Gay Pride

Get ready to take it to the streets!

June is a big month for Pride as almost all of the big festivals, parades and marches take place during this time. Great weather, friends, costumes and music help make these events bigger and better each year. Most of them run for days on end and include musical guests from all over as well as after parties that go well into the next day. In fact, you can't really tell when the party stops for the most part!

Generally Pride Week (or day, or weekend in some places) starts with an opening party which is followed by a number of outdoor events. It's also a great time for organizations to plan parties around different issues such as safe-sex, gay positive vacationing, and all sorts of other great stuff. You never really know what you're going to get into during Pride, but generally one can count on at least a few topless revelers as well as floats full of great costumes, body painting and at the very least, minimal clothing. Beer-tents scattered throughout the closed-off areas don't hurt, either.

Booking your Pride vacation should be done in advance as the bigger events always play host to hundreds of thousands of tourists and hotels are sure to fill up quick. As we said earlier, Pride Festivals go on everywhere but the bigger ones in June are: Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Jose, Toronto, (Canada), New York City, Ghent (Belgium), Budapest (Hungary) and, of course, San Francisco. So take the trip, take some pictures or some video (or both) and send it our way - we want to see how you celebrate Pride!