Pride Schedule

Heat dampened attendance at this year's event, but Phoenix Pride is scheduled to continue to be held in April for the foreseeable future.

By Glenn Gullickson

The Village People performing at Phoenix Pride 2012

Pride plans to continue with April dates despite dip in 2012 festival attendance attributed to heat

Despite conducting this year's Phoenix Pride festival in record-breaking heat, the event will continue to be staged in April for the foreseeable future, according to Brandi Sokolosky, the organization's executive director.

Sokolosky acknowledged that the extreme heat during this year's festival played a role in a 15 percent decrease in attendance for the event.

But she said a variety of factors play into the decision to continue to hold the festival on the third full weekend in April.

"That is the date for years to come," she said. "It's the date that causes the least amount of problems."

In 2013, the 33rd annual festival will be held April 20-21 at Steele Indian School Park.

About 22,000 people attended the 2012 festival, Sokolosky said. That was down from 2011's attendance of about 26,000.

This year's attendance included 18,000 on the first day and 4,000 on the second day, she said.

Online ticket sales were the first indication that attendance would be down this year, with 7,100 tickets sold on the web compared to about 10,000 in 2011, Sokolosky said.

About 70 percent of festival tickets purchased online were used on the first day of the event, she said.

Bills are still coming in, but Sokolosky said she thinks that Pride covered its costs despite decreased gate receipts.

Sokolosky said she heard comments from some people who attended the parade, which opened the weekend's festivities, but were discouraged by the heat from continuing on to the festival. Others waited to go to the festival until evening to catch the headliners' acts, she said.

With temperatures passing the 100-degree mark for the first time in 2012 during festival weekend, some of those attending questioned whether future festivals should be conducted on an earlier date.

"The board will not move the event based on one or two comments. That's not the right way to do business," Sokolosky said. "We go more on a majority feeling. We have to do what's best for the community as a whole."

As it is, the Phoenix festival is one of the first major Prides on the calendar in the U.S., where many events are held in June, which is Gay Pride Month. The Phoenix festival was moved from June to April in the late 1990s to avoid the heat of the summer.

Desert heat recently forced another major local outdoor event to change its date when AIDS Walk Phoenix announced that starting this year the walk would move from the first weekend in October to a date two weeks later.

But Sokolosky said that changing dates for Pride is complicated. "There are probably 10 different factors that come into play when it comes to booking the festival," she said. "All of those factors are things we take into consideration. Every possible venue has been investigated, every date option has been investigated."

The festival can't be scheduled earlier in April because other community groups have events on those weekends, Sokolosky said. Another issue is avoiding Easter, which can fall on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25.

Sokolosky also noted that one of the major contractors that helps stage Pride is committed to work with Country Thunder, a music festival held earlier in April in Florence.

Then there are arrangements with the city for use of the park. The venue for Pride since 2004, the park isn't always available.

Sokolosky said that the 75-acre Steele Indian School is the largest park available as a site for Pride's five stages, hundreds of vendors and other attractions. "We would have to downsize our event to move it somewhere else," she said.

Moving the festival to an indoor venue has been considered, Sokoloky said. But the drawback is that venues like Memorial Coliseum at the fairgrounds or the Convention Center would hold on to the rights for the festival's food and beverage concessions, she said.

"That would limit our opportunity to give back to the community," Sokoloky said, noting that Pride's beverage program provides thousands of dollars to community groups that staff beverage stations.

In the planning leading up to this year's festival, Pride also considered whether to stage a one-day event, since attendance historically drops sharply on the second day.

Sokolosky said that the costs for things like tents and staging would be the same whether the festival is one or two days. To generate the necessary revenue, she said that a one-day festival would have to attract the same total attendance as a two-day event.

One change that is under consideration for future Prides is changing the day of the parade, Sokolosky said. Moving the parade to Sunday could help drive attendance at the festival on the day when fewer people show up at the park.

Sokolosky noted that the weather on Pride weekend is a roll of the dice. Weekends before and after this year's festival were cooler than Pride weekend.

Temperatures for the hottest Pride festival weekend in recent memory were unseasonably warm, with a high of 103 on April 21 and 105 on April 22. Sokolosky said her research found that the average high for the dates is 86.

Sokolosky said that there were few heat-related health incidents during the festival, with four people transported by ambulance from the park on the first day of the event.

"It seemed like people were being smarter about hydrating and staying out of the sun," Sokolosky said.

Among the things that may have helped those attending deal with the heat were water attractions and more and larger tents covering key attractions.

Sokolosky said that a reduced budget for other expenses, including entertainment, helped to provide funds for the tents. Even the day after the festival, Pride planners were discussing how to make more use of tents for shade next year, she said. -E

Pride notes:

Karamba Nightclub's float won the parade's Best of the Parade award. The audience award, which is determined in a text vote, went to the Starbucks float. Best floats were Krazy Latino, first; Plazma, second; and Movie Bears, third. Best vehicles were Arizona Roller Derby, first; Frito Lay, second; and PFLAG, third. Best walking groups were the Grand Canyon Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, first; Cirque de Soleil, second; and Unitarian Universalist Congregations of Maricopa County, third.

Despite performing on the second day of the festival, the Village People appeared to attract the biggest crowd to the main stage, Sokolosky said. The festival opened two hours later than in the past on the second day and the crowd didn't appear to materialize until about 6 p.m., she said.

On the first day, country singer Chely Wright was the big draw on the main stage. "There just seemed to be an outpouring of love for her," Sokolosky said.

A video screen behind the festival's main stage was new this year. Among its messages was the kickoff of an appeal to text donations for Pride's community grants program.

After bottlenecks at the festival entrance in recent years, creating a second entrance this year was considered a success. "That was the best thing we've ever done," Sokolosky said. "It really helped cut down the lines."

Sokolosky said she was pleased that the Pride parade got extensive local media coverage, perhaps because Mesa police officers were marching. "That put the parade on the map, and we're really excited about that," she said.

One thing missing from this year's parade was an international grand marshal. Sokolosky said Pride decided to forgo sending a representative to InterPride, the international Pride organization's meeting which was held in Belgium, where the individual would have been selected.

Arizona temperature map

Statistics show that Phoenix can be hot, hot, hot during festival season

If it seems that Phoenix heats up just in time for the Pride festival in mid-April and doesn't cool off until after the Rainbows Festival in early October, you may not be too far off the mark.

Here are some statistics about the heat from the National Weather Service.

The average date for the first 100-degree day in Phoenix is May 12. Temperatures have reached the century mark as early as March 26 (in 1988). The latest it's hit 100 is June 18 (in 1913).
The average date for the last 100 degree day is Sept. 28. The earliest that Phoenix has recorded its last 100-degree day of the year is Sept. 2 (in 1904). The latest a 100-degree temperature has been recorded is Oct. 23 (in 2003).