PS PRIDE
Palm Springs Pride festival participants include rainbow flag's co-creator, lots of young people
Colin Atagi
Clouds may have filled the sky above Palm Springs Sunday, but they didn't prevent a wave of rainbows from donning downtown for an annual parade celebrating the LGBTQ community.
The Palm Springs Pride Festival culminated with the long line of floats and walkers making the two-mile trek down Palm Canyon Drive. Onlookers dressed in multiple colors cheered on more than 200 groups and organizations as they waved rainbow flags.
Energy was high throughout the two-hour event and nearly every participant drew cheers from the thousands in attendance. Nonetheless, a few stood out more than others.
Here are some highlights:
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The tie-dye artist who made the flag
Forty years ago, Lynn Segerblom and two others created the flag that would eventually become the symbol for the LGBT community. On Sunday, she participated in the Palm Springs Pride parade for the first time.
"I'm ready. I'm super ready," Segerblom, 62, said as she prepared to head down Palm Canyon in a red convertible. "I think Palm Springs is charming and beautiful and this is a lot of people to turn out."
Along with James McNamara and Gilbert Baker, she created the flag in the summer of 1978 for San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade. They worked on it at the city's old Gay Community Center.
Segerblom has been fond of rainbows since she was a child and, as a tie-dye artist, was instrumental in creating the flag's colors.
She shared her story over the years, although she had to bite her tongue depending on who she was with since not everyone was accepting of the LGBT community. Still, it was only this year that her involvement in the flag's development began to spread significantly.
As she prepared to hit the parade route, Segerblom said she's "happy and joyful" that the flag she helped to create can be found across the country.
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A sheriff's department's first Palm Springs Pride parade
San Bernardino County Sheriff's Lt. Ken Lutz's colleagues have known for 25 years he was gay, but he never tried to organize participation in a Pride parade because he didn't want it to be self-serving.
Things changed when another colleague asked if it would be OK to participate in Los Angeles' parade while in full uniform.
"He said, 'I'm guessing I'm telling you that I'm gay, sir,'" said Lutz, 58.
The sheriff's department has never been involved in a Pride parade in its 162-year history, but that changed in June.
Nearly 25 department staff and personnel took part in the Los Angeles parade. About six months later, the department was represented in Palm Springs' parade.
Participation, Lutz said, is a step toward showing sheriff's department is building bridges between communities and hiring people from different backgrounds. He added the sheriff's department employs at least 30 openly gay people, which is significantly up years ago.
"For the longest time, I was the only openly gay male until a couple years ago," Lutz said.
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The youth movement arrived
This year's festival had a theme: Youth Power For Change.
It wouldn't have been the first time a younger crowd got involved in the parade and it was evident within the first few minutes that children were present.
But unlike previous years, schools didn't walk separately during the parade. At one point, a mass of students from nearly 20 Coachella Valley and High Desert schools took to Palm Canyon to show their support for the LGBT community.
Hundreds of students were involved and it took more than a minute to see the group from one end to the other.
"Now those are our snowflakes that turned into a huge blizzard," Cathedral City resident Justin Jensen, 50, quipped while watching from the sidewalk with his partner. "It really puts into perspective how much the younger crowd is supporting us. Last year you'd see a group here and there. This year, you see one huge mass of supporters."
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And since there's an election around the corner
Since only two days separate the Pride parade from the 2018 midterm election, it shouldn't be surprising that there was a hint of politics throughout the event.
Attendees occasionally could be heard shouting obscenities toward Republicans and one person even carried around a large frame containing a derogatory message toward President Donald Trump, offering attendees to hold the frame for photo ops.
But for the most part, people had a single message: Vote.
One float carried four balloons, each in the shape of the four letters spelling "Vote." Other participants carried signs that said nothing except that four-letter word.
On at least two occasions, people on those floats rallied attendees into changing "Vote, vote, vote."
In keeping with the event's theme, other signs had messages saying, "Youth is the power for change."
Crowd members didn't seem to mind that the festivities got a little political.
"It'd be hard to avoid with the election around the corner," said Palm Springs resident Matt Schmidt, 30. "But all anyone's doing is telling us to vote. Conservative or liberal, we should be doing that regardless. It's not a bad message."
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And let's not forget about man's best friend
Humans weren't the only ones participating in the parade.
Like years gone by, man's best friend has been among those showing support for the LGBT community. Only, this year, there seemed to be more dogs and a lot of them dressed for the occasion.
Whether in the parade or watching from the sidelines, there were dogs wearing rainbow-colored clothing and barking whenever the crowd cheered.
Dogs were big and small, but they all attracted onlookers.
"Wonder if we could have a dogs-only Pride parade," Schmidt said.