Pride weekends have always (since the 1990s) also been big party weekends as well. And, especially in my 20s, people were always moving around and there’s a pretty good chance I knew someone in most major cities.
This. My husband and I used to work a booth at our local festival, since a non-profit group we were involved with had one there. The Pride festivals and parades are indeed different from your average festival, and special. The atmosphere is really uplifting and just a lot of fun. A lot of straight folks here bring their kids, too. I think everyone here feels like this is one event that makes the world a little better.
And whilst I love that families see it as a great thing to show their kids, I also would hate to see it sanitised as well - if you can’t cope with drag queens on stage making some bum jokes, don’t come!
I have been to none. I’m not much of a festival person.
None because I really hate crowds. Best I can claim is expressing support on Facebook.
Well, I don’t know how it is where you are, but in my location the type of parents that bring their kids to the festival don’t appear to be the type to easily get their knickers in a knot over stuff like that. The parade and festival during the day also has a different tone to it than the after-dark celebrations as well. 
The closest I’ve “been to” one is Columbus, and that’s because it runs along the street that goes by the convention center during the Origins gaming convention that I attend.
I’ve been to one, last summer. I was in the parade, actually. I’m not gay, but I was marching in support of some of my gay friends who were happy to have me. There was a protest and we were delayed by several hours. It was very hot and a tough day. At first I thought it was some rednecks protesting, but it turned out it was another special interest sub-group to the larger LGBT community who weren’t involved in the parade but objected to the police and military participating. The police and military decided to step off and said they will ensure security but not participate.
As the nephew of an RCMP officer and as a person with a gay friend who is a cop, this really rankled me and I was going to opt out of participating this year. However, the same group had further demands and the Pride group cancelled the parade this year. This was all in Edmonton, Alberta.
I happened to see one in Hokkaido, Japan about 11 years ago. It was interesting.
I’ve been to the one in Toronto for the last three years, since coming out as bi, and last year I was also at the one in Peterborough (ON).
Here is what I wrote about the Toronto Pride parade this year:
So I took in the Pride street festival and parade today in Toronto. It was so beautiful out! I got there fairly early after the Megabus from Belleville, but things were still setting up, so I went to Yonge and Bloor and had an early lunch in the food court under the Hudson’s Bay Centre. As I ate, the food court gradually filled with rainbow people.
Later, the sun was stronger and the crowds were arriving, and I walked up and down Church St. The street fair went from Hayden a lot further south than I remembered, south of Gerrard even, into the heart of Ryerson University.
There were many booths: the library, political parties, clubs, naturists (this explained where all the nude guys were coming from), the Royal Canadian Mint (with a display where one could buy the new $1 coin commemorating 50 years of decriminalized homosexuality; I think this was when then-Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau made that famous statement “the State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation”; I bought 10 coins), a university I’d never heard of before (turned out to be UOIT in Oshawa, which now wants everyone to call it “Ontario Tech”), jewelery, T-shirts, an Italian airline I’d never heard of before, the TDSB, recruiting for firefighters and the military, children’s books (I think), an organization for bisexuals, music, dance, drag, and on and on…
I bought a rainbow bracelet to replace the one I seemed to have lost a while back.
After walking in the sunshine, I gradually felt better, going over to Yonge St and waiting for the parade. I was eventually able to move around a bit to the rhythm of passing floats.
And there were many many attractive women (one – short, dark, plump, and curvy – was mind-bogglingly sexy) and not a few cute guys. But I am too old to be attractive, and I always have to remember how dangerously easy it is for me to be inadvertently creepy. (Even when I was young, this was a problem.)
There were so many groups in the parade! In how many places will you find in close proximity:
• An Indigenous delegation leading the way.
• Then, the Prime Minister!
• Then, a long, long list of groups marching, many with floats, including:
• Conservatives. Not many, but they were there.
• Liberals. Lots of Liberals.
• The NDP, including its Socialist Caucus.
• The Green Party.
• Home Depot.
• 3 major banks (RBC, Scotiabank, and TD).
• 2 airlines (Air Canada and WestJet).
• Furries (at least, I think that’s what they were).
• FanExpo, the comics convention.
• The city government.
• Toronto Public Libraries.
• Trojan Condoms.
• The Anglican Church of Canada along with the United Church and the Metropolitan Community Church.
• The European Union, followed immediately by the UK.
• Ismaili Muslims.
• Sikhs.
• The Royal Canadian Navy.
• The Royal Canadian Air Force.
• Anarchists.
• People dressed up as dogs with muzzles and leashes. They were barking.
• Go Transit.
• At least two groups I had no idea what they were.
• Latinx people.
• Filipinos.
• Teachers.
• Crest Toothpaste.
• The Toronto District School Board.
• Rainbow Railroad, a group dedicated to rescuing LGBTQ+ people from around the world. (I donate monthly.)
• PFLAG (both Toronto and Canada groups).
• Capital One (credit cards).
• IKEA (their shirts had a rainbow of Allen keys…).
• Anti-police activists.
• People on motorcycles.
… and I did not see the end of the parade.
It was very good to be surrounded by weird cute queer people. My inner 13-year-old was in ecstasy, and I was very much wishing I could be 21 again. If I had even known something like this existed when I was in high school / university / college the first time… Even if I hadn’t had access to it, just knowing that there were other people out there, successfully existing in ways other than the stereotypical conservative success-driven jocks and housewives and business people, would have made a huge difference in my teenagerhood.
By the end of high school, it wasn’t so much that people discouraged my art or writing, or my way of being (which I might as well call my queerness, and you don’t realize how odd that feels to say that), but that there was nothing to nourish them or give them context or examples. Maybe I should have gone to OCAD like Mom wanted me to…
I’m back home now in Belleville, sunburned and pleasantly tired, and feeling distressed that I have to ‘cover myself up’ to look anonymously normal, especially at work…
Once a few years ago in Toronto. Had a fun time.
Just gotta pop in to tell you about the first Pride Parade we took our young kids to. Suddenly, here’s a group of at least a dozen nude bicyclists (very nude, and elderly, so there was plenty of flapping in the wind). Eldest Daughter just made an “Oh, oh!” face. But Much Younger Brother announces VERY loudly “Ewww! You made me see this, this should count as child abuse!”
(He was so little that it was precocious, not snotty, and the thirty people in earshot were laughing)
I’ve never attended one, but a combination of being sick of the re-genderization of society and of smug assholes claiming that there is no reason for Pride just drove me to check when is my local parade. Rouen July 16, here I come!