July parades are having this problem too.)

In a free society, things occur that not all people will like, including those that some find objectionable for whatever reason, like who's funding events that would otherwise not be able fund themselves, and asking for banners and so forth being placed as advertisement in return for their funding. I prefer that to the opposite, which would be complete state sponsorship and complete state control.

If a group doesn't need outside funding, then fine, there's no reason for outside funding or commercial advertising in return. Otherwise, we all just need to suck it up, put our big boy and big girl pants on, and be happy that there are companies out there that support LGBT communities, as well as the celebration of the 4th of July, and all they ask for is to be recognized for their funding of events that we all should support.
 
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Yup. Pretty much happens everywhere.

Even threatening things like Burning Man.

Have you ever been to Burning Man? If so, I hate you so much - because I want to go soooooo badly. I just haven't been able to fit it in with all the other things in life that keep pulling my in different directions.
 
Have you ever been to Burning Man? If so, I hate you so much - because I want to go soooooo badly. I just haven't been able to fit it in with all the other things in life that keep pulling my in different directions.

I went very early on, but from the pics I've seen of the phatasmagorical buildings and artwork from the past couple years, I feel I'm the one who missed out. The stuff I've seen pics of there are just mind bogglingly great.

It's become a huge, worldwide draw, though, and from what I can gather the amount of attendees can be a bit staggering.

The Burning Man people just bought some property recently up there, I think with the intent of have a permanent 'mini-man' all year, until the big annual one comes.
 
I went very early on, but from the pics I've seen of the phatasmagorical buildings and artwork from the past couple years, I feel I'm the one who missed out. The stuff I've seen pics of there are just mind bogglingly great.

It's become a huge, worldwide draw, though, and from what I can gather the amount of attendees can be a bit staggering.

The Burning Man people just bought some property recently up there, I think with the intent of have a permanent 'mini-man' all year, until the big annual one comes.

I saw a documentary about the people that run it, and it got into detail about the main buildings, how they were constructed, and also about a few of the other buildings built by other groups. It was amazing. They covered how they assign parking, how they distribute camping sites, what the rules are and what the rules are not.

By the time it was over, I was online trying to get tickets.
 
In a free society, things occur that not all people will like, including those that some find objectionable for whatever reason, like who's funding events that would otherwise not be able fund themselves, and asking for banners and so forth being placed as advertisement in return for their funding. I prefer that to the opposite, which would be complete state sponsorship and complete state control.

If a group doesn't need outside funding, then fine, there's no reason for outside funding or commercial advertising in return. Otherwise, we all just need to suck it up, put our big boy and big girl pants on, and be happy that there are companies out there that support LGBT communities, as well as the celebration of the 4th of July, and all they ask for is to be recognized for their funding of events that we all should support.

Well, I think the point here is that there *are* other options besides big corporate sponsorship, and even if you want to use big corporate sponsorship, there's no reason it has to take over the entire event like this. Pride functioned just fine without it for years, and these other events some people are choosing to go to instead still are -- and they're not exactly small.

I think the point people are making in this article is that SF Pride has chosen to run it like a tourist attraction rather than an event for local LGBT people, resulting in a lot of the local community being kind of excluded from it due to lack of representation. And that's not ubiquitous to all Prides.

London had a huge Pride, as you might imagine. There was a bit of corporate sponsorship, but not so overwhelming as it was in SF, and more appropriately invoked. Like Heineken sponsoring one of the after parties, for example, and the Heinken advertising took a back seat to the Pride advertising. There was no mistaking it was about Pride, not Heineken.

From what I can see of the SF Pride, it seems more about the corporations than Pride, and the organizers are focusing more on attracting tourists who probably don't even care about the cause than they are about having an event for the locals. Yeah, I can see why they'd complain.
 
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