Return of annual Charlotte Pride provides ‘sense of community’ after pandemic hiatus
Thousandstook over uptown streets Sunday, dressed from head-to-toe in rainbow-colored clothing and accessories to celebrate the Charlotte Pride Festival and Parade.
After a COVID-19 hiatus, the two-day event returned to uptown for the first time since 2019.
Throughout the weekend, attendees had the chance to watch drag show performances and LGBTQ short films, listen to local musicians and bands, and peruse hundreds of vendor booths.
Organizers also hosted a health fair this year and 2,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine were administered.
On Sunday, more than 40 floats traveled down Tryon Street for Charlotte’s largest annual parade. Thousands lined the sidewalks to wave and cheer. Several children wearing rainbow tutus sat on their parents’ shoulders. Nearly everyone on the floats and sidewalks waved rainbow flags, big and small, through the sky.
And Mike and Jim Goforth-Strickland were two festival-goers whose outfits got people’s attention.
The couple, who held hands as they walked down Tryon Street, wore plaid kilts with their rainbow accessories.
“Gentlemen, I like your kilts,” a man told them.
They smiled and nodded.
“He’s from Welsh descent and I’m Scottish-Irish,” Jim Goforth-Strickland said. “He was wanting to wear his kilt and I said, ‘Well if you’re wearing yours, I’ll wear mine.’”
The two men were York County’s first same-sex couple to legally marry in 2014. They’ve been going to Pride festivals since the 1990s, Jim Goforth-Strickland said.
“It’s so good to see everyone in a happy mood, smiling and speaking to each other,” Jim Goforth-Strickland said. “These are our people. It’s like one big family reunion.”
Matt Comer, Charlotte Pride communications director, said organizers estimated that 275,000 people attended the weekend’s festivities.
“We were so happy to be able to bring the community back together again,” Comer said. “It was an incredibly powerful weekend and an incredibly emotional one for many people, including those who looked forward to attending their first Pride event before the pandemic began but had to wait two years to do it.”
Several couples traveled from outside of Charlotte to experience the festival, including Meganne McElhinney and Tracy Wernicke.
McElhinney and Wernicke came from Charleston to attend the festival for the first time.
The couple, who’ve been together for more than a decade, was in Charlotte for a concert in July and as soon as they heard about the festival, they decided to come, McElhinney said. They wore shirts that said “I’m with her” and had rainbow hands pointing to each other.
“It‘s been great,” McElhinney said. “Yesterday we actually wore shirts that said, ‘Free Mom Hugs,’ so we got a lot of hugs from people.”
Free Mom Hugs is a national nonprofit that works to elevate the LGBTQIA+ community.
The weekend was also Kim Goebel’s first time participating in Charlotte Pride events. Goebel drove eight hours from Maryland and while she’s been to other Pride festivals before, she said Charlotte’s was by far the biggest.
“I like the sense of community here,” Goebel said. “This is my first time in Charlotte and it just feels like a really warm, inviting environment. You don’t feel like you’re intruding.”
Goebel’s friend, Karson Autry, agreed.
“When you stand on the sidewalk, you’ll watch people see someone they know who they don’t expect to see here, and they’ll scream their names, run and just launch themselves into them,” she said. “I love seeing that because even if you’re like, ‘My friend is also queer or a really good ally,’ maybe you just don’t talk about that, but then you spot them in a place like this and you’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ It happens all weekend.”
Kody Timmers, who sat with Goebel and Autry, agreed that people-watching is one of the best parts of the weekend.
“It’s fun to see the outfits, the costumes, the funny T-shirts,” Timmers said. “You just know that everyone is living their best lives.”
This story was originally published August 21, 2022 at 5:27 PM.
