This year, I’ve been hearing something different.
I’ve heard people say, “Pride feels canceled.” I’ve heard people say that without a big headliner at Stage AE, something is missing. I’ve heard people say we should strip it all back and return to a simple picnic in the park.
And I get it. I really do.
It’s easy to measure Pride by its biggest, most visible moments. The stages, the lights, the artists, the energy of thousands of people packed together, singing and dancing in a space that feels entirely ours. Those moments are powerful. They matter. They’re part of what makes Pride feel like Pride.
But Pride has never been just a concert.
At the same time, it’s just as easy to imagine a version of Pride that’s simpler. More grassroots. Less complicated. A return to something that feels more intimate, more community-driven, more “authentic.”
But here’s the truth we don’t always say out loud. There has never been a version of Pride that didn’t require work or coordination or, most of all, resources.
Even a picnic in the park needs permits. It needs security. It needs infrastructure. It needs people, often volunteers, giving their time, their energy, and their care to make sure the rest of us have a space to gather safely. What looks simple on the surface is almost always the result of invisible labor underneath.
Pride is not a product. It’s not something we can measure solely by what we get from it, like the size of a stage or the name on a lineup. But it’s also not effortless. It doesn’t just happen because we want it to.
It lives somewhere in between.
Pride is something we build. Together. Imperfectly. Year after year. It’s shaped by who shows up, who contributes, who supports it, and by the resources we’re able to bring into it.
So when we reduce Pride to a headliner, we miss its heart. And when we imagine it as something that can exist without investment, we miss its reality.
The truth is, Pride might look a little different this year. And that can feel uncomfortable. But different doesn’t mean diminished. It definitely doesn’t mean canceled.
It might just mean we’re being asked to engage with it differently.
To look beyond the biggest stage. To show up for local artists, performers, and organizers. To support the spaces and people doing the work, often without the spotlight. To remember that Pride doesn’t only live in one venue, on one night, or in one moment.
It lives in our bars and our streets. In our parks and along our rivers. In every space we carve out for each other, again and again.
Pride has always been a balance of joy and effort, celebration and commitment, visibility and vulnerability. That hasn’t changed. What can change is how we show up for it.
Pride isn’t “canceled,” but it is calling on us to participate, to support, to look around and see not just what’s different, but what’s still here and what’s still possible.
Pride has never belonged to a stage or a sponsor. It belongs to us. And it always will.
With pride,
Jim Sheppard
Co-Creator
QBurgh