Columbus Pride Parade and Festival is an annual event in support of the LGBTQ community. It is held in downtown Columbus along the Scioto Mile by Genoa and Bicentennial Park.

Grand Marshall Nina West

Impression

We all have our own thoughts in political, religious realms. We here at VisualOhio are no different. We strive our best to cover events in Ohio that are of interest to our readership.

So, let’s discuss the festival and parade as we would any other event. We don’t think that our readers would want us to write it any other way.

We’ve never been to the Pride Parade/Festival before so the first thing that we concern ourselves with is parking. We were not going to get there until right before the parade started, so our plan was to park a little further out from the event location and we used the COGO Bike Stations to ride in from around the Scioto Audubon Metro Park area to Genoa Park. There was a drop off COGO station there right behind COSI.

From there we walked over to High and Rich Street and found a location along the parade route. We tucked ourselves a few hundred feet from the corner of High and Rich where the parade walkers were going. It turned out to be a perfect spot!

From out vantage point, we could see most of the major floats and then were able to concentrate on the people walking right in front of us.

The streets were stacked with people looking on to see the parade line

No matter what you believe, we feel that one universal truth exists. We should all love one another, and loving your neighbor has never caused anyone any harm.

This parade had many individual, church, corporate supporters.

The importance of events like these is knowing that no matter who you are, where you are from…color, race, religion do not matter. What matters is the acceptance of people for who they are. We need to come together more, have open, honest dialog about our perceived differences. We think that you might find that we all have way more in common than we do differences.

Not only were the people in the parade a pleasure to talk with and watch, but there were plenty of awesome people watching the parade and at the festival.

People in the parade line and in the crowds were giving out “free hugs”. That was a very popular activity, being able to express your love for others freely, even to complete strangers.

Whenever we go to events, we always try and get the pulse of the attendees. This event succeeded in making every single person feel welcome, included and accepted. If that is all this event did, then count it as a success. However, it did not stop there. The festival section, which runs from Friday to Sunday, included community support with health screenings, and other types of assistance as well as entertainment.