My Day at Pride 2024
Amy-Louise, a first year history student at York Saint John University, going to Pride for the first time.
I had never gone to a Pride event before. Coming from a small town on the south coast, the closest events were always an hour or sometimes more away from me and travel wasn’t easy. However, this year, a Pride event was taking place practically on my doorstep.
I met up with my friends at around 11:30am, where we made sure we had everything we could need for the day (water, sun cream, medication etc) and then set off the Minster.
The March/Parade started at 12pm, and lasted around an hour as we walked through the streets of York towards the Racecourse. During this, there was music, bubbles, singing and chanting. As we walked, many people stood on the side lines taking photographs or cheering and waving banners and flags. Walking in the crowd was an immense feeling.
We reached the Racecourse around 1pm, where there were market stalls, funfair rides and live music. We went on a few rides and looked at some stalls. The stalls sold a range of things from crystals, pin badges, croc charms and items of clothing. The stall we spent the most time at was a ‘decorate your own pronoun badge’ where we were given a blank sticker circle and a range of coloured pens and stickers. I decorated mine to have a dinosaur on it.
By 3pm we decided to stand in one of the many queues for some lunch/dinner. We chose an American style truck. Whilst there wasn’t a lot of vegetarian options here, my friends (who aren’t vegetarian) said that their hotdogs and burgers were very good. I stuck simple with some fries.
By 5pm the music and rides were still going. However, due to being in the heat for so long I retired with a different group of friends and headed home on the bus.
Overall, it was a great day out. It was fascinating to see so many pride flags and talk to so many different people about their identities. I had a lot of fun and the weather really helped the day to feel better as the sun was shining all day long!
I would love to go to Pride again next year to be able to see everything all over again as it left a strong impression on me as someone who had never seen an event like this before.
I had so much fun spending the day with my friends celebrating our Pride and seeing how many people showed up to an event like this one.
