Oklahoma Pride Alliance PrideFest was filled with Dancing, Drag Queens, and Queer Joy

The parade was a smashing success, the parade route was shortened this year to combat heat-related illness for both the watchers and walkers. Despite the route being shorter, the crowd showed up in droves and there were plenty of participants, from national brands such as Walmart, Kroger, Amazon, and UPS to local businesses such as Chrome OKC. Below is a clip with highlights from the parade!

The theme of the Festival was Queer Joy: The Resistance and Oklahoma Pride Alliance President Kylan L. Durant told Culturess about how he felt the festival went and his favorite moment of the entire festival, coincidentally it tied into the theme nicely:

"This is my third time to be part of this festival and it was by far the smoothest and most well attended one. Everyone involved mentioned that this was the largest turnout we’ve seen yet. Merch sold out so we had to offer previous year options, all vendors were so pleased with how many people they saw come through, I’m so grateful to the team for spending so much time thinking about this before so that we could have an easier weekend. In years past, the preparation was not as well planned out and the team felt more frantic. My favorite part for this specific year was getting the crowd amped up with shouting “Queer Joy: The Resistance!” It was just amazing to hear some many queer Oklahomans together."

It has often been said the third time is the charm and the Oklahoma Pride Alliance did not miss a single beat this year with their festival, I cannot wait to see what they have in store for PrideFest 2024.

Thank you to everyone who answered questions and contributed to this piece.