Pride is every day in Oakland!

Not even gonna lie, it feels really nice to be recognized for all the work we’ve put in over the last decade.

When we started Oaklash we wanted to honor all the important queer history in this region that made something like our festival possible, and we wanted to make sure that Oakland would stay on the map as a home for queer and trans people when so much of the narrative about queerness in the Bay gets narrowed down to just the contributions of artists from San Francisco.

At the Oakland LGBTQ Center’s Pride kick off event last week, Beatrix talked about how she and her mom and sister were volunteers at the first ever Oakland Pride, and how she doesn’t take that for granted — having a family that supports her, being born in a town where she can be whoever she wants to be, and getting to be part of a community of queer people that show up and put in the work.

As we head into our tenth year of throwing events together here in the East Bay, Bea and I are going to enjoy getting our flowers, thank you very much! We are so proud of what we have built with Oaklash and the way it continues to grow and the potential there still is for what comes after us. We will always be the founders, but we know that this work is bigger than us and building something that will endure for our community was the goal the whole time.

So thank you! And also, come celebrate us with us! Because we’re fun and cool and not too bad on the eyes either!

We’ll have a full calendar of where you can find us for Pride weekend here in Oakland very soon, but if you’re gonna go to one thing…