{"id":24893,"date":"2025-06-29T16:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T16:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/24893\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T16:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T16:13:08","slug":"start-time-route-and-street-closures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/24893\/","title":{"rendered":"Start time, route and street closures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago\u2019s annual Pride Parade<\/a> will kick off at 11 a.m. Sunday, starting in the Northalsted neighborhood and heading south.<\/p>\n

Pride will begin at North Halsted and West Grace Streets, heading down Halsted to Belmont. It will move east on Belmont to Broadway, then south on Broadway, ending at the corner of North Sheridan Road and West Diversey Parkway. The parade is expected to last about three hours, and the route is about two miles long.<\/p>\n

Chicago\u2019s first Pride was in 1970, on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City. The city\u2019s annual parade is the largest in the Midwest.<\/p>\n

Heat and humidity reminiscent of last weekend are forecast throughout the day. By the end of the parade, temperatures may reach 89 degrees or more and the heat index will push 87 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. There\u2019s also a chance of rain and thunderstorms Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The Grand Marshals of the 2025 parade are Cathy Creticos and Maya Green, two infectious disease doctors honored for their contributions to LGBTQ health in Chicago. This year also honors the parade\u2019s first Out Front community group, TaskForce Prevention & Community Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first year we had the community actually vote to lift up the people that they wanted to represent them at the parade,\u201d said Terra Campbell, Pride Chicago\u2019s community engagement director. \u201cCorporations normally have the biggest footprint of visibility \u2014 it won\u2019t be that way in Chicago anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pride Month wraps up as the federal government has moved to restrict services and rights for many in the LGBTQ community. Earlier in June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee\u2019s ban on gender affirming care for minors and allowed parents to opt their children out of curriculum involving LGBTQ themes. The Trump administration also plans to end the 988 suicide hotline\u2019s specialized services for LGBTQ youth in mid-July.<\/p>\n

Amid moves to curtail queer health and education, parade volunteer Moses Lee said it\u2019s important to show up for the entire LGBTQ community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s anything about the community, it\u2019s that we\u2019ve gone through really tough times, and we can do it again,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

While many Pride celebrations around the country have seen a decline in corporate sponsorship and participation, Pride Chicago has not seen a significant change in partners and volunteers.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike many organizations in cities of comparable size, PRIDEChicago has only offered sponsorship opportunities for the past three years and does not require multi-year commitments,\u201d Pride Chicago board chair Steve Long wrote in an email. \u201cAs such, fluctuations in participation are natural and should not be viewed as indicative of broader trends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paraders set up<\/p>\n

This is the first year Metra is participating in the parade. Engineer Aaron Kruse, who designed the float, said he was going for a \u201cLisa Frank\u201d aesthetic \u2014 trying to emulate the \u201c\u201990s icon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just wanted to incorporate a little bit of the elements of the parade,\u201d Kruse said. \u201cUsually, the grand marshals (of) the parades have backpacks, balloons. I wanted to incorporate that with pool noodles \u2014 make it a little more durable.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is Kruse\u2019s fifth parade, though in the past he\u2019s watched from the sidewalks. He said he\u2019s often attended with his girlfriend and her sister, who is gay.<\/p>\n

Metra is participating in this year\u2019s parade to show support for its customers, said marketing director Elaine Teter.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is welcome to ride Metra, and we need to be in the community for people to know that we definitely support everyone,\u201d Teter said.<\/p>\n

Northwestern University Professor Megan Bang and her child, Miigis Curley, helped put together a float for the Chicago area\u2019s queer Native American community. Bang is Ojibwe and Curley is Ojibwe and Navajo.<\/p>\n

They said they\u2019re attending to both educate the broader community about queer identities in Indigenous cultures and increase support for queer youth within Native communities.<\/p>\n

The Native coalition\u2019s float features the word \u201cLOVE\u201d in large rainbow letters, as well as a sign that reads \u201cTHE-ORIGINAL-QUEER,\u201d referring to the normalcy of queer Native identities before European contact with the Americas, Bang said.<\/p>\n

By marching in the parade with other Indigenous people from the Chicago area, Bang and Curley hope to celebrate queer Native people, who they say have faced discrimination within the wider LGBTQ+ community as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like one of the things about this float is yes, to remind other queer people, but also to celebrate our queer youth, our two-spirit youth, and holding celebration for ourselves by being here,\u201d Curley said.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: June 29, 2025 at 9:15 AM CDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago\u2019s annual Pride Parade will kick off at 11 a.m. Sunday, starting in the Northalsted neighborhood and heading…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,22288,15344,7123,5386,1818,9989,9863],"class_list":{"0":"post-24893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-chicago-pride","10":"tag-chicago-pride-parade","11":"tag-chicago-weather","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-illinois","14":"tag-pride-chicago","15":"tag-pride-month"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114767541315223168","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}