London LGBT Pride(s)

[lovingboth]

After doing a post about how they were considering it, I forgot to do a VICTORY !!! post when the evil London Mardi Gras (spit) actually decided to give up and go home.

Ken would like a 'high profile' 'world class level' event next year.

So it looks like next year's event will be on 3rd July (ok), be free to attend (yay), cost about £300k to stage (told you so), involves Jason Pollock, the ex-festival director of LMG (hiss)... and looks like being held in Jubilee Gardens (eeek).

Why eeek? Well because of the London Eye, Jubilee Gardens is even smaller now than it was in the mid-80s, when it was just large enough to hold the event. I can remember the fact that Erasure were going to play there one year (1988?) was kept 'secret' to stop hordes of teenage fans attending - there wouldn't have been room for the people on the march and them!

It seems to me that 'high profile', in this location, means almost by definition that it can't be 'world class', not least as the people at the Mayor's consultation forum wanted the community village section to remain too. Last year, that alone would have taken up about a quarter of the space available. Ghod knows how they're going to control entry or how many people will be allowed in.

Perhaps it will be spread along the South Bank? That would roughly double the available space, but it would still be much smaller than any event since 1990ish, when Kennington Park got 100,000 people.

Oh, it looks like Soho Pride wants to become an annual event. 1st August is the date next year, St Anne's Gardens.

And there's a mention of 'North London Pride'. Ghod knows what, who, where and when about that one.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I remember when London Pride was just the name of a beer...

[heteronormative.livejournal.com]

So that means having a march south of the river? Having it culminate at Hyde Park was good last year, just a shame the Hyde Park part was so very annoying.

[lovingboth]

Yep, expected to be from Hyde Park, so presumably HP-Piccadilly-Lower Regent St-Trafalgar Sq-Whitehall-Westminister Bridge.

[heteronormative.livejournal.com]

I'm also uncertain how they can host it in the Jubilee gardens - those areas are crowded anyway with tourists visiting the aquarium and the eye and all of the other things along that stretch - it sounds like overcrowding could be a real problem.

[lovingboth]

Absolutely.

I wasn't at the relevant meeting, and I'm amazed no-one at it seems to have gone 'eeek' at a choice of venue which is completely incompatible with the stated aims.

[heteronormative.livejournal.com]

Hardly seems world class to put it in the back garden of a ferris wheel.

[mankylarry.livejournal.com]

Kennington park 100,000 surely shome mishtake, thought the last one was about 20,000, and Europride 92 was 100,000.

laurence

[lovingboth]

"100,000!" was Capital Gay's headline the following week. Even if it was 'just' 50,000, that's still at least five times what it had had before.

[mankylarry.livejournal.com]

Surely you don't believe everything you read in the press do you, what were the official (police) estimates : )

Capital Gay, now there's a blast from the past.

Laurence

[badriya.livejournal.com]

"After doing a post about how they were considering it, I forgot to do a VICTORY !!! post when the evil London Mardi Gras (spit) actually decided to give up and go home.

Ken would like a 'high profile' 'world class level' event next year."

It's not just pride they want to take over and ruin. They are apparently ruining the anti-globalisation event to be in London too, by insisiting on government control of venues and format, according to older daughter. I think that was the event. She got back from Paris before Xmas very annoyed about the planning meetings for it.