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Good evening Columbus Underground, how are things?
I was just passing along some information in regards to 2009's Pride events. A friend, Scott is in training with them to be one of the primary organizers of the event itself. Of course, it is quite early to be thinking about this, however there are several tentative changes in the works which are just now being finalized in the annual prep meetings for it (which usually take place in January).
As some people may know, the place where the parade usually ends, Bicentennial Park, is being updated. There are many festivals in town which are being re-routed as a result of this in addition to Pride. As such, the new parade route will be -from- the Courthouse to Goodale Park. Since Goodale is usually where ComFest is each year, Pride itself is being pushed up a week to the weekend of June 19th - 21st. This is a break from the 'traditional' template of cities in each state having their Pride events from smallest town --> largest city over the course of the four weekends, however Columbus and Cleveland are fairly close in population size that is not a large difference.
With vendors now being able to possibly have a place at both festivals, this will mean an increase in potential merchants at Pride. This will be helpful as the cost to reserve Goodale Park is a bit more than Bicentennial (Goodale is, technically, larger).
The main part of Pride itself is being structured as a two day event. The parade will still be on Saturday, as usual. Two previous events, "Dancin' in the Streets" ('geared towards gay guys') and "Rockin' in the Streets" ('geared towards lesbians') will now be combined into one event. Some of you may remember these events as taking place either next door to the old Union Station (now East Village) and / or in the parking lot of Axis. From what has been calculated, these events broke even, profit-wise, so Axis believed it was sort of redundant to have both of them when they could just combine everything and keep their regular business open.
The working title for the Friday event, set to be held in Goodale Park as well, is still "Rockin' in the Streets", which is funny as technically it is now in a park. In addition, the event will be of general interest to the gay community as a whole, as opposed to exclusively lesbian-oriented. The title of this may change over the course of the year.
Some other changing aspects include the colorful, used-as-admission dog tags. A tentative decision is to discontinue these and have them only as "collectables". A new form will be a wristband. There will be different-colored ones for each of the two days.
Drink stands (e.g. beer etc) are the top profit-gatherers, after any ticket prices, for this and most events. As such, the plan is to allow only those people with wristbands will be able to purchase alcohol on-premise.
With Pride happening the next-to-last weekend in June and ComFest happening the last, it will be interesting to see how attendance is reflected. A percent of people likely went to both event A and B, since they both happened to be during the same time. What shall happen this year? We cannot say!
In any case, I was just passing along some "new this year" information.
Okay. Take care!
* Geoff
Launched in August 2010, TheMetropreneur.com is a local online resource devoted to small business development and entrepreneurship. Its aim is to tell the stories of Central Ohio's business community, foster regional economic development and assist entrepreneurs with its resource-heavy focus.