After 32 years, Seattle Pride Parade and Festival organisers say they may scrap the entire event. "We don't know" whether there will be a parade this year, said Weston Sprigg, vice president of Seattle Out and Proud. The group's dozen or so volunteers are tired, he said. The group owes $102,000 to the city after moving the parade and festival from its longtime home in Capitol Hill to Seattle Center in 2006. More than 200,000 people attended the celebration for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, but the organisers didn't make enough money from sponsorships and donations to cover the cost of holding the event at Seattle Center, which was far more expensive than the previous site, Volunteer Park. The group's board plans to meet today to make a final decision on the event, which was planned for the weekend of 24th June. A separate group led by the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center is discussing planning other gay-pride events to fill the vacuum. In February, the group said it would partner with event organiser IES Production, which would produce the festival and pay $50,000 of the debt to the city. The status of that is now uncertain, Sprigg said, and John Merner, deputy director at Seattle Center, says he is sending the bill to the city's legal department to collect. The decision to move to Seattle Center was criticised by many on Capitol Hill, considered the heart of Seattle's gay community. "An event of this scale requires considerable sponsorship, and I think with all the controversy swirling around Pride these past couple of years made it hard to secure that sponsorship," Merner said. Ref: The Seattle Times (m)
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Wednesday, 25th April 2007 - 12:00pm