For the second year in a row, San Diego Pride will be a mostly virtual event after organizers acknowledged Tuesday that the ongoing COVID-19 crisis does not give it a clear “path to safely produce Pride events at the same immense scale we did prior to the pandemic.”
The annual Pride weekend — normally held in July and highlighted by the parade and festival — is the region’s largest civic event, attracting more than 350,000 annually with an economic impact of $26.6 million.
Last April, a month after the pandemic began, San Diego Pride announced it would cancel the summer tradition due to a statewide prohibition on large gatherings to curb the spread of COVID-19. It changed course a month later when it announced it would instead mount an eight-day virtual Pride celebration that would culminate with a virtual parade.
This year, the streamed Pride parade — dubbed Pride Live — will be held July 17 in conjunction with “smaller, COVID-19 compliant and scalable in-person satellite events across San Diego County,” according to a statement from San Diego Pride, which said specifics surrounding in-person events will be announced in early June.
Read the full story on LATimes.com.
