Angelica Owens
Staff Writer
The city of Philadelphia always has a Gay Pride parade and festival in June, but this year they tried something different. After the regular Gay Pride Parade, they will have a Youth Pride parade on July 5th.
Youth pride will be from 11-6pm and will start off at the William Way Center 1315 spruce and the rest will be between 13th and locust.
Youth Pride was planned mostly by a man named Andrew Rannells, along with student, Sean Morris and others. They started Youth pride because regular pride is filled with old, drunk people. To avoid that scene, they made a day where participants 21 years old and younger can celebrate being queer. There isn’t much information given on the events on this day, but there will definitely be a ribbon cutting of the new rainbow crosswalks in the gayborhood so that should be an exciting thing to happen. It is not clear where the tradition of the rainbow crosswalks started but they are over gayborhoods all around the country, including most recently, Key West Florida.
I am really looking forward to going to going to Youth pride because this is the first year we have done this and I think it would be good for just the youth to get together and celebrate being youth in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community because it’s not easy. We are always getting talked down on from some of the older generations.
Another event I am looking forward to is the rainbow crosswalk. I have always wanted to see something rainbow in our city besides the rainbow signs but actual visibly on the streets such as the sidewalks. I am a huge fan of being prideful about who I am, so I can’t wait to see the new edition to the streets of the gayborhood! It brightens up our city and makes it a way to say that we have pride towards who we are and to show we are happy with ourselves.
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