The “Love at First Fight!” exhibition is currently on view at the Schwules Museum, one of the world’s first LGBTQ+ museums.

Sarah Blesener

Schwules Museum

One of the world’s first LGBTQ+ museums, Schwules (Gay) Museum opened in 1985 and remains a touchstone of queer history in Berlin. Its rotating exhibitions delve into everything from trans visibility to queer resistance under Nazi rule. The museum collaborates with artists and academics from across the LGBTQ+ spectrum, offering an ever-evolving portrait of queer life in Berlin and beyond.
Address: Lützowstr.73, 10785 Berlin

Berlin by night

Hafen

Hafen (“harbor”) has been a safe mooring for the city’s LGBTQ+ community for over thirty years. Located on arguably Berlin’s gayest street, it’s a place where locals greet each other by name as they spill out onto the sidewalk. Regular events range from pub quizzes to inclusive football screenings. Inside, it’s snug and unfussy, with red walls and a long wooden bar—perfect for striking up a chat.
Address: Motzstr. 19, 10777 Berlin

Beloved Berlin nightclub SO36 hosts Gayhane, a queer dancy party, on a monthly basis.

prokura nepp/SO36

SO36

This is an iconic venue rooted in punk counterculture, with a half-century of history of supporting Berlin’s LGBTQ+ community. Located in Kreuzberg, SO36 hosts the legendary Gayhane nights, where a Turkish, Arabic, and South Asian soundtrack is matched by a diverse queer audience from across the city and the world. It’s multicultural, electrifying, and defiantly authentic.
Where: Oranienstr. 190, 10999 Berlin

Alaska Bar

Tucked into a quiet Neukölln corner, Alaska is a kitsch-filled cocktail bar with a laid-back, queer-friendly atmosphere. Though not exclusively LGBTQ+, it’s beloved by the community for its inclusive vibe, vegan tapas, and house-infused cocktails. On weekends, expect pop-up gigs, art shows, or experimental drag performances.
Address: Reuterstr. 85, Neukölln, 12053 Berlin

Girl’s Town

Berlin’s queer nightlife isn’t all megaclubs. Girl’s Town was created for queer women and trans and nonbinary people, and remains an example of word-of-mouth Berlin at its best. This roving party pops up every few weeks (check their Instagram for updates) at venues across Kreuzberg and Neukölln, including summer beach bar takeovers. Expect hip-hop, R&B, bass-heavy sets, and performances from local queer artists. The vibe is inclusive, consent-led, and joyfully familiar.
Address: Varies across Kreuzberg and Neukolln

MonGay at Babylon Cinema

In the same cinema that screened East Germany’s first gay movie (which debuted on the night the Wall fell), Mondays are now reserved for queer films. Hugely popular with Berlin’s LGBTQ+ crowd, the series mixes mainstream hits, cult classics, and indie favorites. German movies carry English subtitles. Occasional special events—think screenings of Cabaret with live orchestra—make it a standout.
Address: Rosa-Luxemburgstr. 30, 10178 Berlin

LGBTQ+ Festivals

Easter Berlin, which takes place in mid-March or April, is Europe’s biggest leather gathering. Thousands head to Berlin for themed parties, workshops, and the Mister Leather Berlin contest. A similar scene returns in September for Folsom Europe, a kink festival. In May or June, keep an eye out for Queer History Month, when cultural institutions and grassroots groups spotlight intersectional queer stories through talks, exhibitions, and performances. Also in spring, XPosed covers four days of international queer cinema, from contemporary documentaries to rediscovered classics to, experimental animations, with screenings in indie venues citywide. Later in the year, Soura (‘image” in Arabic) focuses on LGBTQ+ movies from South Asia and North Africa. Both festivals include director talks and filmmaker Q&As.

Christopher Street Day in late July is Berlin’s flagship Pride event, dating back to 1979. The parade runs from Kurfürstendamm to Brandenburg Gate, followed by citywide street parties. The lead-up includes Schöneberg’s Gay & Lesbian Street Festival. Come winter, the great tradition of German Christmas markets gets a queer twist thanks to Berlin’s LGBTQ+ holiday market, which sits in the heart of Schöneberg. Expect queer-run stalls, DJs, drag shows, and plenty of glühwein.

The hard evidence can be found in the city’s state archives, just past the gate of Santa Croce. Open to the public (though in-person registration is required), these archives contain documents dating back to the eighth century. During a research visit, I reviewed a massive, leather-wrapped ledger, now over 500 years old, where I found the names of thousands of men, all accused of sodomy during the city’s Renaissance heyday. One of them was Leonardo da Vinci, who was accused in 1476 of engaging the services of a male sex worker at the age of 26. And he wasn’t the only celebrated artist whose name is in such a ledger: Sandro Botticelli faced his own accusations; sculptor Benvenuto Cellini was convicted twice for sodomy.

It’s well-documented that 15th-century Florence was a European locus of queer sex and culture. Surviving records describe a city where, as historian Michael Rocke writes in Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, men had sex in “nearly all of the thirty to forty taverns and inns and in the several public baths spread throughout the city” as well as in “alleys, streets, or fields around taverns.” A thriving sex trade among men soliciting men centered in the Baldracca, the city’s proto-red light district. Even the Duomo itself was a frequent site for hookups. On the balconies and passageways leading up to the cathedral’s dome, men were often found “kissing each other and giving each other the tongue”—so much so that public access to the cupola was eventually banned.

Today, there’s little trace of this gay history. While Brunelleschi’s famed dome is once again open to the public, that seedy Baldracca neighborhood was razed in the mid-16th century to build the Uffizi, now visited by over 5 million art-seekers a year. In the museum’s collection are famous works like Da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi; Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, and a muscular, barely-clothed St. Sebastian, that early adopted gay icon, by the painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi—better known as Il Sodoma (yes, for the reasons you might imagine). Rarely, however, do the many guides in the museum mention Leonardo or Botticelli’s sodomy accusations, or that Michelangelo, the creator of David himself, had written thirty love poems dedicated to a young nobleman. (“This, lord, has happened to me since I saw you: a bitter sweetness, a yes-and-no feeling moves me,” he wrote. “Certainly it must have been your eyes.”) The true, queer history of Florence is often forgotten, relegated to footnotes.

The closest thing I can compare all those hurdles to is the series of arduous trials Indiana Jones has to complete in The Last Crusade—except that, instead of finding the Holy Grail on the other side, you get to fly coach. And clearing those obstacles in the mid 2010s as a trans woman who had legally changed her name but couldn’t update the gender marker on her Georgia driver’s license was complicated and exhausting, especially given how frequently I had to do it.

First, I would book a ticket but had to select “male” as my legal gender. I would walk up to the TSA checkpoint with an ID that had a feminine-presenting photo and my name on it, but also an “M,” so I’d hand over a Disability Notification Card as well that explained my “health condition.” After that, I would opt out of the full-body scanner, which meant waiting upwards of 15 minutes for a TSA agent to give me a pat-down. I count myself lucky that I didn’t experience much of the harassment, abuse, and invasive searches so many trans people have gone through, though there were certainly a few uncomfortable encounters.

In those days, I considered it a miracle to see other trans people at the gate for my flight—especially trans women who, due to the effects of our initial puberty, are often more visually noticeable. Whenever it happened, I wanted to rush up to them and celebrate having made it through the hell that was airport security. Of course I didn’t, because the last thing either of us wanted in those moments was even more attention. Still, we were here, in the inner sanctum—a place we weren’t supposed to be. The thrill of it was almost enough to make up for those times I had a too-tight connection in Charlotte.

Travel got easier for me over time, in part due to my physical transition and in part due to political changes. I found out I could change the gender marker on my passport without surgery due to a little-known 2010 policy, which soon made presenting my ID a non-issue. And after I got bottom surgery in 2014, I took a deep breath and walked through a full-body scanner for the first time ever. Pat-downs are now, mercifully, a distant memory. Advocacy from trans travelers has since pressed the TSA to make even more changes, like introducing a gender-neutral algorithm for the full-body scanners in June 2023 (though reports of harassment and false alarms persist).

Even more so, spotting people like me at the airport has gone from being a once-in-a-blue-moon phenomenon to an ordinary and even expected occurrence. Hell, departing from my home airport of SEA-TAC in Seattle, I’ll sometimes find myself sitting next to a trans woman on my flight out, which feels surreal. She’s usually younger than me, and I hope she has had an easier time accessing airline travel than my history reflects, just like I faced fewer challenges than my trans forebears. Most of all, I hope she has fun playing Zelda.

It’s a curious thing, queer travel: When I’m at home, my queerness is an inalienable part of me, a concrete fact; but when I go abroad it activates like a magnet, drawing me close to certain people and places, drawing those people and places closer to me. It’s a joy that borders on the ecstatic, to find yourself—and others like yourself—wherever you are. So if you must travel, I recommend being gay while doing it. It’s not for everyone, but it can really lighten things up.

Queer travel is an ancient human tradition, the subject of films from chosen family travels in Under the Tuscan Sun to drag queens hitting the road in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar; Transamerica’s mother-son road trip to Pirates of the Caribbean’s polyamory cruise. More recently, it’s become an economy of scale: It’s now a $200 billion dollar slice of the trillion-dollar global tourism market, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association. These dollars are generated by cruises, walking tours, resorts, weddings and honeymoons, and Pride celebrations—with more opportunities doubtless being invented as you read this. Soon enough, I expect even straight people will travel queerly, if the contours of modern tourism bear any resemblance to those of popular culture or the present zeitgeist. (You know how everyone’s now saying “very demure, very mindful”? A trans woman came up with the trend on TikTok.)

Belonging to any segment of the LGBTQ+ world comes with its own rituals and routines. Travel often involves leaving them behind—for better or for worse—and ushers in a whole new set of rules. This is where the golden rules of queer travel come in, informed by a survey of 15 queer travelers and experts. Sure, they’re helpful principles to travel by, whether you’re queer or not. But these are for us, by us. Let them be your beacons wherever your travels take you.

Vietnam gets an Equality index of 54 out of 100 from Equaldex, a score which is dragged down by the discrete nature of the culture more so than prevalent stigma.

Just Filip/Unsplash

1. Get culturally acquainted

Rule number one of queer travel is to know where you’re going. This is important for travelers of all kinds, but for some, it is an urgent matter of safety and security. There is a pervasive fear among queer travelers about encountering prejudice, or straight-up danger, when visiting an unfamiliar space or society, so even though tourists—queer or not—are often not held to the same set of rules as locals, it’s good practice (and a balm for worries) to get concrete and factual information about a place, particularly its laws and attitudes toward LGBTQ+ citizens.

Equaldex is a digital tool that assigns each nation an “Equality” score between 1 and 100, and you can customize your search to see where things like gay marriage or gender-affirming care are legal and available. That said, data points are just one part of the picture, and these cultural nuances often look different in practice. For example, Dan Dao, a travel and food writer who regularly contributes to Condé Nast Traveler, is based in Vietnam, Equality index 54. “There’s a Pride parade, but there’s also a mind-your-business culture,” Dao says. Public displays of affection, for one example, can be uncomfortable whether you’re a straight or gay couple. “It’s a very, very open place,” Dao continues. “But even in a place that’s safe, it’s important to know what those norms are.”

2. Stay gay

For Brandon Berkson, the CEO of the hospitality guide Hotels Above Par, the downiest comfort he can find in a property involves some third-party authentication of its queer-inclusive values. He looks at Misterb&b or for the approval seal of Travel Advocacy Group (TAG), which is spun off from the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association. “Both are goldmines for finding chic, LBGTQ+-friendly stays,” Berkson says. Or you can book queer-owned and operated hotels directly, and these tend to abound in gay sanctuary cities (Berkson recommends Maxwell Residences in Puerto Vallarta.)

3. Find the pharmacy

“I tend to find the LGBTQ+ pharmacy wherever I’m going,” Dao adds, referring to places where travelers can find medications like PrEP or test for STIs. “So I have peace of mind, even if I never go.” He uses the Gay Passport, which publishes detailed city guides alongside photos of hunky male tourists. In addition to itinerary recommendations, you can also find information about local clinics and pharmacies, down to a typical cost quote for STI and HIV testing.

4. Download a VPN

Anyone can have a virtual private network. It’s a little digital plug-in that lets you circumvent a local network by teleporting your online session to anywhere else in the world. I downloaded ExpressVPN before I moved to Japan so I could continue to watch The Real Housewives on Peacock, but my friend Justin Fenner, who covers grooming for the Robb Report, says chicly that it was “the only way to get any work done” abroad, should you find yourself, say, in Beijing and need to access the New York Times. Other intrepid friends have used VPNs to access dating apps in countries where they’re blocked or restricted, but this qualifies as very risky behavior, and not the kind I can personally endorse.

In an unusual move from the State Department, a “worldwide caution” travel alert was issued on May 17, warning of “increased potential for foreign-terrorist-organization-inspired violence against LGBTQI+ persons and events.” The blanket global warning for US citizens traveling overseas comes ahead of Pride Month and advises travelers to “stay alert in locations frequented by tourists, including Pride celebrations and venues frequented by LGBTQI+ persons.”

The broad advisory is unlike standard State Department issuances, which grade the safety levels associated with traveling to specific countries on a scale ranging from Level 1 (“Exercise Normal Precautions”) to Level 4 (“Do Not Travel.”) A similarly wide worldwide travel advisory was last issued in October, warning against demonstrations or violent actions against US citizens and interests amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

The latest alert “feels more broad than anything we’ve seen, but it’s also just another reminder that LGBTQ+ travelers are targets in certain parts of the world,” John Tanzella, the president and CEO of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA), tells Condé Nast Traveler.

The advisory comes exactly a week after the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a public service announcement about foreign terror organizations’ potentially targeting upcoming Pride gatherings in June (the FBI did not distinguish between domestic and international threats in the May 10 announcement). The State Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Sadly, it’s not all that uncommon to hear warnings for LGBTQI+ travelers lately,” says Miles Mitchinson, owner of gay adventure travel company Detours, pointing to last summer’s Canadian advisory against travel to certain parts of the US and the UK’s warnings last month about discrimination in parts of Greece.

How LGBTQ+ travelers can stay safe

“Traveling as an LGBTQ+ person always carries a certain degree of risk,” says Tanzella, of the IGLTA. “It is the reality of our world, with more than 60 countries criminalizing our relationships—and a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world.”

Despite those challenges, he adds that “it’s crucial not to let fear completely stifle travel,” noting that the community should “prioritize vigilance” when traveling, particularly during Pride Month.

The State Department’s advisory suggests US travelers enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), which sends alerts in precarious situations and can inform the local embassy of your whereabouts during an emergency. The social media sites for the State Department, such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), also provide real-time updates.

Both Tanzella and Mitchinson say it’s important for LGBTQ+ travelers to research the laws and cultural norms of their travel destinations prior to departure. Country-specific guides to regulations around the world can be found on the State Department website under each country’s travel page in the “Local Laws & Special Circumstances” section, which has a subsection with resources specifically for LGBTQ+ travelers.

Additionally, Mitchinson suggests the International Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association travel map as another reliable resource. Planning trips with LGBTQ+ travel experts (IGLTA’s own network includes more than 13,000 travel professionals) can also offer travelers an extra level of assurance, Tanzella says. He adds that people attending large-scale Pride events in June can also reach out to the event organizers with questions about security measures.

“We have long been a community whose first instinct is not necessarily to retreat, hide, or cancel all travel plans,” Mitchinson says. By connecting with reputable resources, staying on top of the news, and following advice to stay alert, he says individuals can make the decisions that best align with their own risk tolerance.

Tanzella agrees, with this advice for LGBTQ+ travelers: “Don’t be afraid of the world, but always research information specific to your travels.”

“Fire Island is a very special place, especially for queer people,” Jimi Urquiaga, a.k.a. Missleidy Rodriguez, told me. While that might seem like a statement of the obvious, Urquiaga has experienced the island from an atypical vantage point: for the past two summers, they’ve been packing up their life in New York City as a costume designer, producer, creative director and drag queen to come work at the Pines’ plant shop, CAMP. Urquiaga called me on their break, sitting behind a desk at the plant shop, with a view overlooking the bay. “So that’s the fantasy,” they said with a laugh after describing their surroundings.

For the most part, though, Fire Island has been a fantasy for the whitest, wealthiest, and fittest members of the LGBTQ+ community. And in looking back through archival photos, Urquiaga said they’ve rarely spotted people of color, with the exception of legendary DJ Lina Bradford. While an exclusionary environment on Fire Island certainly exists, Urquiaga estimates that 95% of their coworkers are people of color (per their own estimate). And after a particularly special season working on the island, which they described as “adult summer camp,” they wanted to attempt to correct that archival erasure. The resulting photo essay, “The Pines Summer of ‘23,” exists as a time capsule of a magical summer shared with their coworkers-turned-second family.

Once we made it to Cape Town and settled in at the Silo Hotel, we sat down together and looked at what was ahead of us: an early-morning motorcycle ride around Table Mountain and then wine tasting, a helicopter ride above the Okavango Delta in Botswana to our first safari camp Duba Plains, then a mobile safari in the Moremi Game Reserve with Barclay Stenner Safaris. I felt like I was looking in a mirror. We were both sitting with our legs crossed, leaning back in our chairs with our arms behind our heads. I quickly changed positions.

This kept happening during our trip. When we first met our guide, Carlos, at Duba Plains Camp, we both walked up to him in the exact same manner which I normally approach people, with intense eye contact and my right hand outstretched, practically bumping into one another to get there first. Later, after spending the morning with a herd of elephants and catching a thrilling moment where a pack of African Dogs was hunting a Kudu, we met up with Map Ives, a guide and conservationist, for lunch to learn more about the Delta. As Ives was explaining how the yearly floods create a lush and completely unique natural landscape year after year, I kept getting caught up by my own natural phenomenon: my father and I unconsciously have the same body language.

The following days played out in the routine of most safaris: 5:30 a.m. wake up for the morning game drive, lunch at 1 p.m., free time until 4 p.m., when we then went out for an evening game drive, and back to camp for dinner around 8 p.m. This structure worked well for its purpose—to see as much wildlife as possible, which we certainly did, spotting nearly everything in our field guides. But it left little time for the heart-to-heart conversations I had envisioned having with my father, forcing us to become vulnerable and mend some emotional damage. And when we had time in the afternoons, my father wanted to rest. 

This ended up being a blessing in disguise, though. As the days continued, and I sipped my rooibos tea in the afternoons while my dad napped, thinking back on a morning spent observing the beating heart of the natural world, I not only felt my own relationship trauma floating away in the dusty warm breeze, but the need to hash out my childhood qualms felt more and more trivial.

On the bush plane to the Moremi Game Reserve for our final leg of the trip, I asked my father if he noticed our body language similarities. “Of course I have,” he quipped, laughing. “You’ve always been so similar to me.” This caught me off guard. “No!” was my first reaction. Then I realized how much I’d been resisting this notion.

Curious to test out a new mindset, one in which I try not to let our similarities irk me, I felt hopeful to bond in a more natural way. But shortly after settling in at the Barclay and Stenner Camp, a laboriously set up oasis deep in the national park complete with its own king-sized bed, bucket toilet, and pull shower, my dad fell ill with a cold.

The next day, I found myself without my father, being led by the camp’s operators and guides, John Barclay and James Stenner, on a morning drive. We found a pride of lions and I was astounded when a young male cannoned out of the sage and playfully awoke his sister. She started stretching her back by placing her paws on a tree in an almost standing downward facing dog position, and her brother quickly wandered over and copied her. Watching their instincts and family dynamics expanded my own realization the day before on the bush plane: Humans (as animals) learn and grow through imitation and shared experiences. It was a spectacular sight, and one, I realized, I wished I was sharing with my father—even if we looked the same squinting through the binoculars to view it.

Brammer agrees, saying, if he and the celebrating couple were not close, “I would discreetly decline and only offer context if asked.” If pressed for information, Morgan says, she would offer gentle honesty about her safety concerns; couples know that not every invitee can attend, whether it’s due to an issue with scheduling, budget, or various personal reasons one might have.

If you RSVP “yes,” seek safe spaces at the destination

Should you decide to attend, do your research and identify places where you might stay or dine where you will feel safe. The same goes for any potential wedding guest—whether as a queer person, a person of color, a woman, whatever the case may be.

“You can choose to find your own accommodations in a more welcoming part of town, even if it’s not directly associated with the wedding venue,” says Matthieu Jost, the co-founder and CEO of misterb&b, a homesharing platform aimed towards queer people. “You can still support your loved ones during their special day while ensuring your own well-being.”

As a guest, it’s appropriate to ask the couple for their suggestions for queer-friendly spaces at the destination. They’re likely the ones who know the place best, and they (hopefully) want their guests to feel safe, too. Kristen Arnett, a book author and life-long Floridian who recently wrote an essay for Time about why she’s having her queer wedding in Florida, says she and her fiancée are being very purposeful about their wedding planning, given their own queerness, the queerness of their guests, and their love for Orlando’s queer community.

In addition to hiring only queer people and queer-owned businesses for the wedding—from the caterer to the photographer to the DJ—Arnett and her fiancée are proactively giving their guests recommendations for restaurants, shops, and lodging to try for their wedding weekend. “We feel like brand ambassadors for queer Florida,” Arnett says. “We’re always trying to curate an experience for people to come here anyway. It’s a big part of our wedding planning, asking ourselves, ‘What are the spaces that our guests would want to visit, or where they can feel good about coming to Florida?’”

Similarly, Jost suggests looking into the local queer businesses at the destination, and giving them the support they might need—just as they might be able to support you. Furthermore, engaging with a destination in this way as a visitor can possibly increase your understanding about the lived realities of a community under a particular political or social climate.

If you RSVP “no,” express your love another way

If you’re pressed for more information as to why you can’t attend, Jost advises expressing your gratitude for the invitation with grace. “Explain that your concern lies with how you feel visiting the destination itself, emphasizing that it is not a reflection on the couple or their wedding.”

After you RSVP, show your care and support in other ways. You were invited for a reason and, if you feel moved to do so, it doesn’t hurt to take an extra step and do something nice for the couple. “A card, some flowers, or an item from their wishlist would go a long way here,” Brammer says. “We live in wild times, regardless of your identity, and there are complications galore when it comes to travel and events. I like to think we can all be understanding with each other.”

As in all things, act with grace and compassion

Whatever you decide, your attendance as a guest has no material impact on the occasion: Two people are getting married whether you make it or not. They have their reasons for having their wedding in a particular place, and you have your reasons for being unable to go. Savage advises her clients as much. “My mantra for couples? The only thing that matters, at the end of the day, is that you get married. Everything else is details.”

San Francisco has been a haven for the LGBTQIA+ community since its free-wheeling frontier days in the 1850s, when cross-dressing and same-sex couplings were common practices among intimacy-starved Gold Rush miners. Queer-friendly saloons and dance halls that dotted its Barbary Coast red-light district in the following decade eventually gave way to bars and clubs like Mona’s, Finocchio’s, and Li-Po Lounge, which served San Francisco’s exploding LGBTQIA+ population, many of them ex-servicemen who were discharged from the military for being gay.

For its electrifying gay nightlife, far-out artists like Allen Ginsberg and The Cockettes, and groundbreaking gay-rights organizations (the Mattachine Society, Daughters of Bilitis, and the Society for Individual Rights), San Francisco was dubbed “The Gay Capital of America” by Life magazine in 1964.

Whenever queer freedoms were compromised by local politicians or police, the community was quick to jump off their bar stools and pick up protest signs. Three years before Stonewall, one of the first documented transgender uprisings in the U.S. occurred at Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin district.

As the gay liberation movement gained steam, the Castro district became ground zero for queer activism. Local camera shop owner Harvey Milk became the city’s first openly gay politician when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, famously fighting to defeat Proposition 6, which would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in California public schools. But even Milk’s assassination in 1978 and the subsequent AIDS epidemic couldn’t turn the tide in that century. In 2004, then-mayor Gavin Newsom permitted San Francisco City Hall to grant licenses to gay couples—an act that helped pave the way for the legalization of same-sex unions in all 50 states, which came in 2015.

Since the summer of 1970, San Francisco’s LGBTQIA+ community has held an annual parade and festival—part celebration, part protest—that’s known today as San Francisco Pride. If you’re looking to celebrate Pride in San Francisco this year while supporting gay businesses and causes at a time when queer rights remain at risk, here’s how (and where) to do it.

Rainbow flags line the Castro district—which has long been a community of activists. A giant rainbow flag on the corner of Castro and Market Streets is a monument to Gilbert Baker, who designed it and raised it for the first time in 1978.

Stefano Politi Markovina/Alamy

Where to watch the 2023 San Francisco Pride parade

The 53rd annual San Francisco Pride parade kicks off with San Francisco Dykes on Bikes this Sunday, June 25th, at 10:30 AM. Culminating at Civic Center, the two-hour parade with nearly 200 contingents includes hometown favorites Versaphere, Cheer San Francisco, and the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band.