Pride Guide 2022

Dear Readers,

You’ve probably seen those “By the Numbers” company reports where they highlight their accomplishments with some big, bold figures. Well, since our city’s annual Pride celebration—one of the oldest and largest in the South—returns in person this year after two long years sidelined by the pandemic, I thought I’d kick off this first issue of our Pride Guide with some inspirational numbers of our own. Also tucked inside this celebratory section is an events calendar, so you can plan your Pride weekend accordingly. I am delighted to share this inaugural Pride Guide with you, the first of many we hope to produce in the years to come.

Happy Pride 2022, Atlanta!

Richard L. Eldredge

Editor

PRESENTING SPONSORS

Alphabet Soup

Atlanta Magazine - September 30, 2022

Trying to be inclusive but don’t know which letters to use? We can help.

Pride in Your Work

Rachel Garbus - September 30, 2022

Atlanta business leaders talk about inclusion.

Mr. Charlie Brown: In & Out of Drag

Richard L. Eldredge - September 30, 2022

In 1978, iconic drag performer Charlie Brown had moved to Atlanta from Tennessee and first became a star at the Sweet Gum Head drag bar. The result of those weekly conversations, tentatively titled Mr. Charlie Brown: My Fabulous 50-Year Career In and Out of Drag, is currently being shopped to prospective publishers. Here is an excerpt from the book’s opening chapter.

Atlanta’s Pride Parade

Richard L. Eldredge - September 30, 2022

Is it time for this venerable parade to return to its radical roots as a protest march?

Even More

Atlanta Magazine - September 30, 2022

Midtown’s Piedmont Park will once again play host to the annual Atlanta Pride festivities Saturday, October 8, and Sunday, October 9, with lots of live music and miles of booths throughout the park to shop, browse, eat, and drink your way through. Here are some additional events to put on your 2022 Pride calendar.

Celebrating 50 Years of Atlanta Pride

The first Atlanta Pride was held in Piedmont Park 50 years ago to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, which took place after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village. Atlanta’s gathering bore little resemblance to the lavish corporate-sponsored spectacles that have taken over Midtown each October (though going virtual this year due to the pandemic). In the summer of 1970, few were willing to march on a public sidewalk holding aloft an “Equal Rights for Gays” sign, as homosexuality was both illegal and grounds for termination from most jobs. The American Psychiatric Association wouldn’t remove homosexuality from its catalogue of psychiatric disorders until 1973.