Small Moments of Intimacy

by Isaac Fellman

Just before the California shelter-in-place order went into effect, the archives staff put together an online collection of Pride parade videos from the 1970s and 1980s. Despite their huge size, Pride celebrations are made up of small moments of intimacy, and it’s that intimacy that makes an in-person Pride parade impossible this year. Pride isn’t just about buying new rainbow clothes, decorating floats or celebrating love in the abstract; it’s about contact and coziness, about proximity.

So as we celebrate Pride without a physical parade in 2020, I thought I’d share some of my favorite small moments from our archival parades (click the boldface text to go to the videos):

1975 Parade, 0:58. A beaming Harvey Milk clasps hands with a young man sprawled out in the flatbed of his campaign truck; the eye contact is warm, intimate, for just a flash, and then the camera moves on.

1983 Parade, 2:23. The camera rides along on the People With AIDS Alliance trolley. As it passes the Warfield theater, crowds packed tightly onto the sidewalk clap and holler. The trolley is passing directly over the location now occupied by the GLBT Historical Society’s archives, on the lower level of the building directly across the street from the Warfield.

1986 Parade, 11:36. The Dykes on Bikes are start-stopping, idling in each other’s exhaust. One butch/femme couple (shown in the image above) is in full wedding gear, their motorcycle dragging shoes on a string. The butch’s hat flies off in the wind, and the femme trips off the bike in her floor-length gown to pluck it from the head of the dyke (on a bicycle) who has picked it up offscreen. It’s a minuet of lesbian gallantry.

1989 Parade, 5:30. Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are grand marshals of the 1989 parade. They sit shoulder to shoulder in the back of a convertible, Phyllis greeting the masses with a Roosevelt grin, Del in huge sunglasses, talking avidly to her wife but looking uncomfortable with the attention of everybody else. A campy cowboy in a black tank top waves to his friends from the driver’s seat, inches from Del’s knees.  

When you link to the videos, take the time to look closely and identify those sequences — those small moments of intimacy — that are meaningful to you. And please check out our special archives webpage with all of our collections and resources pertaining to this beloved, annual San Francisco celebration.

Isaac Fellman is the reference archivist at the GLBT Historical Society.