In June 1974, about 200 Seattleites joined the city’s first Gay Pride Week , picnicking in Pioneer Square’s Occidental Park, to honor the Stonewall uprising. Fifty years later, the Seattle Pride Parade is now one of the largest Pride events in the country, drawing thousands of colorfully dressed spectators downtown each year. To mark the celebration’s golden anniversary, we sat down with intergenerational pairs of LGBTQ+ friends and family members to talk about their unique experiences attending Pride and other personal milestones.
Here are moments from their conversations, edited for concision. Ivy Malone, 25, and their father Michael, 62, both realized they were gay and then came out within a few years of each other, while Ivy was in high school in Mississippi. Ivy: It was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, and I was here [in Seattle] visiting with my dad.
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I wasn’t out at the time. I wasn’t even sure if I was gay yet, but I remember going to Pride and feeling such a sense of community that summer. .
.. When was your first Pride? Michael: It was probably around 2016 or so.
I really did not anticipate how powerful that would be. ..
. I really didn’t feel closeted much, but at that point it was like, wow, this is huge, to have all those people around. Ivy: Yeah, I think being raised in the South, there was so much of a stigma around it .
.. and then being able to come here and see people who are living their full lives, their complete liv.
