First Tri-Lakes Pride slated June 26 | News, Sports, Jobs – The Adirondack Daily Enterprise
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SARANAC LAKE — The Tri-Lakes will have what may be its first-ever organized Pride Month festival next weekend.
The Adirondack North Country Gender Alliance is hosting the first annual Tri-Lakes Pride event at Riverside Park in Saranac Lake on June 26 from noon to 4 p.m. The event is free and open to all LGBTQIA-plus community members and allies from Saranac Lake, Lake Placid, Tupper Lake and surrounding regions.
There will be exhibits, vendors from across the Tri-Lakes, raffles and music. Mhisty Knights, a regional drag queen based in Peru, is slated to perform at the event. There will also be a fashion show hosted by the Saranac Lake Youth Center in collaboration with the Main St. Exchange consignment store.
The event is family friendly, ANCGA Executive Director and Tri-Lakes Pride Organizer Kelly Metzgar said, with music and fun for all ages.
“That’s very important to me,” she said.
Owen Gilbo, diversity and inclusion specialist with the state Department of Civil Service, is expected to speak at the event, along with Harrietstown town Supervisor Jordanna Mallach and other Tri-Lakes community leaders.
Mallach said she’s tried her best as town supervisor to make sure the community knows that everyone’s voice matters, and she thinks Tri-Lakes Pride is one more way to accomplish that goal. She encouraged everyone in the community to stop by the event, even if they’ve never celebrated pride before.
“I think that any opportunity that brings people in the community out is good,” she said.
ANCGA is also partnering with Romano’s Saranac Lanes to offer a Pride bowling event on Saturday, June 25 from 4 to 6 p.m. Bowling is $15 per person for two games and shoe rental. The Pride bowling event is a fundraiser to help ANCGA, a nonprofit organization, cover the costs of the Pride event on June 26. ANCGA is completely volunteer-run, according to Metzgar.
More information about the event is available on ANCGA’s Facebook page.
ANCGA hosts a number of local events including the Adirondack North Country Pride event in Plattsburgh, which takes place in October — LGBTQIA history month. This year’s event will be the seventh annual Adirondack North Country Pride.
Although ANCGA is based in Saranac Lake, Metzgar said the alliance started putting on Pride events in Plattsburgh first because it’s one of the biggest communities in the North Country in terms of population, second only to Watertown. ANCGA was focused on attracting as many people from the LGBTQIA-plus community to the event as possible. The alliance always had plans to bring pride to the Tri-Lakes, but Metzgar said the coronavirus pandemic delayed that from happening until this year.
Metzgar said she hopes this will be the first of many Tri-Lakes Pride events — that’s why ANCGA is calling this year’s event the “first annual” Tri-Lakes Pride.
ANCGA is still looking for volunteers to help set up and take down tables, chairs, tents and other equipment for the Pride event in Riverside Park. People who want to volunteer for the event should email ancga_prideparade@outlook.com.
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How did Pride Month start?
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Pride Month is a callback to the Stonewall Riots that started on June 28, 1969. The riots — a clash between police and members of the LGBTQIA-plus community that stretched over six days — were sparked by a police raid of the Stonewall gay bar in New York City.
Police raids in gay bars were common at the time, according to the Library of Congress. It was illegal to serve alcohol to gay people in New York until 1966, and in 1969, being gay was still considered a criminal offense.
As a result, many gay bars served alcohol without a liquor license, and police raids of the bars and police brutality against gay people was common.
The Stonewall Riots are often hailed as the birth of the gay liberation movement.
qThe first Pride march was held in New York City a year after the riots, on June 28, 1970.
“Pride celebrations are a way to honor those who came before us, who fought for the right to express their love toward another person on their own terms and not what society dictates as being acceptable or ‘proper,’” Metzgar wrote in a column for the Enterprise last year. “It allows us to show our young people that they are perfect just as they are.”