The 49th annual Twin Cities Pride festival will be held at Loring Park this weekend in Minneapolis. It will feature local vendors, food courts, a beer garden, music stages, and a spa. I'm gonna leave the details to my guest, Felix Foster, the chair of the board of directors of Twin Cities Pride.

Jill Riley: I'm glad that Twin Cities Pride is back — a little later than the usual June weekend. So what's all happening in the Twin Cities in terms of Pride this weekend? We really want to just give people a heads up that that it's still going on. It's still a go. It's a little bit later this year.

Felix Foster: Yeah. Just about everything that would normally be happening in June is happening this weekend, with the exception of the parade. [We're] not doing that this year, just due to time constraints in getting it all planned after the COVID restrictions were lifted, but we're doing the big festival in the park all weekend, we'll have vendors, music, food, the beer garden will be there. And I know a lot of the bars and restaurants and places that tend to do big events for pride weekend are still doing their their parties and the drag shows and all the normal things you've come to expect.

I'm sure there were a lot of unknowns, right down to the last minute.

Oh, yeah. We were in the thick of trying to plan similarly to what we did last year, some kind of virtual or with masks and how to deal with social distancing. And then when all the changes were coming out, we were like, oh, I guess we can do something interesting. So we tried to pull it together, basically, within the last four to six weeks, and it looks like it's gonna be great.

There are Pride celebrations all over the country. Felix, what is really special and unique about Twin Cities Pride?

The thing I always kind of try to emphasize is that we really try to make it for everyone and accessible to everyone. I believe it stands, still, [that] we are the largest free Pride in the United States. A lot of the other big Pride festivals similar to ours have like a cover or event-based ticket sales, and ours, it's just free for anyone to come on down to Loring Park and enjoy what we have to offer.

With the pandemic last summer, so many things were shut down. Is there anything really special that we can expect in terms of Pride this year? Or is it just that great feeling of, we're back, we're gathering in the same space?

We're very excited to get back and get into the space and be able to see people in person. I think that that's always one of the strengths of Pride: bringing people together and getting to see people that you might not get to see very often. That'll be really great after all this time, but we are [also] trying to do a few special things. A big battle of the bands that we led up to last year virtually, trying to get that in person. So that'll be Saturday at 2:00. And then at noon on Saturday, we're having for the first time kind of a commencement ceremony, an Indigenous drum circle, which will be really, really special. So we're excited to get people come out for that. And then just a great lineup on our stages the rest of the two days.

Did I see that you're going to be offering vaccinations on site for people?

Yes, the Minnesota Department of Health will be on site offering free COVID vaccines and also might be giving away some gift cards and other things [to] people who come out for that. So go ahead and get back into it if you haven't yet.

For anyone who hasn't been to Twin Cities Pride before, what's your advice for folks who want to check it out?

Come on down, bring friends. Drink a lot of water. Bring a water bottle; you'll probably be able to find water bottles in the park. Just come hang out. It's a great two days whether you just want to listen to the music and see the performers or you want to hang out in the park with friends. It's a great time to dress up and have a lot of fun.

Photo by Sharyn Morrow (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)