On June 29, New York City’s official Pride march starts around 11 a.m. under the defiantly political theme “Rise Up: Pride in Protest.” Karine Jean-Pierre, the former press secretary in the Biden-Harris administration, is one of the grand marshals. PrideFest, the annual street fair featuring food and activities for all ages, also returns.
Pre-party the day before at the South Street Seaport Museum with Youth Pride and at the NYC Dyke March — a “protest march, not a parade,” according to the organizers — that steps off from Bryant Park at 5 p.m.
Other Pride Month parades and festivals include: Staten Island (May 31); Asbury Park, N.J. (June 1); Queens (June 1); Westchester County, N.Y. (June 1); Long Island (June 8); Woodstock, N.Y. (June 8); Brooklyn (June 14); Hudson, N.Y. (June 21); the Bronx (June 21); and Harlem (June 28).
With so many dance-till-you-drop parties taking place over Pride weekend, now might be a good idea to take a Monday off. Two of the more popular ones are the Brut Party in Times Square (June 27), for the leather-and-harness set, and the 25th annual Alegria (June 29), which begins at 4:30 p.m. at Avant Gardner in Brooklyn and ends 24 hours later with Sunrise, a chill rooftop comedown.
Your Pride Shows
The Brick Theater, a multidisciplinary performing arts space in Brooklyn, is hosting several queer-themed shows through June. Among them are T4T Fest (June 3-8), a series of plays “by trans artists, for trans audiences,” and the ninth annual Queer Butoh Festival (June 25-28), featuring performers from Britain, Mexico and other countries.
Broadway Bares, the long-running strip-and-sing benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, is back with two performances at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Midtown (June 22). The theme is the Wizard of Oz-inspired “Come Out, Come Out”; the “Stripper Spectacular” package includes an invitation to a private cocktail party hosted by the Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell.
Drag That Slays
Two recent “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winners will sashay into New York City. Onya Nurve, who took the crown in the most recent season, is at 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn (June 19). Nymphia Wind, the winner of Season 16, makes her New York City debut at Town Hall (June 26) in Manhattan, with a new one-woman show, “Bananas?”
Other drag events include the weekend-long “Drag Me to the Catskills” (June 13-15), featuring a drag brunch and an on-the-road edition of the drag festival Wigstock, hosted by Lady Bunny; and “Drag History Hour” (June 20), a “queer journey inside the undertold history of the Harlem Renaissance,” hosted by the drag queen Bertha Vanayshun at Under St. Marks in the East Village, part of the Queerly Festival.
Sounds of Pride
For its Queer Ancestry series, the Brooklyn collective Chamber Queer heads to Judson Memorial Church for “BaroQueer: Historically Informed” (June 5), a free program with Carnegie Hall Citywide and the Handel and Haydn Society that features music by Caroline Shaw and other composers. The group will also host performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (June 7) and the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (June 9).
Machine Dazzle, the designer of outre-fabulous costumes and a longtime Taylor Mac collaborator, joins the composer and performer Gerard Kouwenhoven in a live musical performance at Lincoln Center’s Josie Robertson Plaza (June 21), part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City series. Stay afterward for a Silent Disco.
Uptown at the Cafe Carlyle, there’s a special Pride series (June 24-28) with cabaret performances by queer artists, including Lea Delaria and Daniel Reichard. Amber Martin’s show “Bathhouse Bette” pays homage to Bette Midler’s days performing for towel-clad fans at the former Continental Baths.
Reel Talk
Discover or revisit queer cinema’s past at movie houses all month. Options include “The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love” (June 11) at Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg; a revival of the killer-thriller “Cruising,” part of the Quad Cinema’s Pride on Film series (June 13-19); and a new restoration of “Winter Kept Us Warm” (June 21), a 1965 landmark work of Canadian queer cinema, at the Metrograph on the Lower East Side.
Reads and Rights
On June 3, the actresses Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey, the stars of the soapy lesbian TV series “The L Word,” discuss their new memoir “So Gay for You” in a talk moderated by Karine Jean-Pierre at 92Y.
Another option that night, at the Strand Bookstore in the East Village: The writer Joe Westmoreland discusses the reissue of his 2001 book “Tramps Like Us” — about a young gay man crisscrossing 1970s and ’80s America — with the writer Eileen Myles.
On June 5, Mike Curato, the author of the new graphic novel “Gaysians,” hosts a discussion “celebrating queer Asian American friendship, love, and self-discovery” at the Museum of Chinese in America.
Funny, Girl
The comedians behind Gay Takeover describe it as “a comedy show that brings L.G.B.T.Q.+ entertainment to locales where it’s not traditionally welcome.” On June 13, the comedian Lauren LoGiudice and other queer comics host “Gay Takeover of Little Italy” at Capish?! Club within Lunella Ristorante on Mulberry Street.
Other comedy options include standup and a drag show (June 26) hosted by the duo Jaboozy and Pat N. Pending at Unlisted, a rooftop cocktail lounge on the Lower East Side; and a show by Jessica Kirson, whose standup special “I’m the Man” recently debuted on Hulu, at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center (June 28).
Marking History
In his sound installation “The Gay Chorus: No Time at All,” the artist Matthew Leifheit gathered archival recordings of gay men’s choirs from around the country from the decade before effective H.I.V./AIDS treatments. The result, edited from footage on 53 VHS tapes, is an hourlong “recital” that will loop daily at the New York City AIDS Memorial in the West Village daily throughout June.
This year is the 10th anniversary of Gay Bars That Are Gone, a walking tour of closed gay bars in the city. Among the stops on the free tour on June 7 are Eve’s Hangout, a lesbian bar from the 1920s, and the Saint, the gay disco.
Take the Kids
Staten Island’s Greenbelt Conservancy and Luv on a Leash, a therapy dog project at the Pride Center of Staten Island, are among the partners on Barks and Recreation (June 5), a family and pet-friendly event at the borough’s Carousel for All Children in Willowbrook Park.
The New York Public Library offers many free Pride events for teens. On June 6, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library branch hosts Quiet Queers: Pajama Party, an afternoon rooftop event that’s more about relaxation than getting rowdy. In the Bronx, afternoon youth parties take place at the Melrose branch (June 10) and the Baychester branch (June 30).
Good Sports
Gotham FC, New York and New Jersey’s National Women’s Soccer team, take on KC Current for Pride Day (June 7) at Sports Illustrated Museum in Harrison, N.J.
On June 13, the Mets take on the Tampa Bay Rays in a Pride Night celebration that will feature performances by the Queens Crew, the Mets’ dance team. The first 15,000 fans receive a Mets Pride tank top.
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