Gay Place

PRIDE PUSHED ASIDE? AWOL TILL FALL? It's a pretty big rock you are lounging under – or perhaps you are just one of the last 12 non-Facebook holdouts – if you did not see the dual announcements this week from Austin's two premier LGBT(QIA) celebrations. QueerBomb, launched last summer as an answer to the increasingly conservative-leaning and commerce-reliant Austin Pride, began popping up all over town with tweets, Facebook posts, and the coincidentally named "QR" codes with news of the coming Friday, June 3, rally, march, and series of parties across town. Their newly redesigned and refreshingly functional website (www.queerbomb.org) is up and ready and being refreshed with info as it pops. The Austin Gay Lesbian Pride Foundation, aka AGLPF, aka Austin Pride, after a somewhat deafening silence, put up a blog post at www.austinpride.org confirming rumors and laying out its reasoning for pushing the city's traditional June Pride celebration to September. So we called them up. Again. The big news this week, as far as we're concerned, is that they actually picked up the phone. And don't fall out of your seats: They actually spoke with Your Friendly Neighborhood Gay Place. Boy howdy, do we have questions! But for this first round, new AGLPF prez Karen Thompson and yours truly kept our very cordial convo short and sweet. Here are the deets: Austin Pride happens Saturday, September 10. As of our conversation, the group had not yet released the location, but Thompson told us it will happen at Fiesta Gardens. When I asked for reasons for the date push beyond what was stated in the blog post, Karen reiterated most of them, but added that heat was a concern, that the date "had to do with the availability of venues," and that the decision was made primarily by AGLPF's new board (the list of principals is in the body of the blog post). Hmmmm. We are really happy and grateful to have an open channel with Thompson. Gay Place, as we said, has lots of questions, and we're excited to have a face-to-face with her within the next week to finally reopen communication between our parties. And would it be too much to dream of an open communication between Austin's two Pride parties? We are weighing in as optimistic. Stay tuned.

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