Tuesday, April 28, 1998 | 9:59 a.m.
Craig Walker wanted a parade. A parade with all the trimmings: Horses and floats and marching bands; sidewalks with crowds and judges and awards.
He wanted to be able to march down the streets of his hometown with pride. He wanted something to bring cohesion to his community, so dispersed and camera-shy and fearful. He wanted it simply because he thought it was time.
If, he said, it took walking down the street all by himself with the American flag on his head -- he would.
What it ended up taking was about two years of planning, a lot of red tape cutting, and a financial loss. And he didn't get his horses, his crowds or any marching bands.
But Craig Walker did finally get what he wanted: Las Vegas' first annual Gay Pride parade last Saturday.
Low-key community
Las Vegas doesn't boast much of a gay neighborhood. There is no Castro. There is no Greenwich Village. As Walker put it, the gay population pretty much "walks around and bumps into each other," if at all.
If there is any time of the year the community can all gather, it is once a year at Sunset Park, when the Southern Nevada Association of Pride Inc. (SNAPI) holds its annual festival, a day-long affair featuring workshops, live entertainment and -- pardon the pun -- general gaiety.
But the park is a place of bushes and trees, of fences and shadows. It may be a public park, but it is not the most public of places. A parade is different. It is a walking, talking, declaration of existence. It symbolizes onward movement. Taking to the streets means taking a stance.
And gay or straight, Americans love horses and floats and marching bands. Give us a reason -- ticker tape, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving Day, Heritage Days, whatever -- and we'll throw a parade: to honor our war heroes, mark our heritage, display our gratitude, or simply to show off our bonnets.
You could say that the gay pride parade is a bit of all these reasons rolled into one.
The tradition began with the Stonewall Rebellion, the 1969 skirmish between New York City police and fed-up drag queens who fought back for the first time against harassment and kicked off the concept of gay rights.
The following year, parades sprung up to mark the anniversary. Since then, gay pride has grown to include events in in more than 200 cities and two dozen countries worldwide. In February, a parade in Sydney, Australia, estimated to be one of the largest ever, drew 600,000 people.
"It's electrifying," said Julie Siska, co-president of Interpride, an international association of gay pride organizers. "It's the one event that I know of that brings the whole community together -- gay and straight -- and creates a spirit of joy and festivity."
Ostensibly, one of the points of a gay pride parade is to raise visibility and become a recognized force in the community. But sometimes, a parade is less for those observing from the sidelines -- and more for those participating.
SNAP to it
Walker, a 31-year-old Chaparral High School alum, became active in SNAPI five years ago when he realized that most of the work on local gay issues was slowly being usurped by new residents rather than natives such as himself.
He started out five years ago as an assistant entertainment director and worked his way onto the board of volunteers, scoring a coup by attracting out of town headliner Martha Wash to perform. Soon, he was being sent to attend annual pride conferences and attending other city parades, and noticing that no other city with a population similar to Las Vegas didn't host a parade.
In fact, cities with populations not much larger than Las Vegas were attracting tens of thousands of people to their marches. Even cities far more conservative than Las Vegas on paper, such as Salt Lake City, were already marching and drawing headliners such as Chastity Bono. Even a country with an openly hostile leader like Zimbabwe had managed to organize a pride event last year.
Why, he figured, should Las Vegas be so far behind?
A firm believer in the one-tenth doctrine (statistics that have cited as many as one-tenth of the general population is homosexual), Walker began questioning why a city with a million residents -- many of them in the entertainment industry, no less -- could only muster a showing of 8,000. What they needed, he figured, was a better reason to show up.
So Walker decided to play Pied Piper of Pride -- he would organize a parade, draw people to watch it, then lead them right into the park.
Returning from an Interpride conference held in New York this October, Walker excitedly brought the idea before his fellow SNAPI board members. At at first, they were skeptical. Then, they were inspired by his passion.
"He was on fire about it," recalls SNAPI board member Anne Davis Mulford. "And this is something the community has been asking for for several years -- when are you going to have a parade? When are we going to have a parade?"
In fact, the year before, a unofficial motorcade, led by Las Vegas Bugle publisher Rob Schlegel, had cruised around the city, picking up and depositing members at the festival.
"That set the precedent," SNAPI parade co-chair Holly Lee said. "So we said, 'now let's really put our neck out there and make a parade.' We decided we would do it, whatever the cost, just to start making it happen."
Coming of age
To many, the presence of a gay pride parade symbolizes one more signal that Las Vegas may be coming of age on gay rights. "This is the most closeted community I've been in," Irene Fenton, who rode in the Unitarian Universality congregation's float, said. "This is long overdue."
Despite a recent setback when Clark County's school board decided not to add specific language protecting gay and lesbian students in its new harassment policy, activists point to other recent achievements: the repeal of Nevada's anti-sodomy laws, the hosting of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association's convention in the fall, the doubling of this year's AIDS walk, held on the Strip.
And a parade, Mulford said, "is one more signal to those people that are a little bit afraid that it is OK -- you aren't going to get killed in the streets, and you probably aren't going to lose your job -- of course, I can't say for sure."
For those who weren't quite ready to be so public, she noted, "you can also be an observer and cheer people on. You don't have to be on television like Princess Anne. You can be a star or a wallflower and still be a part of it."
And, she added impishly, "I really do think that some sterotypes are true, and we love a parade."
After gaining approval from the SNAPI board, Walker approached the county about holding the parade on Eastern Avenue, in order to lead right into the park. The Department of Public Works demurred. It was accustomed to closing down the Strip along the "designated parade route," but said it had never been asked to block off a busy street such as Eastern before.
It took Walker three proposal go-rounds, four months of negotiating, and an outlay of about $10,000 in barricades and police personnel, an amount which the organization did not expect to recoup.
Finally, a mere week-and-a-half before the event, he had his way. They would give him a lane and a shoulder on Eastern Avenue and on Warm Springs Road -- he would give them a parade.
The quick turnaround time left local groups as frenzied as a frat house a week before Homecoming. Frank Herman, a board member of Lambda Business and Professional Association, a local chamber of gay and gay-friendly businesses, was in the midst of slapping together a rainbow-colored tissue-wrapped float in a pickup truck.
"It's fantastic," he said, his main concern being the short notice. "I have a fear it'll be a lot smaller than it should be." In fact, many were even more skeptical, doubtful that it would happen at all, sure they'd get a phone call declaring the whole thing called off. Others scoffed at the parade's meager first steps.
"It's 300 yards down nothing but desert and walled communities," griped one member of the community. "Instead of saying, 'We're here, we're queer, get over it!' we should say, 'We're over here, we're kind of queer, please look at us!' "
"We're doing baby steps here," Mulford conceded. "There will be people who say, 'Oh, it's not like New York, oh it's not like L.A.,' but I think people are impressed that we're doing it at all."
In a sign of faith, pride neighbors from Long Beach and Los Angeles, showed up to march in a show of support. "We're proud of you," said Robin Fornicola, the projects administrator of L.A.'s Christopher Street West, "because we know how much work it is."
Parade day
The winds were howling on the morning of the parade, whipping the banners and multicolored flags with a vengeance. The skies were dark, the temperature was chilly, the mood was almost bleak.
A bleary-eyed Walker, who had been up since 4 that morning to chalk off the parade area, stood shivering in his jean shorts and a T-shirt, worrying the gusts and rain had turned his dreams of horses and floats and marching bands into a hurried trot past a smattering of supporters along Eastern Avenue.
No matter. Even a cool breeze didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the 100 or so assembled, who honked their horns and cheered as the parade began its mile-long, one-hour march at around 10 a.m., while cars whizzed by alongside them, some gawking, others clapping along.
As is tradition, a start-up local chapter of "Dykes on Bikes," a group of women (and men filling in) replete with black leather, helmets and hogs, kicked off the parade, going first so as not to overheat their engines.
They were followed by 26 groups, including the new local piano bar called Keys, a handful of members of Delta Lambda Phi fraternity carrying the banner "Party with Pride," about 15 teens from the Gay and Lesbian Community Center's youth group, and a carload honoring some of SNAPI's pioneers -- the original 13 men and women who picnicked in the park 15 years ago and launched a legacy.
Floats ranged from the flamboyant displays of drag queens dressed to the nines, and the scantily clad vocal group Men Out Loud, to the undecorated, understated cars driven by members of P-Flag, parents and friends of lesbians and gays.
The Catholic group, Dignity, chanted: "We're here, we're queer, we're Catholic. Get used it," while the choir of the Unitarian Universality Congregation of Las Vegas brought up the rear, singing "Amen," as they rode by in a hayride in turquoise robes.
And Walker, who'd threatened to march all by himself with the American flag on his head, if he had to? Engrossed in the supervision, he barely got to see his own parade, let alone march in it. "How did it go?" he asked Lee an hour later. "I didn't get to see any of it."
And not even the wind and low turnout dampened his spirits. "I'm glad we did it, I'm glad it's over, I can't wait for next year," he said, summing it all up.
And as for next year? Walker declares: "I'm expecting horses and floats and marching bands."
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