The tiny island city of Wilton Manors - entirely bordered by waterways - is the beating gay heart of LGBTQ-popular Fort Lauderdale. It's owned and operated by the Graton Tribe whose president is openly gay. The hotel is supportive of the local LGBTQ community and is Pride's lead sponsor. Where to stay : Hang your wigs at the adults-only Graton Resort and Casino, a 200-room luxury property with a full-service spa and salon and outdoor pool. If you can't join for Pride month, consider visiting for one of the summer's smaller Gay Wine Weekends. The marquee event has been redesigned as the Drive-Thru Parade on Saturday, June 5, but there are 16 other official events scheduled throughout the month of June. The theme of Sonoma County's homey Pride celebration, "Beyond the Rainbow: Surviving, Reviving, and Thriving," draws inspiration from the Wizard of Oz to offer renewal and support. Sonoma's beautiful rolling hills lack the star power of nearby Napa with its haute cuisine and celebrity-driven vineyards, but it more than compensates in seasonal-focused produce, a wider variety of wines, and a large concentration of LGBTQ residents, including many in the wine industry.
Here are some of the best US pride celebrations in 2021, plus hotels for each.ĭiscover the white, red, rosé, and rainbow-hued wines of gay-popular Sonoma County, an hours' drive north of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
All hotels have solid COVID-19 policies and protocols in place for extra peace of mind.Hotels were chosen to accommodate a wide variety of interests and budgets, but all hotels are exceptionally LGBTQ friendly and highly recommended by LGBTQ locals, with many operated by openly gay staff and/or proud sponsors of local Pride events.For the rest, I tapped into my network of local queer experts to compile this list of diverse and welcoming LGBTQ Pride celebrations across the US.I'm familiar with each of these fabulous queer-friendly destinations as well as their LGBTQ communities and have experienced many of the Prides firsthand.I chose some of the best US Pride celebrations, plus the best hotels for each based on the following criteria: Most importantly, we'll gather in 2021 to celebrate the many reasons to be proud while mourning those we've lost.įrom California wine country to the streets of New York, there's a US Pride celebration ready for you to join, with many launching this coming week and sashaying all the way through September. A few will be drive-through others will postpone large gatherings till later in the year. For now, we'll skip crowded and sweaty parades and parties (alas!), but in order for us to join safely together in person, many Prides have been restructured as celebratory hybrid events. While we did it mostly virtually in 2020, the trend in 2021 is to meet in person.
We will always exercise our right to be visible and celebrate our magnificent diversity. We've been marching for half a century in the face of arrest, harassment and worse, through nearly four decades of an epidemic that devastated yet ultimately galvanized our community, and now through a global pandemic. Pride's back! In truth Pride never went away.