“Why Isn’t There a Parade?”

After 1995, Cincinnati went four years without a Pride parade. In the fall of 1999, Chris Good approached longtime activist Michael Chanak Jr. with a lot of questions. One of them was simple: Why isn’t there a parade?

The rest is history. Good formed an independent committee, with Chanak as senior advisor, and moved the event to Northside. On June 11, 2000, after a rally at Burnet Woods, the parade stepped off for Northside and ended at Hoffner Park with a festival. Dr. Shane Que Hee was Pride Marshal, and Peaches LaVerne was Honorary Pride Marshal.

Peaches LaVerne returned as honorary marshal every year through 2003. In 2004, Peaches rode as the parade’s Queen Mum in a yellow VW convertible, while ally Christopher L. Osborne taught Peaches “the intricacies of the ‘royal wave.’” That December, the community mourned the passing of Peaches LaVerne.

Ken Colegrove chaired the committee from 2001. The GLBT Center in Northside later took over the event and ran it through 2009, when attendance reached an estimated 22,000–25,000. Knowing Pride had outgrown the neighborhood, the Center’s board handed it to the Greater Cincinnati Gay Chamber of Commerce, which brought it back downtown.

The full Pride parade and festival have been held every year since 2000, apart from the COVID-19 cancellations of 2020 and 2021.