Kim Simpson purchases an item from Andrew Bare at the Human Rights Campaign booth at last year’s Columbus Pride Festival.
The Republic file photo
The Columbus Pride Festival, which attracted an estimated 2,500 to 3,500 people last year at Mill Race Park downtown, is scheduled Sept. 24 at the same place.
The event, launched in 2018 along Fourth Street to celebrate the local LGBTQ+ population and their friends and families, was limited to a livestream format in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The gathering earned worldwide media attention its inaugural year because publications focused on a local, bisexual teen student who organized it in the hometown of the conservative and then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.
The festival’s website summarizes its purpose as follows: “Our festival works to unite Columbus as one community that celebrates diversity, fosters inclusion for all and embraces the LGBTQ community. We seek to promote this unity by bringing together members of the LGBT community, allies and community organizational leaders while advocating for positive conversation about the values and experiences we share while celebrating what makes us different.”
The day includes vendors of food, merchandise and those representing organizations, plus live music and more. Organizers are still finalizing details and sponsors.
“We are hopeful that the attendance will be bigger, being on the same day as the Mill Race Marathon, so we may get some out-of-town attendees,” said Katelynn Herrick, festival director. “We already seem to be at a pace to have more vendors this year. And we are working to find different local entertainers.”
Herrick said that the drag show, among the most popular attractions last year, will be expanded to two hours this year.
The crowd last year 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.”
The event also included the international Pride’s rainbow logos 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.”
