Capital Pride will mark its 40th year with a “Flashback” theme to highlight how the event and community it celebrates have changed across the decades, organizers announced on Thursday.
“We will take the opportunity to take a look back at not just these last 40 years, but a history of the LGBTQA movement,” Mike Alexander, the event’s development director, told attendees at the official unveiling of the 2015 theme.
The 3rd Annual Pride Reveal also showed off a new, streamlined logo for the Capital Pride Alliance, which plans the June festivities and numerous other gatherings throughout the year.
The Washington, D.C. celebration dates back to a one-day block party hosted in 1975 by Deacon Maccubbin, owner of the now-defunct LGBTQ bookstore Lambda Rising. Numerous organizers and financial backers kept the festival alive through the years, referring to it in earlier iterations as “Gay Pride Day” and “Gay and Lesbian Pride Day.” It now includes a full week of events, culminating in a weekend parade and festival with more than 300,000 participants.
This week’s Pride Reveal was “a chance to celebrate Capital Pride’s wonderful sponsors, partners and supporters,” Liz Dean, Web coordinator for the organizer’s production team told Tagg Magazine. This year’s sponsors include Malmaison, the Georgetown restaurant that hosted Thursday’s Pride Reveal, as well as Hilton Hotels & Resorts, HOT 99.5 and Maryland Live! Casino. Whitman-Walker Health, Tagg Magazine and the Human Rights Campaign are among the event’s other supporters in 2015.
Community groups also organize events around Capital Pride, extending its reach even further beyond the official events produced by its steering committee. One member of the DC Gurly Show, a decade-old queer burlesque troupe, said she was excited to learn about the 2015 theme.
“Pride is a big deal for us,” said Dixie, who joined the group last year. “2015 is a year of flashbacks for us as well, [as] our 10-year anniversary.”
Capital Pride, she said, is “something we love being a part of, and this year being especially about flashbacks, it’s a bit of a transformational experience.”
Past themes for Capital Pride have included “Unleash the Superhero in You,” and “Build Our Bright Future.”
