Seattle Pride Releases Names of Announcers for 2019 Parade

At Wednesday night’s sparsely attended community meeting (Where were y’all?) for Seattle Out & Proud to discuss how their 2018 events went (“Swell!) they also released a teeny, tiny bit of information on plans for Seattle Pride 2019. 

Held at Swedish Hospital’s Glaser Auditorium, the meeting featured the entire board of SO&P but primarily featured president Kevin Toovey and vice-president Jeff Cornejo leading the evening’s discussion which mostly focused on outlining the success of last year’s events including SO&P’s biggest annual event, the Seattle Pride Parade which featured over 225 groups and 60, 000 people registered to march.

Other successes including lowering the cost of non-profit registration fees and the sponsorship program which paired up corporate for profit groups with non-profits and created unique partnership opportunities. 

Here is the obligatory moment to post that Seattle Out & Proud is responsible for the production of our city’s annual parade (and some other events like the Volunteer Park Pride event formerly known as the Pride Picnic) while the big Pride Saturday festival on Capitol Hill and the Pride Sunday festival at Seattle Center after the parade are produced by an entirely different/separate group (Seattle PrideFest) largely due to the fact Seattle is very dysfunctional…

The board was mostly coy when it came to releasing any information on 2019 events which will focus on celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which helped create the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement, as well as the 45th anniversary for Seattle Pride celebrations. We did learn that Volunteer Park Pride will happen Saturday, June 15th…but they had no names to release as to talent for that event. Nor did they have any names to release regarding marshals for this year’s Pride Parade, though we were promised BIG news…soon.

Really, the only news they released concerned the parade announcers at the three stages on the downtown parade route which runs down 4th Avenue to Seattle Center. For 2019, SO&P did things a bit differently and allowed the public to nominate people for the gig…they received dozens of submitted names (it behooves me to point out that someone nominated me for this gig; thank you anonymous fan!) and they ended up with nine names for 2019, (there will be three announcers for booth).

The 2019 Seattle Pride Parade announcers are:

Drag Divas Arson Nicki, Gaysha Starr, Cookie Couture, Londyn Bradshaw, and DonnaTella Howe

Singer/Performers CarLarans, Ruth Soto aka Latin Rose, and Thadayus Wilson (who also performs in drag)

Burlesque star Ms Briq House

It’s a diverse line-up but I will kvetch and say that they really do need to try and get more women as announcers, something I’ve whined about for….well, almost 20 years. I don’t believe any of the drag talent are transgender so…two women out of 9 isn’t exactly parity. (And, there are plenty of women in Seattle who are qualified to do this. It’s not like drag queens are the only queer performers in town…Just sayin’…)

The Seattle Pride Parade is Sunday, June 30, 2019 and takes place along 4th Avenue in Downtown Seattle.  Parade registration is now open; go here for more info.