Set-Up Nearly Complete For One Of Nation's Largest Pride Fests

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MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Thousands of people will be coming to the Twin Cities this weekend for the Twin Cities Pride Festival.

Crews at Loring Park in Minneapolis have been busy putting up tents and making final arrangements.

There will be plenty to buy, plenty to eat, and four stages of music with concerts throughout the weekend.

Twin Cities Pride is one of the largest Pride festivals in the country. There will be about 400 booths and close to 40 food vendors on site this weekend. Those vendors come from seemingly everywhere. Some of them have spent months planning for this weekend.

One of those taking part in the festival is Hagen and Oats. They are a female-run wood shop based in Newport, Minnesota. Sisters Nikki Hollerich and Anna Hagen have stained rainbow pieces for this year's festival. They call them Stainbow and they hope people check it out.

"We just set up the tent this morning, but like you said, we've been prepping for a couple months getting some pieces ready. But we've got a couple helpers today that's made it pretty quick," Hollerich said.

"It just feels like Pride is the quintessential empowering people. So we love to be a part of it. We made a whole line just to help promote our community here so we are really excited to be a part of it," Hagen said.

It seems like we've been talking about road construction all spring and summer, but some of that will stop for the Pride Festival. MNDOT says the Whitney bridge painting that's been done will stop for the festival.