A Hot Day in the Boogie Down Borough: Scenes From Bronx Pride 2018
A Hot Day in the Boogie Down Borough: Scenes From Bronx Pride 2018
The 1 Bronx Pride celebration took place this past weekend, in between perhaps larger, but no more enthusiastic, Pride events last week in Brooklyn and an upcoming parade in New York City. Festivities started on Thursday when Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. raised the first-ever rainbow flag to fly above the county courthouse, in celebration of the borough’s LGBTQIA residents. Two days of meet and greets, parties, bar nights, a drag brunch, and salsa dancing on Roberto Clemente Plaza followed before the Pride march began on Sunday at the Bronx Borough Hall, traveling down 161st Street and then Third Avenue. The parade culminated in a “small but mighty” festival, according to photographer Devin Doyle, who captured the event for Vogue.
Hosts included stars from Ryan Murphy’s new FX series, Pose: legendary ballroom scene doyenne Dominique Jackson, actor Ryan Jamaal Swain, and voguer Jason Rodriguez of New York’s House of Ninja. “It was a very hot day in the Bronx,” Doyle says, but the celebration’s attendees were undeterred. As it was only the second time organizers had staged the 1 Bronx Pride fest, which they say “promotes inclusion, community, and dialogue, and works toward a future without discrimination where all people have equal rights under the law,” everyone who braved the summer day was “feeling the vibe,” Doyle witnessed. He also noticed that almost every reveler he spoke to was from the borough: “It was a local crowd, warm and welcoming,” he says, that danced into the evening to Bronx-based performers and DJs. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
