Pride 2026
- Al Preston
- Jul 15
- 3 min read
By Al Preston
What a busy month!
We went to two pride events and attempt to host a walking tour downtown of Pittsburgh’s bars.
Some of these events were far more successful than others.
While we didn’t get any takers for the walking tour, we got some really helpful feedback! We are grateful for those who gave us suggestions for when and how to do the tour next year so keep an eye out next summer!
Now! For the events, we were happily invited to the Vandergrift Pride and Forest Hills Pride events.
We attended the Vandergrift pride last year and were so happy to do it again this year! It was as lovely as the even before. Thankfully for us, we weren’t next to the stage this year! Which made talking to attendees much easier.
We were also recognized a few times! Folks who saw us last year were happy to see us there again. They were also excited to see we were giving out some of our zines. This event is always so lovely. The people, the volunteers, the other venders, they’re all so lovely and great.
The other pride event we attended was in Forest Hills! It was a bit late in the day, but it was very fun!
We were very lucky and ended up inside the lodge at the park, so we were nice and cool and dry for the event. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so great outside. It rained heavily for some time while we were there, but that did mean we got a lot of people coming up to our table!
Since we were inside the entire time, this pride felt much smaller than Vandergrift. The folks attending were different as well, but that may have just been because we were inside. They were older, which could explain the later time, but just as lovely as all of the other prides!
Lots of the attendees were very excited to talk to us and hear that we were collecting Pittsburgh’s queer history. I also loved noticing which zines went faster than others in different areas. As always, our Dante ‘Tex’ Gill zine went fast, but it was really cool talking to some of these folks because they remembered reading about Gill in the newspaper or seeing him at the bars.
Others were excited to see our Wendi Miller zine and told us about meeting Wendi or going to Miller Frame. This year, our zine about the city’s gay rights ordinance went rather quickly as well.
It was a lovely event, and we’ll hopefully be able to attend again next year! This pride was very lovely and busy, which is always a good thing!
We also collected some archival material while we were at these events. We want to begin collecting videos, images, and materials from pride events now and going forward. We are also going to start collecting social media posts and advertisements for events. We also want to archive images and videos of the various events. As such, if you have images or videos or events you want to make sure are recorded and archived, please let us know! Reach out via email and we’ll chat about what you have to share and what you want to keep.
While we don’t have much space for physical archives at the moment, we have plenty of space for digital materials and the ability to digitize flyers or pamphlets or things that are paper.
Hopefully one day we’ll be able to take physical objects, until then we’ll happily take digital and paper items!
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