Perth’s Pride Parade will fill the streets of Northbridge from 8pm tomorrow night.
Over sixty community groups, businesses and individual entries take part in the community event which will begin at the corner of William St and Brisbane St. The parade will progress down William St, turn into Lake Street and conclude at Russell Square.
The theme for this years parade is #lovewins; the hashtag that spread around the world in the wake of the USA achieving marriage equality last year.
As is the tradition, the parade will be lead by the Dykes on Bikes, who report having a huge number of participants lined up for this year’s event.
Among the groups marching are The Perth Gaymers who’ll be joining the parade for the first time. The community group has grown incredibly since first being launched a few years ago and now have several hundred members, making them one of the biggest LGBTIQ+ social groups in the city.
A spokesperson for the group told us that they’re entry will be based around one of the most popular computer games. The group hope to have around 30 to 40 people in their entry.
“Our entry theme is based on the popular ‘Rainbow Road’ track from Nintendo’s Mario Kart. It reflects our fun and vibrant group that revolves around gaming, but also hopes to relate to the #lovewins theme, that we are all racing to victory for our rights and a strong community. We have some cardboard racing karts, people in cosplay, costumes and geeky outfits.” the spokesperson told OUTinPerth.
Connections Nightclub always have impressive float and have won quite a few prizes for their entries over the years. This year the club’s Pride Party in an extension of the regular Saturday night shindig Showpony.
“Our main night (Saturday nights) are called Showpony so we’re extending that to Pride this year and our mascot is a gay rainbow Unicorn.” Gavin Kingsbury from Connections revealed.
“As Pride’s theme is #LoveWins and the unicorn is a symbol of love we thought joining the two very fitting. That and the gay community has kind of adopted unicorns over the years and who doesn’t love unicorns? Our float will be an explosion of gay unicorn love which you won’t be able to miss as it will pretty much assault your senses with unicorn overload.” Kingsbury said.
Connections won’t be the only unicorns in the parade. Local boylesque artist Tess OZteron is celebrating the release of his debut tune, an electro-pop number Like a Unicorn, and will be appearing the parade under the banner of Unicorn Power!
Listed in the rundown for the parade are over sixty entries including Pride in Diversity, Bears Perth, the WA AIDS Council, The Freedom Centre, Curtin University, Magenta, the Perth Pythons Hockey Team, Playgroups with Pride, and local gym Rise Fit.
While the OUTinPerth team will be busy photographing the parade and all the parties of the evening, we’ll be in the parade too! A group of dedicated readers and contributing writers will represent the publication in the parade.
OIP Staff
