Friday starts a whole weekend of Pride in Tulsa

by Patrick French

Tulsa Pride Director & Board of Directors, OkEq

Tulsa Pride is just around the corner and we’re ready to party. We’ve got an amazing weekend full of fun lined up for our community. Tulsa Pride weekend begins Friday, May 31, with the second annual Pride Pool Party at the Holiday Inn Tulsa City Center pool from 3-9 PM. The Street Festival and Parade will be held Saturday June 1, featuring all day entertainment, along with performances from Oklahoma’s finest Drag Queens and Kings, the 2013 Tulsa Pride Idol, and special guest DJ’s.

Watch for local venues promoting “Pride Nights.” Patrons can find information about Tulsa Pride and win prizes and other Tulsa Pride memorabilia at each event. Details on “Pride Nights” are available on the new Tulsa Pride smart phone app—available on Apple and Android devices, or our website at www.TulsaPride.org.

Among the non-stop entertainment planned for the June 1 Street Festival is the headlining band: award-winning Fayetteville, AR group Big Bad Gina, described as a “fun and funky Goddess-folk-fusion band with a soulful, jazzy flair.” Tulsa native and crowd favorite Eric Himan returns in 2013 to rock the Street Festival. Eric’s music has recently been featured on Sirius/XM’s Coffeehouse radio station with his song, Save The Afternoon and a version of the Simply Red classic, Holding Back the Years.

The brainchild of Summer Trottier and Mal Bailey, Paper Anchors is an indie-electro-pop ensemble from Springfield, Missouri that makes their Tulsa Pride debut this year. Paper Anchors released their latest contemporary synth/electronic pop album In Pixels in October.

Local queer rapper and singer/songwriter, $erious $tanley makes his main stage debut this year after having DJ’d for the last two years. $erious $tanley is dedicated to the mission of raising visibility for LGBT musicians, and is set to release his third album, Futurelove, this summer.

Tulsa Pride weekend concludes June 2, with the Tulsa Pride Picnic in the Park presented by the Tulsa Shock. A throwback to the beginning of Pride in Tulsa, 31 years ago in 1982, this year’s Picnic in the Park will feature a small entertainment stage with Northwest Arkansas’s Chasing Nadean performing for the crowd. Bring your own food, ice chests, kids, and of course your pets to enjoy a great day at the park.

In Tulsa the annual gay pridefestival and parade is an event hosted by Oklahomans for Equality (OkEq). It is an official program of the organization and OkEq has been the primary fiscal sponsor for the annual event for 31 years.

The first pride picnic took place in Tulsa in the summer of 1975. By 1982 the annual event had become so popular that our fledgling organization was approached by the local MCC church and a bar owner from TNTs to oversee and become the main sponsor and organizing agency. Our archival minutes document this information and newsletters from that era emphasize how the "pride picnic continues to grow with projected crowds for June 1982 being around 400."

For decades, the Tulsa Pride Picnic was held in isolated city parks but in the mid 1990's we were able to move to more visible downtown park locations. After seven years requesting a parade permit, the Tulsa City Council reluctantly approved the first gay pride parade permit in 1999 and today many city and county officials attend Tulsa Pride Festivities.

From 1982 crowds of 400 to crowds over 25,000 in 2012, the Tulsa Pride Festival is the largest gathering of LGBT folks in Tulsa.  ~ by Toby Jenkins, Executive Director, Oklahomans for Equality