STEVENS POINT – Organizers of the city’s LGBTQ Pride celebration are not short on ambition.
Stevens Point’s Pride festival returns from noon to 9 p.m. on June 12 at Pffifner Pioneer Park after a physical hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Organized by Point Pride, a group sponsored by CREATE Portage County, this year’s event will be double in length and size than the last celebration in 2019.
June is LGBTQ Pride month, which originated as protests led by Black transgender women, in response to a 1969 violent police raid of New York’s Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar.
Headlining the event are drag performers Sissy LaLa and Bryanna Banx$ as well musical performances from groups such as Falling Flat. Other performers include Croi Croga Aerial Arts. The event will feature alcohol, food trucks and a local vendor and artisan market.
Ryan Goszkowicz, event director for Point Pride, said they have tentative plans for an afterparty at Main Street Taps, which has frequently hosted drag shows in the area. He estimates the event will feature 20 to 30 queer performers from across the state and nearby Minnesota.
“To finally have the CDC say that things are finally lightening up a bit for people to come to our event is incredible,” he said. “I want to be outside. I want to talk to people. The response we’ve been getting on Facebook has been very cool. My phone is constantly is buzzing.”
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Point Pride organizers last year held a small, prerecorded online event as the pandemic paused the group’s efforts to keep a Pride celebration going. The pandemic gave Goszkowicz and his group an extra year to plan the event.
“It was a blessing in disguise,” he said. “I think we were a little over our head the first time around.
Goszkowicz headlined 2019’s Pride event at Pfiffner as drag queen Sissy LaLa. When he found out the group, Central Wisconsin Equality, that put together that year’s festival folded, he knew he had to step up for his hometown.
“I thought ‘I’m not going to let this not happen’,” he said.
He, his brother Rob, Reggie Eaton and Martha Bawara came together last year to pick up where the previous group left off. They started by working with CREATE’s Greg Wright to secure a nonprofit status so they could solicit donations from businesses. He said he couldn’t be more proud of the group’s work.
The nonprofit status they acquired through CREATE was critical in being able to convince businesses to donate and sponsor the event, such as Agora Makers Market, Brody Designs, Rookies Sports Pub and Portesi.
Goszkowicz said part of the festival will include a drag show for first-time performers, judged by himself, Banx$, Mayor Mike Wiza and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point mascot Stevie Pointer.
“The entire feeling of the event is love and support and having it be your first time to perform is incredible,” Goszkowicz said. “It just gives them an outlet.”
The idea for a campy contest for first-time performers came from the overwhelming feedback he experienced after 2019’s drag show as well as media coverage, such as a story about the rise in drag queen shows at local bars in the region by USA TODAY-Network Wisconsin. As more bars, such as Main Street Taps, brought in drag queens that attracted full audiences, people told him they didn’t think it was possible to have that response to queer culture in the region.
Goszkowicz said he hopes this year’s event will help establish Stevens Point as a perennial hotspot for LGBTQ events in central Wisconsin.
But for fellow event organizer Eaton, Pride this year is about having survived 2020.
“For me personally, holding Pride after everything gives us a chance to feel positive after a year of vitriol. Specifically for the LGBTQ+ community and BIPOC community to be able to celebrate themselves and not be at a protest,” Eaton said. “It’s nice to have that positive event happening but also being able to express ourselves as the people we are without hate or backlash, hopefully.”
Contact reporter Alan Hovorka at 715-345-2252 or ahovorka@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ajhovorka.
