Bigger Crowds, More Vendors Expected at East Lansing’s Fifth Annual Pride Celebration
Saturday marks the fifth annual East Lansing Pride celebration and the city is ramping up the festivities in anticipation of growing attendance.
Each year the event gets bigger both in what is being offered and featured, as well as new crowds being drawn in, East Lansing Community and Economic Development Specialist Matt Apostle told East Lansing Info ahead of this weekend’s celebration.
With about 60 vendors expected at the event as well as expanded drag story time and the addition of a catwalk for drag performances, Apostle said the city has been working for months to accommodate growing interest in East Lansing Pride.
The event will run from 4 to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 13 in the city’s downtown and will feature community art activities, live music, free giveaways and more. After the main festival, attendees 21 years old or older will be welcome to attend the official East Lansing Pride Afterparty at Landshark Bar & Grill, where drag performers who competed for a crown during the day will attend.
In order to continue to build the East Lansing Pride drag competition, the current titleholder Fantasthma, an alum of East Lansing High School, has been performing in shows over the last year helping to raise money for Pride and give more artists in the area an opportunity to perform in East Lansing, Apostle said.
For the first time in the event’s history, there will be a keynote speaker, Apostle said. Host for FOX 47 News Bobby Hoffman is scheduled to give the keynote address for Saturday’s event at 6 p.m., before the Open Floor Drag Show which will run intermittently until 8:45 when the two top contenders will compete in a lip sync battle to determine the winner.
Live music performances will run throughout the day’s event with alternative rock band Home Grown Homunculus performing from 4 to 5:30 p.m. and R&B soul artist Alise King performing in between drag performances from around 7:15 to 7:45 p.m.
East Lansing Pride is a fun event put on by the Downtown Management Board and the Spartan Housing Cooperative with several sponsoring entities, but it also provides an opportunity to educate the public on the values the city has held for decades, Apostle said.
In 1972 East Lansing became the first municipality in the nation to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in city government, 50 years before the state of Michigan enshrined such protections into the state’s civil rights laws.
“That’s been a big priority of ours, especially these past two years, we’ve been putting on this giant fun party, but we also want to make sure that that educational advocacy piece is there, and people are … remembering the importance of pride in East Lansing and the history of LGBTQ+ advocacy in the city of East Lansing specifically.”