Columbus resident Bren Thomas looked out over a crowd of people at the annual Columbus Pride Festival Saturday afternoon at Mill Race Park downtown and smiled broadly. On this day, there was nowhere else she’d rather be.
“Every time I come to Pride, I always feel so welcome, and everyone feels like family and also, everyone here is so sweet,” Thomas said. “And definitely it can be a struggle at other times (in Columbus) in other circumstances when I just don’t feel as validated or I get misgendered.”
Thomas and friend Evie Brooks from Spencer were among organizers’ estimated 2,500 to 3,500 attendees at the free event at some point during its five-hour span. The event, launched in 2018 to celebrate the local LGBTQ+ population and their friends and families, was limited to a livestream format last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My favorite part is just seeing all these different people from all different backgrounds, all different places being together,” Brooks said.
The attendance was significant despite temperatures around 89 degrees and also a sizable crowd just a few blocks away at the annual Hot Rods ‘n’ Rock ‘n’ Roll car show and concert event downtown.
Festival coordinator Katelynn Herrick said at the end of the event that she was pleased with the turnout and the day that included everyone from toddlers to seniors well past retirement.
“And it was so awesome to see all the families there,” Herrick said.
The crowd included a large number of young people, from teens to those looking to be in their 20s. The teens included a mixed Columbus North High School choir performing songs such as Imagine Dragons’ “On Top of the World.”
Once again, the drag show, this time held on the amphitheater stage, proved to be perhaps the most popular activity. A crowd of about 400 people watched cross-dressed, wig-bedecked performers lip-sync and dance to a variety of songs with a driving pop-rock beat. A Columbus native going by the stage name of Jasmine Monet was among the more popular acts.
So was an Indianapolis-based performer named Kendra Stone, who elicited big screams and cheers with every cartwheel and each smoothly successful execution of the splits.
“I think my hip joint just popped out,” a chuckling Stone said afterward.
And a Bloomington drag queen named Mocha Debeauté, who has performed nationwide in what she calls a specialized art form, mentioned that the visibility of Pride festivals in general is important to promote acceptance of LGBTQ+ residents.
“I love this,” Debeauté said of the Columbus event. “I think it’s enlightening.”
Understandably, the international Pride’s rainbow logos were everywhere among the crowd: socks, leggings, hair bows, caps, face paint, backpacks, dog leashes, you name it.
Others wore fashions supporting the LGBTQ+ set. One young man sported a T-shirt with the message: “Straight but not narrow.”
