HOUSTON — Pride Month comes to a close with one of Texas’ largest celebrations.
The Houston Pride Parade and Festival held all-day events for the LGBTQ+ community, with many feeling welcome in the Houston heat.
“It’s like the best event in Southeast Texas, it’s great to get out here,” Shania Drummond from Beaumont said.
“It’s one of the most important things going on right now, supporting each other,” another festival attendee said.
Pride Houston 365, which organized this weekend’s parade, continued a tradition of more than 40 years of pride celebrations.
This year, heat and security were top of mind for people attending the festival. Organizers had three cooling tents, four cooling buses, free water and fans available for people at the street festival outside of city hall.
“I really do like it, in previous pride events they haven’t supplied water but this time they did so that’s definitely going to help a lot, people are going to be more comfortable,” one woman said.
“They definitely have shut it up a lot more, the gates are bigger, they weren’t that big last year, I think the security has gone up,” Drummond said.
According to event organizers, 25 law enforcement agencies and private security were hired for this year’s event.
This weekend’s Pride parade followed The New Faces of Pride parade last weekend. City leaders are discussing ideas of how to combine the two events in the future.