51st annual Twin Cities Pride kicks off at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
MINNEAPOLIS -- Twin Cities Pride, the largest free Pride festival in the country, kicked off it's 51st year Friday night, with the Pride Beer Dabbler at the Sculpture Garden.
"Everybody's pumped and getting ready, vendors are loading in, food trucks are loading in," said Twin Cities Pride Executive Director Andi Otto.
It takes a village to set up the massive festival that is Twin Cities Pride. Venders spent Friday putting up finishing touches. This year's celebration spans Loring Park and beyond.
"We expanded over into the Sculpture Garden, which we've never done before so over at Parade Park," said Otto.
Also new this year: A food court, bingo, pickleball and a space for youth.
"We've added a new youth hideaway zone for all of our LGBTQ youth to sit back and enjoy their authentic life."
The Pride march is also expecting big crowds on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
If you're a Wild fan, defenseman Jon Merrill will be calling bingo, also on Sunday.
Otto said they're expecting 600,000 to attend this year's Twin Cities Pride, a far cry from the original celebration.
"Half the people stayed here in Loring Park and half the people marched up Nicollet Avenue for LGBT rights," said Otto. "I would say we really started to boom in the early 2000s and every year we've continued to just kind of grow and grow and grow so this year will probably be our largest capacity."
"It's really our most fun show that we do all year," said Melissa Deeg, setting up her booth For Goodness Socks.
Deeg sells socks themed around social causes. She said it was the people that made her return her second time to Pride.
"Everybody's so wonderful, accepting, we had a blast so we had to come back for this year," said Deeg.
This year, members of the LGBTQ community say having pride is more important than ever.
"Being proud to be gay, especially in this climate in the United States, we really need to show how proud we are of who we are," said Ryan George, of Minneapolis.
With the Taylor Swift concert happening this weekend, Pride-goers are doing more planning than usual.
"Nothing against Taylor Swift as a human, not a Taylor Swift music fan so like, the idea of everyone being out here during that is a little stressful cause just a lot of people right? You know, traveling," said Mandy Pavlak, of Minneapolis. "Hopefully the weather holds out."
But more than beer started to pour at the Pride Dabbler in the Sculpture Garden Friday evening.
Organizers say they're ready if the showers turn severe.
"We have great assets from the state of Minnesota emergency management team. We have a meteorologist on-site at all times, really watching that weather. We have great alert systems," said Otto.
