Over the 40-year history of what is now known as the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade and celebration, the gay community has seen a lot. The event, which started as a tiny march down Polk Street, now is estimated to draw more than a million people. Countless people have grieved over friends and family members lost to AIDS, and the celebration itself struggled to reflect the diversity of its participants.
At least one thing, however, has been consistent for decades �" the excitement each person feels.
Kathy Knowles, a lesbian who volunteered consistently from 1981 through 1992, remembers waiting in Civic Center Plaza with the "humongous" crowd to hear Dykes on Bikes' motorcycles, the signal that the parade was approaching.
"I would just go out and absorb the energy," Knowles, 56, said in an interview. "It was huge, all these tens of thousands of people waiting there for the beginning of the parade, and then as soon as we could hear the motorcycles, everybody would start screaming."
Pride's beginnings were much more modest.
In 1970, about 30 people marched down Polk Street to City Hall to mark the first anniversary of New York's Stonewall riots, where transgender people and others stood up to police. The riots are generally regarded as the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement, although many have noted that San Francisco had a riot at Gene Compton's Cafeteria in 1966. That riot broke out when police confronted trans people. The exact date is not known.
On that first anniversary in San Francisco, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Gay-In at Golden Gate Park drew about 200 people. The event's name reflected the street where the Stonewall Inn still stands.
There was a rally but no parade in 1971, but after that, it grew by thousands of people each year.
A fundraising-related document from 1974 found in the archives of the GLBT Historical Society indicated efforts to generate income were much simpler than they are today, when large corporations help the Pride celebration occur.
"Raffle tickets are on sale from all committee members and the cost is 50 cents each or books of ten for $5.00," the document said. "If you would like some tickets to sell, contact Harvey Milk, 864-1390. Prizes include a ten speed racing bike, 19 inch color television set, Polaroid cameras and a host of others."
In 1976, then-Mayor George Moscone issued the first proclamation for what was then known as "Gay Freedom Day." There were an estimated 120,000 participants.
The parade marched down Market Street for the first time in 1977, and attendance was an estimated 200,000.
Glenne McElhinney, who marched for the first time in 1976 with members of a women's cheese collective and became event co-chair in 1982, attributed the "huge jump" in attendance in 1977 to factors such as the anti-gay activism of Anita Bryant, the pop singer turned Florida citrus promoter.
"The parade went on and on and on forever," said McElhinney, who is 54 and identifies as "dyke, lesbian, feminist and rabble-rouser, rebel, butch."
"... Everybody marched, and there was a huge contingent of straights for gays riding in the parade that year, and bisexuals were starting to flex their muscles. It was the place to be that year, in 1977, and it makes it a special parade," she said in a recent interview.
The city provided $10,000 to the parade in 1978, marking the first time the parade received city funding. The event was even larger than the year before, and Milk rode in the parade as the city's first out gay supervisor.
Milk's assassination five months later, in November, had an impact on the event the next year.
Lani Ka'ahumanu, 66, who marched in the parade for more than 20 years, said, "I can't quite remember the parade," in 1979. "It's kind of a blur."
But Ka'ahumanu, who is bisexual, did recall there was "just this pall that took over."
Controversy
There was controversy over the 1980 events, including allegations of fiscal mismanagement.
In the August 1981 issue of On Parade , a publication put together by people involved with the celebration, co-chair Barbara Cameron wrote that the 1980 committee had left behind unpaid debts.
Cameron's article was accompanied by a preliminary financial report that listed income (as of July 1981) at $76,833 and expenses at $69,760, leaving a surplus of $7,073.
By comparison, the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee has projected it will take in about $2.2 million this year, which is also what it plans to spend.
Neither figure includes in-kind contributions.
The current budget data comes from information the committee submitted to the city's Grants for the Arts office in February.
In 1981, there were 250,000 people who attended the parade. The name was changed that year, and in 1982 what had been Gay Freedom Day since the early 1970s was known as "International Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day."
Linda Boyd, a lesbian who was co-chair in 1983 and 1984, was one of several people who recently recalled that many, including women, were critical of the change.
"They wanted to be called gay women," said Boyd, 64, in a recent interview. "They didn't like the term 'lesbian' at all."
The only fatal accident during the celebration happened in 1982. Darryl Anderson, 19, was apparently lying behind a float when the float's driver ran over him.
AIDS enters the scene
In the 1980s, a new disease was taking a toll on the community.
The year 1981 "really was a turning point," said Greg Day, 65, who was a Pride co-chair that year. "We already had 'gay cancer,' and one year later we were in the throws of the epidemic. Within two years after that parade, the epidemic was very intense. It was very, very important for men and women to come together."
Day, who is gay, said the 1981 parade "laid the groundwork" for the "response to AIDS, especially in San Francisco, where lesbians and gay men joined together and where our sisters supported gay men in this epidemic, and have ever since."
In 1983, 20 people who were living with AIDS led the parade, which was dedicated to them that year, according to materials in the archives of the GLBT Historical Society.
Ken Jones, who's gay, served as co-chair in 1984 and said he was the parade's first African American co-chair. Around 1981, when he became involved, discussion included "how do we acknowledge our gay pride ... and at the same time address all the death that was taking place around us?" he said in a recent interview.
Boyd, also a 1984 co-chair, recalled being "besieged by the media."
The sentiment was that the committee shouldn't be inviting people from the suburbs and Middle America, "because they were going to come to San Francisco and catch this disease," she said.
However, "If these guys stayed in small towns in the Midwest in ignorance ... that would be more dangerous for the spread of HIV than for them to come to San Francisco and learn something," said Boyd.
McElhinney, a 1982 co-chair, recalled the disease's toll as she ticked through the men she had worked with on the celebration. Many of them are dead.
"It's really sad, really sad," she said. "... All of that history and all of that richness is gone. A whole generation of wonderful gay men is gone."
Knowles, the longtime volunteer, said, "The pool of people to run things was constantly being depleted" because of the disease. It took at least 500 volunteers to produce the event.
But she recalled one volunteer in the late 1980s who was sick but sneaked out of the hospital to work.
"I think he made it through the day," said Knowles.
Despite the sadness in the community, there were still good times.
Knowles recalled one year when singer and actress Grace Jones was on the last float of the parade.
"Everybody in the crowd was trying to climb on the float. We were trying to stop them, of course," said Knowles, who recalled that Jones "just kept singing. She wasn't fazed at all."
Addressing diversity
Besides challenges from outside the LGBT community, there was also turmoil among people involved with the celebration.
McElhinney said there was criticism for having women as co-chairs, then for having people of color in leadership positions and reaching out specifically to people of color.
"We were actually trying to make changes that were positive, that people ended up doing anyway," she said.
What was happening with organizers was like a barometer of what was going on in the community, said McElhinney.
Boyd said that within communities of color, "there was denial that there were any gay people, and on the other hand there was racism within the white community."
Knowles said, "It wasn't a question of other people being overtly racist, but it was always a struggle to get people of color to work on the parade."
A 1983 flier asking "Were you left out last year?" especially sought volunteers for the outreach committee to make sure "people of color, women, disabled ... [and] the dying" were included.
There were also concerns about including bisexuals.
Ka'ahumanu said in 1983 she helped co-found the bi political organization BiPol.
In 1984, Dianne Feinstein was the city's mayor. (It would be several years before Feinstein was elected U.S. senator.) Feinstein didn't ride in the parade, Ka'ahumanu said, but according to the Pride Committee's current Web site, she did issue a proclamation.
The bisexual contingent, which carried "biphobia shields," had someone play "Mayor Bi-anne Feinstein."
The marchers eventually encountered a woman who jumped into the middle of their contingent and started screaming, "You don't belong here! What are you doing here?" Ka'ahumanu recalled.
"We put up our shields and started chanting, 'This is what biphobia looks like,'" and the woman disappeared, said Ka'ahumanu.
Another name change
Bisexuals and transgender people finally saw more acknowledgment when the celebration's name was expanded. In 1995, the name appeared for the first time as the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration.
The move took a while.
Matthew L. Le Grant, 54, a bisexual who was on the board of directors around that time, recalled the excuse he heard for people not wanting bisexuals included in the name "was that we were not really queer enough. The assertion especially for bisexual people was that they were really just straight people that would run back into the closet when the going got tough."
Dominique Leslie, who is transgender, served on the Pride Committee board in 1995 and 1996.
Leslie, 52, said in a recent interview that among the opinions she heard at the time for people not wanting the name change was that people didn't want an "alphabet soup." There was also the notion that "we're all gay."
However, Leslie said, "For transgender people, we may or may not be gay. Some of us are queer-identified, some of us are not."
She recalled that others were "just afraid that what gains they had gotten for their own community would be taken away by another community."
Leslie indicated the discussion didn't hit her hard.
"I developed a pretty thick skin early on, so I don't really take things like that personally," she said.
In a celebration guide in the GLBT Historical Society's archives, Dennis McMillan wrote that the Freedom Day committee had held a town hall meeting in January 1994 to discuss a possible name change.
According to McMillan's story, 44 percent wanted to add bisexual and transgender to the name, 37 percent had "totally new names in mind," and 18 percent wanted to keep the current name.
He wrote that someone from ACT UP said bisexual and transgender people were lesbian and gay, so there was no need for a name change.
"Others believed the name was already long enough and entirely appropriate as is," McMillan said in his piece.
However, the name was eventually changed officially in December 1994, he wrote.
Celebration continues to thrive
Since its beginning, the Pride celebration has seen plenty of turmoil from both inside and out of the LGBT community.
One recent challenge the LGBT community has faced is the battle over same-sex marriage.
At one upswing in that battle, the California Supreme Court ruled in May 2008 that same-sex couples have the right to marry in the state.
In the Pride parade the next month, shortly after same-sex couples began getting legally married, many couples celebrated by marching.
The joy was short-lived, however. In November 2008, the state's voters passed Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Prop 8 was upheld by the state Supreme Court in May 2009.
(Closing arguments in a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Proposition 8 were heard in San Francisco last week. A ruling is expected within weeks, and the matter is widely expected to reach the U.S.. Supreme Court.)
Regardless of what's going on around the community, the celebration is always a big task to pull off.
Teddy Witherington, 48, became the Pride Committee's first executive director in 1997. The consensus was that it would be good to have someone working full-time throughout the year to organize the celebration. Witherington, who is gay, came from London Pride.
"There are always challenges," said Witherington. "How can there not be challenges when you don't have a dress rehearsal and you have to get 200 community groups from one end of San Francisco to the other? But the challenges really pale in comparison to the joys and the successes."
Whatever the challenges, Ken Jones, a 1984 co-chair, said he hopes "the brave people" in the Stonewall riots are never forgotten.
"We must never forget why we gather," said Jones, 60. "It's significant that we gather to celebrate people who got tired of being harassed by the police, and they said 'Enough is enough,' and I hope that we never ever forget that struggle."
The excitement the celebration generates should help people remember the work it's taken to get through the last 40 years, and the work that remains to be done.
McElhinney, the former co-chair, said she's ridden with Dykes on Bikes every year since the late 1970s. Even after all these years, when she hears the roar of the hundreds of motorcycles, "my heart still races, it still races, every [last] Sunday in June ... I'm as excited then as I was my very first one."
This year's Pride celebration, with the theme "40 and Fabulous," will be Saturday, June 26 to Sunday, June 27. For more information, visit http://www.sfpride.org.