PORTLAND, Ore. — The largest parade in Oregon was expected to bring tens of thousands of people to downtown Portland this Sunday for the Portland Pride Parade.
The parade started around 11 a.m. and wrapped up a few hours later on Sunday. Weren't able to watch it in person? KGW streamed the Portland Pride Parade live on the KGW website and app, the KGW YouTube channel and KGW+. Watch the replay below.
Festivities got underway Saturday. The Portland Pride Waterfront Festival kicked off at 12 p.m. Saturday and runs through 6 p.m. Sunday at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. It's Portland's biggest celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ+) communities.
The parade route started at the North Park blocks and went down Northwest Couch Street before turning onto Northwest Naito Parkway. It ended at the Portland Pride Festival at Tom McCall Waterfront Park.
People have celebrated Pride in Portland since the 1970s, with its first organized waterfront festival in 1994.
Organizers said that this year’s waterfront pride is all about being a safe place for people to express their identity, while also seeing queer representation.
Executive director Debra Porta said this year, they were lucky enough to start setting up Wednesday for the 70,000 people they expected to show up this weekend.
Porta said there would be almost 200 groups walking in the parade with tons of food vendors, drinks and lively entertainers.
But she said she wanted people to remember how much the queer community has fought for acceptance and spaces like this festival, where they can connect with others just like them.
“The fight doesn’t actually really ever end," Porta expressed. "We have to keep doing the work and keep putting our collective power together — to make sure that our community is seen, heard, included and has everything that we need.”
Why Portland Pride is in July
This is the second year that Portland Pride is being held in July. To avoid overlapping with other significant cultural events in the Rose City, Pride Northwest, which organizes the festival, moved it to July.
For a long time, the weekend of choice for Portland's LGBTQ+ Pride Month celebration would almost always overlap with Juneteenth and the Delta Park Powwow. And moving the festival to another weekend in June wasn't an option with Portland's full summer calendar of events, Pride Northwest said.
This year's Portland Pride theme is Feast and Love in celebration of the festival's 30th year anniversary. On Sunday, Portland-native Jinkx Monsoon, who has won two RuPaul's Drag Race crowns, will be headlining the Waterfront Pride Festival stage.