This year's Pride Day in Minneapolis took place on Sunday June 26th with the blessing of beautiful weather, sunny and quite breezy, but mostly vivid and colorful thanks to the people. The Pride Parade took place along Hennepin Avenue in downtown to end in celebration at Loring Park.
Minneapolis has always impressed me in the way it's so inclusive: LGBT communities of all type of backgrounds: a rainbow of rainbows.
The Minneapolis Pride Festival in Loring Park had a beautiful art installation by HOT TEA called Time Travel. It represents the struggle in time for many of us about realizing who we truly are in his own words: My latest installation is called "Time Travel". Today I took it down and it reminded me of a time in my childhood when I would always wear a speedo. I was like 4 or 5 years old and I wore it all the time. It was a yellow speedo with blue stripes. As I got older my true self went deeper and deeper into my sub conscious and by the time I was in high school I was a totally different person. As the years have gone by I have been feeling closer and closer to the person I once was and this weekend really helped. Growing up - I was told a lot of negative things about myself which led me to bury myself and become someone I'm not. Hearing all of your positive feedback about my latest install "Time Travel" helps me get even closer to being who I really am/was.
I grew up in Mexico as a secret-keeper for gay friends who couldn't come out to their parents, less to society. Knowing their anxiety and struggle broke my soul. In college I took a boy that I knew was struggling with accepting himself to his first gay bar. I had never seen someone's eyes spark in such a way as if they've found home, identified with tons of others... He wasn't alone, there was a whole community. I'm happy to report he's now happily married to a super handsome gentleman and seems like they're living happily ever-after-like in Europe.
It was because of a gay bar that a spark of acceptance initiated in him, these places are shelters for all those people who at some point in their lives they'd be alone forever. They're places of happiness and acceptance and I'm glad we're stretching that outside. This year's Pride Day in particular was special, it was a day to honor the victims of the Orlando Massacre and to remember that love trumps hate.
Sexual orientation, gender identity & expression are themes of diversity we've just started to understand as a society through the lens of love. It's about time! 🌈🤓🌈