The road to Tampa Pride 2024 has not been all rainbows

This year marks the Tampa Pride Diversity Parade’s 10th anniversary in Ybor City, but it’s been a rocky road to get here. Growing from a 20-person picnic on a grassy University of South Florida lawn in ‘82 to today’s pride parade in Ybor City drawing tens of thousands of people, the joy of Pride in Tampa has not been without its struggles.

In 1982 the first event that remotely resembled what we recognize as pride today took the form of a picnic and a softball game on the University of South Florida campus, ending with an evening sock-hop. There were only about 20 people there and one attendee recalls there being more spectators than celebrants.

Over the years Tampa Pride grew and parades throughout the ‘90s gained more popularity and support each year. Perhaps inevitably, though, Tampa Pride outgrew its local community.
The 2002 Pride event was set to be held at Raymond James Stadium with Pat Benetar as the headliner and tickets going on sale for $80 a pop. Ticket prices were already high so there wasn’t even a parade as part of the event. The LGBT community recognized that this was somewhat removed from the queer community itself and felt that it sullied pride and its original reason for being. Sure enough the event was a huge failure and left organizers in debt.

In the wake of corporate pride’s flop, Tampa Pride went on a brief hiatus. During this pause, however, in 2005 former Hillsborough County Commissioner Rhonda Storms put to vote that the Commission "adopt a policy that Hillsborough County government abstain from acknowledging, promoting or participating in gay pride recognition and events, little g, little p.” It passed. All sanctioned pride events in the county were banned. Storms then also added an amendment that would require a supermajority to repeal the ban.

Storms crusade was a huge blow to Tampa’s queer community and a reminder why pride events ever began at all. Especially when just across the Bay, St Pete Pride was the largest pride event in the state. Nonetheless there was hope. In 2005 the mayor of Key West invited Tampa Pride organizers to have “Pride in Exile.” Organizers loaded buses up and shipped out down south. Monroe County hosted Tampa Pride late that summer right on Duval Street.

Then in 2006 the Tampa Museum of Art worked alongside Tampa’s queer community to organize the first Pride & Passion event. The museum was one of the only organizations in the Tampa Bay area that was not an exclusively dedicated LGBT entity to hold a pride or pride-adjacent event.

At the time of the first ever Pride & Passion gala the museum also hosted exhibitions which reflected themes of diversity and the queer community’s contributions to the art world. Keith Haring was one featured artist. The gala raised funds for the museum’s diversity, equity and inclusion programming and continues to be the museum’s most popular fundraiser year after year.
During the pride ban the community had some allies but it still took years for Tampa’s gay community to get back what it had lost. It wasn’t until 2013 that the Board of Hillsborough County Commissioners voted unanimously to repeal the pride ban, in large credit to the help of Kevin Beckner, Hillsborough’s first openly gay commissioner. Tampa Pride made its victorious return in 2015 by holding the first officially sanctioned pride in 13 years.

Tampa chose the month of March for its pride event, in part to set it apart from neighboring St Petersburg's massive June celebrations where attendance can be in the hundreds of thousands, but also because of the spring month’s more Florida-friendly weather. It has also become the unofficial pride event for spring breakers.
The community had a lot to celebrate that year with the federal legalization of same-sex marriage and Pride’s return to Tampa marked the closing of a dark chapter in the city’s history.

Organizers raised $128,000 to fund Tampa Pride through corporate sponsorships, donations and entry fees. A commitment from the City of Tampa provided police, paramedics and cleanup crews. Then Tampa Police Chief and current Mayor Jane Castor was the first openly gay person to hold either of those positions in Tampa and was chosen to lead the 2015 100-unit parade as Grand Marshall alongside local activist and Hamburger Mary’s owner Kurt King.

Tampa remembered their brothers and sisters in Key West who supported them during the pride ban by featuring a 100-foot section of the 1.25-mile Sea-to-Sea Key West rainbow pride flag, which extended from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean in Key West.

After the parade ended, the party went on in festival form on the streets of Ybor City with over 100 LGBT-owned and LGBT-friendly businesses. The event drew around 20,000 people to Ybor City that year and has continued to grow over time.

LGBT revelers still have had to face bigoted protesters at Tampa Pride events over the years. In 2016 police had to separate Tampa Pride participants and homophobic picketers when a screaming match broke out in the street. In 2017 Tampa Pride highlighted a tribute for victims of the Pulse NightClub shooting that happened the previous year. Tampa Pride hosted survivors, first responders and bar staff from Orlando. Nonetheless, the queer community’s strength in numbers and in spirit have kept Tampa Pride safe.

In 2021 Tampa was one of the first cities to celebrate pride since the Covid-19 pandemic first struck the states. The event was a celebration of community after an extended period of isolation, as well as a space to reflect upon activism in the midst of the sunshine state’s ongoing battle against queer liberation.

Just this year, the Hillsborough County Commission passed on issuing an in-chamber commendation for Tampa Pride.

The city’s rocky history with Pride should serve as a reminder that the first pride was a riot–that pride has always been political. Though there are still strides to be made towards tolerance, particularly in the sunshine state’s legislature, it comes as a relief that the community and its allies no longer march brick in hand, but hand in hand.

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