Black Pride comes to SF ready to uplift, educate, and dance

It all started on a lunchbreak in April.

Gyasi Curry, a queer man who was then KQED-TV’s school partnership manager, posted a Reel to Instagram posing the question, “Wouldn’t it be cute if all the Black queer party curators and collectives got together to throw a Black Queer Pride in San Francisco? Let me know what y’all think!”

It turned out “cute” was an understatement.

“The Reel went locally viral,” Curry, also known as LBXX, said in a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter, and within 48 hours, after thousands of views, hundreds of comments, and offerings from City Hall and the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, Curry organized a Zoom call for over 60 folks eager to help, organize, and plan the inaugural San Francisco Black Pride. 

“This is being driven by the community; there is a hunger for more visibility and more space. The current administration ignited this fire, so we have to make sure spaces are open and welcoming to people of color,” Curry said, referring to President Donald Trump’s administration. “Everyone is welcome at our Black Pride events. We can’t fight exclusion with exclusion, we enjoy allyship. This is not being done alone.” 

A native of Long Beach, California and Buffalo, New York, Curry joined AmeriCorps after college and was sent to San Francisco in 2017, where he volunteered at a Catholic school in the Mission. He also co-founded Makeroom, a Bay Area artist collective designed to uplift underrepresented voices. 

“My friends and I weren’t seeing a lot of Black people out in mainstream nightclubs; Makeroom has helped bring more Black people into more spaces,” Curry said.

San Francisco Black Pride will be turbocharging Makeroom’s agenda. 

Celebrations will take place the last week of August in the Castro and other parts of the city, an intentional week due to “Black August,” which commemorates milestones in the civil rights movement and Black history, and the fact that Burning Man will be taking place on the playa in Nevada. The dates – the end of the week coincides with Labor Day weekend – were an overwhelmingly popular idea brought up during the first Zoom call. 

Curry explained, “We want to give Black people who’ve lived here the opportunity to take up more space. The city is empty during Burning Man, it feels like a ghost town. Economically, this is a great opportunity for businesses to make up on lost revenue. This could be powerful.” 

Castro Merchants President Nate Bourg said having San Francisco Black Pride take place in the city’s LGBTQ district is important in light of the history around Black patrons of several gay Castro bars facing discriminatory entry policies in the past and people of color in general not feeling welcome in the neighborhood.

“I think it is exciting that it is centered in the Castro because our neighborhood has a history of not being as welcoming to Black people as it should be,” said Bourg, a gay man who co-owns LGBTQ social club The Academy on upper Market Street housed in a building once home to a gay bar.

 
Addressing his association’s members at their August 7 meeting, Bourg noted San Francisco for years has recognized the Black LGBTQ community as part of its Pride celebrations held in late June. The committee that oversees it has long had Black community members in prominent leadership roles, and there has long been the Soul of Pride stage, for instance, at the festival held in the Civic Center featuring Black performers and speakers.

“This is something new,” said Bourg of the SF Black Pride event, whose organizers were unable to attend the business group’s meeting as scheduled.

San Francisco joins a growing number of cities with Black Pride events. The first Black Pride was held in 1991 in Washington, D.C., and today the largest is in Atlanta. Houston, Detroit, and New Orleans also have significant celebrations. Oakland has also held a Black Pride celebration in recent years. 

A week of events
The San Francisco events kick off August 25 with Movement Monday, where people can join hip-hop or yoga workshops at the LGBT center, at 1800 Market Street, or a Vogue class with Sir Joq at the Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th Street.

Talk Tuesday will screen a Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project short film about the displacement of the Bay Area’s Black community. Taking place at Ruth’s Table, 3160 21st Street, the film will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Honey Mahogany, a Black trans person who is executive director of the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives.

“We want to give space for healing and conversation for people who don’t have a platform,” Curry said. 

A historical walking tour through the Mission, Duboce Triangle, and the Castro makes up Walk It Out Wednesday. 

All those steps will help the crowd gear up for Ball Out Thursday, a night of dancing, performances, and all-Black DJs at 1015 Folsom. 

Freestyle Friday will host simultaneous happy hours at Detour, 2200A Market Street, and Propagation, 895 Post Street, along with a scavenger hunt through the Fillmore District. 

The Satur-Allday Festival begins at noon at the LGBT center, and while no formal parade is planned, Curry expects the walks to the post-festival parties at QBar, 456 Castro Street; Beaux, 2344 Market Street; and Mother, 3079 16th Street, to be uplifting and triumphant. 

The Castro’s past that Bourg mentioned is why it was intentional to stage several events in the neighborhood.

“We want to take up space there, the Castro is part of the queer experience. QBar has historically held space for Black people, and QBar reached out immediately after I posted my Reel,” Curry said.

Soulful Sunday will host a reflection celebration at Mission Dolores Park, and then the crowd will head to Beaux for a late night show with “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” winner Angeria Paris VanMicheals. 

The celebration week is fiscally supported by the SF LGBT center and most events there are free. 

Curry is ecstatic.

“I was just sitting there on my lunchbreak, I wasn’t trying to start a movement,” he said. “Now, I’m thinking five years out already. When do we get to have bigger conversations about rent and the Fillmore being too expensive? We’re not just a party, we are calling into existence that we are here and we want to uplift Black voices.”

San Francisco Black Pride takes place at various venues August 25-31. For more information, visit sanfranciscoblackpride.org .