This weekend, Riverfront Park will host the biggest Pride in the Park to date.
Dozens of booths and thousands of people will come together again for Capital Pride’s 46th annual pride event.
Starting at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21, the park will fill with art, products and entertainment from the local LGBTQ community. There will be drag performances, food and drink, a family corner and a raffle. The event will run until 6 p.m.
Pride in the Park is “an event for the community, but it is also by the community,” said Capital Pride President Zachery Cardoso. He expects between 9,000 and 10,000 attendees, up from 8,000 last year.
The event will also include more booths, with 11 food options, 164 vendors and 40 resource booths.
Capital Pride’s booth will have information about its events, pride merchandise and will also collect people’s stories about being in the queer community for National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11.
Both the event and organization’s growth has increased support and awareness across the Salem community.
Due to the quick growth of Capital Pride, Cardoso, who has been the nonprofit’s president since 2019, said that people in the area expect the organization’s events to keep getting bigger and bring in more famous artists and performers.
But they’ve kept the focus on Salem’s queer community. “We’re intentional to keep it local,” he said.
Two local drag performers, Riri Caliente and Lylac, are the emcees for Pride in the Park. The event’s entertainment lineup, along with other event information, is available online.
Pride in the Park, Capital Pride’s main event, is held in the fall rather than during Pride month in June. That’s because June is a busy time for many queer artists and performers. In 2022, Cardoso told Salem Reporter that celebrating Pride in the fall also reflects that queer people can celebrate any time of year.
In June this year, Capital Pride hosted Salem’s first Pride parade in two decades followed by a block party with free resources and games.
Since January 2023, Capital Pride has launched many community programs, including camping trips, board game nights and crafting meetups.
Although lots of community support has happened in recent years, some of Capital Pride’s partnerships have been around for decades. Capitol Subaru in north Salem has supported the organization for around 24 years.
“They’ve been sponsoring us since before it was cool to sponsor Pride,” Cardoso said.
Cardoso said the queer community around Salem seems so much larger “when you put it all together,” at Pride events.
“It really is just a place to be safe and celebrate,” he said. People get to “feel free to be themselves and feel like they have a place and a community here.”
Capital Pride is accepting volunteers for next week’s event. The volunteer sign up is available online.
Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: [email protected].
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Madeleine Moore is working as a reporter at Salem Reporter through the University of Oregon’s Charles Snowden internship program. She came to Salem after graduating from the University of Oregon in June 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
