InterPride, which represents Pride organisers around the world, estimates that New York’s is one of the three biggest such events, along with those in Madrid, held each July, and São Paulo in May. “Gay Christmas”, more formally known as Pride, is held in New York every June. The Pride march along Fifth Avenue, New York, June 2016 © Daniel Shea/Webber Represents The pink paraphernalia that surrounds it bears the slogan: “Mobilize for equality.” Next door, at T-Mobile, tired partygoers relax on white pouffes under the watch of a fuchsia unicorn.
The pier is lined with promotional marquees: in a Delta Air Lines tent stamped with the tagline “Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries”, couples are invited to sit for digital caricatures sketched by artists on iPads outside, a flight attendant in uniform pushes a trolley through the crowd dispensing flashing party wristbands. The shout, emitted by a girl in knee-length rainbow socks and matching headband, is swiftly drowned out - first by the growl of Beyoncé’s “Formation” blaring through an enormous festival-style sound system second, by the collective whoop of the thousands of women assembled beneath it.
One June evening, on a broad pier jutting out into the Hudson river from the west side of Manhattan, New York, three words hang briefly in the sticky summer air: “Merry gay Christmas!”
