October Events!

By Al Preston

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            October is another busy month for The Holiday Pride. As it is LGBT+ history month, we wanted to get out into the community some more!

            While we didn’t get out as much as we would like, we did manage to do two events. The first was the Pittsburgh Zine Fair. As stated before, we have started making Zines of topics that we have covered. The Zine Fair was the first time that we were able to send them out into the world!

            What a lovely event as well!

Here’s all of the zines we brought to the fair fresh off the printer and wax stamp.

All set up and ready to go!

            My lovely and long-suffering, wife and I arrived early to help set up the event and then had a wonderful time. There were so many creative people selling their carefully crafted zines. Not to mention the sheer amount of queer folks everywhere. I haven’t seen so many queer folks coming together by happenstance rather than on purpose before.

            It was great to talk to other Zine makers and get to know the community that surrounds Zines some more. Talking with those that looked at our zines or expressed interest in The Holiday Pride was also a bunch of fun. Many folks told us that they were excited to know that someone was collecting and presenting Pittsburgh’s queer history.

            Unsurprisingly, our zines about Dante ‘Tex’ Gill and Pittsburgh’s Drag Queens were the most popular. Next were the multiple versions of our oral histories. It was so exciting to meet more members of the community, and I can’t wait for the zine fair to come around again next year!

            In a more academic setting, the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums Conference or MAAM, was a lovely event as well! We presented a poster that talked about our new walking tour!

From left to right: Myself, Laura: a college of mine, Jessie; a current Duquesne student who has been helping me with the walking tour project, and Dr. Jennifer Taylor; a professor at Duquesne University.

Jessie and I talking to folks about the walking tour.

Many of the museum professionals attending were very excited to see us making a community focused exhibition of history. More than one person talked fondly about going to the Pegasus or Metropol and were surprised to see just how many bars that had existed in the city.

We passed out a number of pamphlets for the short tour (which you can download for free!) and I hope those folks who visited Pittsburgh for the first time were able to take a stroll along the walk!

There were many wonderful folks there and I talked to some of the city’s museum professionals. It was a wonderful time!

Events are very important for us at this stage of the museum. It gets our name and projects out into the public to develop buzz. It was great to see at both of these events, that folks were taking our zines or pamphlets and telling their friends who then came over themselves to see what we were all about. Some had heard of us before either event and were excited to see us.

I personally really enjoy attending these events and talking to people about what we do. Directly interacting with the community is something I love to do, and it helps get our projects out into the community they are meant for.

There will always be more events we’ll attend, keep an eye out for us and keep an eye on our socials (instagram) to know where we might be!