Motor City Pride, Now and Then

Back when I was still doing this somewhat regularly, Motor City Pride moved from Ferndale to Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit. It was somewhat controversial, as Ferndale has been a hub of gay community in Metro Detroit for a long time. There was resentment. There was discord. There was a hissy-fit.

I spearheaded an initiative among the small businesses of the greater downtown area to show that Detroit was a welcoming community. Honestly, I did it because someone shared with me that the businesses in Ferndale - the ones that had Pride at their doors because it was a street fair - didn't donate to Pride, and I figured Detroit small businesses could at least throw down the welcome mat. We raised like seven grand. Pride that year was the best gay Detroit thing ever.

It was a little rough going at first. I joked that the parade was the Saddest Gay Pride in America, with like fifteen groups marching and four spectators along the way. Don't get me wrong, it was fun. I like it when it is janky - I am a real Detroit 1.0 gal at heart.

In 2013 (year three) there were so few spectators
they were power washing the sidewalks during the parade.

But we made it work anyway.
(Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Cindy Elmwood.)

Fast forward six years. Detroit is now the hottest thing going. I don't know if it's the fact that we have a white mayor or the fact that Shinola has legitimized the city to the Somerset shopper, but the suburbs suddenly cannot get enough Detroit. If you have a problem with that statement all I can say is I talk to suburbanites who haven't come to the city since they finished grad school at Wayne State all week long at work, and I'm just paraphrasing everything they say to me. Whatever it is, the change in the last five years is kind of astounding.

So now the parade is jam-packed full of participants, Griswold Street lined with folks watching the parade. Corporate sponsors up the wazoo (although not a lot of participation from the handful of gay bars remaining in SE MI. Chipotle is in though).

Pre-parade prep. The excitement is palpable. 

Lines to get into Pride at Hart Plaza are long on both Saturday and Sunday. It's kind of amazing, the growth.

I have no snark to add, actually. It's great that finally the whole Pride in Hart Plaza thing has hit its stride.

Every year since year one I have marched with the Robert M. Nelson Presents group, and every year it's one of the highlights of summer. Some people ask, "Who is Robert M. Nelson?" and I feel bad for them. Not everything is instantly discoverable with the Internet. But the people who know, know. (I'll explain some other time).

He's only a Craigslist "Missed Connection" away!

See?

My partner and I have been throwing a gay pride Saturday party since the second year, caftans optional. Sunday we march in the parade. In the beginning we did if for our own entertainment, and today, entertaining thousands, it's no less fun. It's kind of crazy that we can still have a spot in the parade just for the sake of having a spot in the parade. And when it's all over we go into Pride and check it all out. (And the last few years, wind down watching the Tony Awards).

Against all odds, Pride weekend has become the best weekend of the summer. Kudos for that, Motor City Pride. And more importantly, kudos queers of Detroit.

A Video is Worth a Million Words

As Motor City Pride approached this year, I got a call from Toby Barlow - friend, former neighbor, and chief creative officer at Team Detroit.  He'd been watching what was going on with Pride moving downtown this year, the Pride Project and the way that the gay (and straight!) community in Detroit was so energized by all of this.  He said (I paraphrase), 'Hey, I want to do something to help show this off, what do you think of a short documentary about gay life in Detroit?"  Naturally I said that would be awesome.

Now just two months later, the video is done and really exceeds any and all hopes I'd had for it.  It's not a comprehensive look at GLBT life in Detroit, it's not a gay history piece - it is just a snapshot of some of the things that make gay life in Detroit so different and wonderful.

I always say, being gay and living in Detroit isn't for everyone.  But if you watch this video and something resonates, then maybe it is for you.  Enjoy!

MotorCity Pride from 4exit4 on Vimeo.

The Sweetest Hangover

I'm a bit late in reporting back, but Motor City Pride in Hart Plaza was amazing.  And if you've ever been to ANY Pride before, you know walking away saying it was anything better than "fine" is unusual.  But it really was.  I was so ... proud.

Organizers estimate 44,000 people attended over the two days, which is incredible.  Between the Lines did a nice writeup of the event, so instead of re-hashing it all, I'll link to it here.  Let's just sum up and say it was incredibly diverse, Oakland County did not stay away, and everyone seemed to have a really great time.

The rainbow stripes on the Ren Cen were one of my favorite things!

Other local media did the obligatory puff piece with photo gallery of all the festival gayness (yours truly not excepted), which I thought was pretty lame given the fact this marked a gigantic jump in visibility in an area with essentially none.  I mean FOR REAL - it was big news that Movement/Electronic Music Festival had 99,000 over three days, but 44,000 local GLBT people gets the boilerplate article?  I guess the story was only interesting when Ferndale Pride and Motor City Pride were at odds with each other.

About that ... apparently by the time June rolled around, most animosity about Pride's move seemed to have dissipated, and from what I heard the Ferndale events were nicely attended and everyone was happy.  I fully intended on checking it out but the addition of a Pride parade on Sunday morning meant any free time was filled planning for that.  Maybe next year I'll plan better.

In Detroit, everyone is a star! Especially Robert M. Nelson!

Everything else went great too.  The Pride Project came together beautifully and I got great feedback from both the Detroit indy businesses that supported Pride as well as the folks at Motor City Pride and Equality Michigan about it.  I even had some other businesses approach me to be included next year!  Please be sure to check out that website again and thank (and patronize!) anyone who participated!

A few very nice posters of the Pride Project placed around
Hart Plaza attracted no end of attention.

Finally, the Friday night Pre-Pride Doggy Style was out of control.  Who knew a downtown gay night on a Friday could attract so many people?  Someone open a downtown neighborhood gay bar NOW.

People who need Doggy Style are the luckiest people in the world.

After all the Pride Projecting and Doggy Styling and Fierce Hot Messing and Hart Plaza-ing and Parading and everything, I was the closest to exhaustion I've been in my adult life.  If I had a normal job I'd have had to call in "Proud" on Monday, I was that worn out.  To me, that's a great Pride.

The most incredible thing about this Pride was that for the first time since I moved to Detroit, I actually really felt like being gay here was totally normal.  I mean as completely normal as it would be in Chicago or Washington, DC or Boston or anywhere else I've lived.  Everywhere you went there were gay people or rainbow flags or just people asking how Pride was going.

In my email to business owners for the Pride Project I said that Motor City Pride moving downtown had the potential to change perceptions about Detroit in a way that hasn't happened since the Superbowl was here in 2006.  In the way Pride exceeded every expectation, I really believe that was the case.  What I didn't expect was that it was going to change the way *I* thought about Detroit.

The whole weekend left me feeling a little feisty, like maybe it's OK to say that something can just be GAY for its own sake without people getting defensive or worrying that people will feel left out.  (It's Detroit, for God's sake. The Island of Misfit Toys.  Everybody belongs.)  By foregoing a gay identity in the name of not offending anyone, we actually diminish our ability to create our own community, raise our own visibility and maximize the positive impact we could be having on Detroit.

This post is long enough without hashing out all that in 2000 words or less, so let's just say Pride left me thinking "what if ..." a lot for a long time afterward.  And it's been a while since I really looked at Detroit that way.  I'm sure I'll elaborate soon enough.

SO! It's been a recuperative and reflective couple of weeks, and that's why it's taken so long for even a little reporting back.  But now that I can finally deal with this stuff again ...

Double Rainbow: Oh My God!

This Tuesday night is a big gay double feature, starting with the Model D Speaker series "Gay Detroit"!  Join an expert panel of judges as we discuss the state of gay culture & community in Detroit.  I'll be sitting on the panel in my first official public appearance.  It's a real Detroit gay meet-and-greet!

The event is followed by a Town Hall discussion presented by Unity Michigan.  The Model D panel will be a little more community-oriented (and certainly City-oriented), and we'll let the folks with Unity Michigan handle the heavy stuff.

To make it extra special, there's a post-panel Doggy Style!  Yes, you can't get enough!  It all happens at the Park Bar, starting upstairs at 5:30 and ending sometime after midnight in the gutter.  Please join us, and help keep the Pride momentum going!

Model D Speaker Series: Gay Detroit
Charles Pugh of Detroit City Council, Roland Leggett of Equality Michigan, Kirsten Ussery of the Downtown Detroit Partnership and Villages CDC, and me.
Tuesday, June 21, 5:30 - 6:30pm
The Park Bar, 2040 Park Ave. (upstairs)
Pre-registration is encouraged.

Unity Michigan Town Hall: Equality Action
Denise Brogan-Kator from Equality Michigan, Shellie Wiesberg from the ACLU, Curtis Lipscomb from KICK, and Laura Hughes from Ruth Ellis Center.
 7:00 - 8:30pm

Hot DP (Double Panel) Doggy Style Action!
9pm - ?

The Hart of Pride

Downtown Roundup for Pride

Motor City Pride weekend is here!  I was talking to a bunch of friends last night and everyone is so excited - it's like we live in a different city.  Last year I was in San Francisco for their Pride, and while I readily admit the level of planning and number of festivities was much greater there, the anticipation for the event in Detroit this year seems about on par with that.  And if that's not progress I don't know what is.

The Pride Project was an overwhelming success.  Forty-five independent businesses from Corktown, Midtown, Woodbridge, Eastern Market, New Center and the Central Business District participated, and together as the Greater Downtown Independent Merchants we raised over $7000 for Motor City Pride. The group is a sponsor at the Gold Level, the highest sponsorship level this year!

Please visit our extra special website to see all the great downtown businesses that chipped in.  Visit them this weekend while you are out and about, and throughout the year!  They are our friends and a fantastically supportive community, and I can't send them enough love.

OK, so onto the festivities!  There is a lot going on at Hart Plaza, most notably a bunch of us city-dwellers will be hanging out at our booth in Sponsor's Row, just as you enter the festival.  Stop by and say hello!

But there's also a lot going around downtown of special interest for Pride attendees as well. Here is a rundown of things you'll want to take advantage of this weekend.

FRIDAY
Visit my little contribution to downtown's alternative gay scene tonight!  The very special Motor City Pride edition of Doggy Style takes place at the Park Bar from 9-2, with a painstakingly curated mix of highly entertaining music videos.  All the cool kids will be there!

SATURDAY
If you head downtown for the Saturday component of Pride, it's a quick two blocks to the Grand Trunk Pub.  They are always a good spot to visit and as a special extra for Pride, DJ GM (or as you may know him better, Greg Mudge, proprietor of Mudgie's Deli in Corktown) will be spinning all afternoon and evening.  They have a great patio, great eats and if you are a beer lover, they have fifteen craft beers on tap.  Which are also great!

Of special interest, Saturday is the date for the annual Historic Indian Village Home and Garden Tour, which is always lovely and you can hit before Pride starts Saturday afternoon.  Tickets are $20 there is more info at their website.  See Sunday's activities for more info on tours of the Villages!

Saturday night, another mainstay on the downtown scene, Fierce Hot Mess, is having its third anniversary party AND Official Pride Afterparty at Oslo!  "Messy dance floor decadence, fierce music and hot people, converging in one place to create a distinct Detroit experience that is sure to be remembered."   Our favorite dj's, Mike Trombley and Chuck Hampton (aka Gay Marvine) always play the most amazing music!

If you are looking to mix things up on Saturday night, you can also check out the Cupcake Collective at the Old Miami, where they present All OUT Detroit: A Very Special Cruise.  They will be playing electro, disco, house, hip-hop and soul all night, and part of the proceeds go to benefit the Ruth Ellis Center.

SUNDAY
Sunday morning is the all-new Pride parade!  It starts at Griswold north of Lafayette (think Lafayette Coney Island area) and goes down to Hart Plaza.  Who knows what it will be like?  Probably awesomely home-grown.  I'll be walking with the "Robert M. Nelson presents a Salute to Robert M. Nelson, with Robert M. Nelson and the Detroit friends of Robert M. Nelson" float.  Who is Robert M. Nelson?  Find out at 11am on Sunday!

When you are at the Pride festival, make sure you check out the DJ set by Macho City's Mike Trombley at 5 on Sunday!

Wind down after Pride at Cafe D'Mongo's!  Larry is opening especially for us "in honor of your parade" and I expect a lively afterparty at everyone's fave watering hole will be the perfect way to end a fun weekend.  Come by for drinks and Robert M. Nelson will show you how he puts the "easy" in "speakeasy."

SPECIALS
Some of the sponsors in the Pride Program are making special offers just for Motor City Pride attendees.

Wheelhouse Detroit is located right on the riverfront, and you can rent a bike and do a little exploring.  It's so fun to bike around downtown and Sunday in particular is supposed to be GORGEOUS.  If you show your Pride sticker (you know, the one they give you when you enter Motor City Pride) you can get 20% off rentals, so two hours is only $10 and a full day is only $25!  Those Wheelhouse girls are the best.

Avalon is giving a 10% discount off your purchase for the weekend if you tell the retail staff a piece of local or national GLBT trivia.  Which will be really easy to do if you read Tim Retzloff's great op-ed in this week's excellent issue of Between the Lines.  Buy cookies and bring them to us at Hart Plaza!

Inside Detroit, the downtown's unofficial chamber of commerce and home of the Detroit Segway tour, has a great retail shop inside the Welcome Center in Merchant's Row.  They sell tons of unique Detroit apparel and locally-made items, and they are offering 15% off in honor of Pride weekend!

ALSO
While you are at Pride, be sure to stop by the booth for The Villages of Detroit because they are offering three FREE one-hour bus tours that leave from Hart Plaza.  It won't be as in-depth as the Indian Village Home & Garden Tour on Saturday, but it will give you a great overview of all the Villages, and there will be one stop to visit a gay-owned home on the tour!

Also in the home tour category (but separate from Pride), Corktown is presenting their Historical Home & Garden Tour on Sunday from 12-5. It's not specifically for Pride but who doesn't love a home tour?

Finally, when you are at Pride, stop by the booth for the Spirit of Hope Church, where our friend Pastor Matt is running a GLBT trivia contest.  Answer questions on gay politics, music, society and religion and get a chance to win a gift card from a Detroit Pride Project business!

That's all I've got for now.  See you at Motor City Pride!

Doggy Style Pride

Motor City Pride is right around the corner! It's hard to believe it's almost here - almost as hard to believe as the fact I'm actually excited about it.  Of course it is kind of a big deal: Pride moving downtown, expanding to two days, and upgrading in just about every way.  It's like the most idealistic dreams of a very annoyed me four years ago come true.

Being as excited as I have been, I've naturally overextended myself on a bunch of planning and coordinating my various gay spring projects, but I wanted take the time to make sure everyone knows we are having a very special Doggy Style at the Park Bar, just to kick off Motor City Pride!

This Friday night stop by the Park Bar anytime from 9pm to 2am and get Doggy Stylin'!  It'll be an extra special night of old favorites and new surprises and the perfect way to get into a gay downtown mood.  And remember, Doggy Style is Detroit's best "gay-er" night so your straight friends can come too!  As long as they can handle a little Xanadu.

See you Friday!  And spread the word on Facebook!

[OH! I almost forgot, if you are interested in volunteering at Pride, they could still use some help!  It's an awesome way to pitch in, meet some new people and get some good karma.  You can squeeze in a couple hours of helping and still have lots of Pride fun.  I recommend you sign up to be a check-in person, so you can check out everyone as they come through the gates!]

The Pride Project

For me, one of the most frustrating things to come out of the discussion about Motor City Pride moving to Hart Plaza from Ferndale was this leitmotif that Detroit is not as gay-friendly as Ferndale.  It's been mentioned in comments on Facebook (although the Motor City Pride page is pretty aggressive about removing excessively negative comments, a policy I have mixed feelings about) and covered in Between the Lines (be sure to read the comments).

Now I get where this perception comes from.  There have been widespread reports of homophobia in the African-American community in the past, and we've had several civic and community leaders make homophobic remarks over the years.  But let's compare apples to apples.

Ferndale is a community of 19,000 people covering 3.9 square miles.  Detroit is a city of 713,000 people covering 149 square miles.  But the greater downtown area, the area including the Central Business District, Corktown, the Midtown neighborhoods, Lafayette Park & adjacent areas, and Eastern Market, is roughly 16 square miles and approximately 40,000 residents. Essentially that's been my world (with the addition of the Villages and SW Detroit) and it's a better comp than the city as a whole.  And I've never lived anyplace more gay-friendly.

A little over three weeks ago this was rattling around in my brain, trying to figure out how to send the message that Detroit is actually an AWESOME place to live and be gay.  And maybe Motor City Pride moving downtown was an opportunity to show that.

The independent business community downtown is pretty tightly-knit, so I asked a couple friends if they were interested in doing a small sponsorship of Pride that we could bundle together.  And if they thought other business owners would be receptive to the idea.  It turns out they weren't just receptive, they were enthusiastic.

I could never in a million years have anticipated the positive response I received from every friend I approached.  And they approached friends too.  And in the three weeks since we started spreading the word, we've raised over $6500 from a whole slew of downtown independent merchants who are proud to be sponsors of Pride.

See the fact of the matter is, Detroit is the most welcoming city I've ever lived in - and I've been around.  Jim Geary, owner of the Woodbridge Pub, said it even better:

I think this is great for the city and a good public example of the diversity and tolerance that Detroit should be famous for. It is my experience, in the ten years I have lived here, that Detroiters are more tolerant in general, whether it be religion, race, sexual orientation or financial status, than anywhere else I have lived.

So anytime you hear someone say Detroit isn't welcoming to gays, why don't you straighten them out and mention the following list of businesses - the bars, restaurants and retailers who make Detroit as cool as it is - who put their money where their mouth is and jumped at the chance to welcome the regional gay community to Detroit.

I'll share more info about this when this little Downtown Pride Project is done.  I'm still approaching folks - these are just the people my friends and I knew personally who'd committed by last night.  If you don't see your favorite downtown spot on here, why not ask them about it? Hit me up at the email to the left, I'd love them to help roll out the gay welcome mat!

Downtown Pride

You may have heard: Motor City Pride is moving this year, from its long-time location in downtown Ferndale to Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit.  It’s a huge upgrade and it means a big increase in visibility for the GLBT community, room for significant growth of the festival and a fantastic venue for the variety of events and activities Pride entails.

Naturally, people are worked up.

Many in the Ferndale-centered gay community have expressed emotions ranging from disappointment to anger over the move.  Reasons cited as to why the move is a bad idea include the fact that Ferndale is very gay-friendly, the event is a tradition there, and the businesses in Ferndale will lose money.   Overheard cocktail party chatter reveals more: that Detroit is not welcoming to the gay community, and that parking, or crime worries, or inconvenience are reasons why they won’t attend.  There is even a separate Ferndale Pride planned.

From all the bellyaching, you’d think these people actually spent time at Motor City Pride!

Anyone who’s been to Pride knows that it is a big street fair, with a crowd that is diverse no matter how you slice it: all races, genders, ages, and economic dispositions are represented.  It does have a smalltown feel, and it doesn’t compare to Pride in other major cities.  And if you look for the Woodward-corridor gay contingent they are either not there, or they are holed up inside Q (or Zoo Bar or whatever it’s called now) or Soho.  I wrote about this after attending Pride two years ago, and I’d argue that commentary is worth a read again today.

So it is really kind of surprising to me that the people with the most gripes about the scale of Pride in the past – the people who routinely head to Chicago or Toronto for bigger Pride celebrations – are the same people who are complaining that Motor City Pride is moving into a bigger, more visible and (frankly) better-suited venue.

Look, I get the disappointment when a big event moves.  But the lack of vision from the community in this regard is really kind of unbelievable, particularly when it comes to the formation of Ferndale Pride, a series of events designed to “complement” the events downtown. Craig Covey, the openly-gay Oakland County Commissioner, former Ferndale Mayor and a perfectly nice fellow is the co-chair of this event, is doing a great job of sticking to the script that everyone should support Motor City Pride downtown too, but the Ferndale thing has kind of turned into a rallying point for folks who resent the move.

It’s hard to be critical of Covey, who has done more for the benefit of the SE Michigan gay community than most of you combined, but all I can say is if I wanted to be super passive-aggressive I would plan a bunch of events the same weekend as Pride but make a point of not technically overlapping any of Pride’s official hours.  It’s really suggesting a classic Oakland County approach … venture into big bad Detroit for the event only, and then scurry back to the safety and security of the OC!

Covey has said in various outlets that lots of other cities have multiple Pride celebrations, and that’s true.  But I can’t help but think how fun it would have been if we had a Motor City Pride with the support and attention of the whole community, and then later in the summer there was Ferndale Pride in the spirit of Market Days in Chicago, the country’s largest gay street fair.  Instead we now have White Pride as an alternative to regular Pride. I say that in jest! Kinda.

The OC crowd wasn’t the only one upset about Motor City Pride on the move.  The Black Pride Society, the group that throws the annual Hotter Than July festival, is also displeased.  Their stated concerns are that the Pride planning committee didn’t build a community consensus for the move (and while MCP organizers have been exploring a move to Hart Plaza for years, this is technically true).  OK, valid point, but the word on the street is that it has more to do with MCP’s stated objective of creating a more inclusive event and the concern that it could potentially eclipse HTJ.  And the fact that MCP is now actually in Detroit, which I suppose you can’t blame the Black Pride Society for feeling a little ownership over.

Now honestly, if I were them I’d feel kind of good.  Motor City Pride is now twice as far away as it used to be from Palmer Park, where Hotter Than July is held!  And while Pride may now be in a more appealing location to the black gay community, it’s not like Pride in Ferndale was anything close to a white-only event.  Hotter Than July serves a different need than Motor City Pride, and I think the City of Detroit just lucked out because now it gets to host two GLBT Pride events.

Imagine when the dancefloor isn't squished to one side of the street!

Well, we clearly have a lot of Pride in the Detroit area!  

Obviously I’m thrilled about the move. I’m not the only one who has commented over the years that it seems, well, odd that Detroit's Pride takes place in a suburb.  Without dismissing the significance of Ferndale as a community that has been embraced by gays who have likewise been embraced in return, I think it has been one of those things that perpetuates the notion that Detroit as a whole does not have a "real” gay community.

The move also reinforces - for me, anyway - the fact that the Detroit area GLBT community still occasionally takes its role as community developers seriously.  Ferndale was a pretty bleak place before the gays and the cool kids moved in, and now it's quite a nicely-actualized community.  Really a beacon of forward-thinking in Oakland County. Pride moving downtown kind of shows that the general gay community views Detroit as a place with promise too.  And a successful Pride could go a long way toward changing perceptions of the city for the gays and lesbians who spend most of their lives outside of it.

I think this Pride will really blow everyone away, and given the fact we live in a state where rights for the GLBT community have actually REGRESSED over the past ten years, increased visibility and a successful Pride are more important than ever.  So go and have fun.  And you know what?  Check out Ferndale Pride too.  I might view their handling of things as a mis-step, but everyone wins when everyone wins.