Firsthand Report and Photos from Sonoma County CA Pride Parade 2025
Here are my pictures and memories
The Sonoma County CA Pride parade and festival at the Santa Rosa town square gets bigger every year. This year we celebrated 40 years of Pride, Power and Progress.
A highlight for me is always the North Bay LGBTQIA+ Timeline, constructed by a small group of history queers. This year it focused on the transformative decades of 1970–1990. Some of the highlights:
- In the 1960s, Guerneville was home to one of the region’s first gay and lesbian bars.
- In the mid-1970s, a lesbian trucking team — yes, a full 18-wheeler operation! — ran as part of the Red Clover Workers Brigade in Santa Rosa.
- By the late 1970s, gay men from across the country flocked to the Russian River to live, love, and celebrate in community.
- The devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic changed our community forever — teaching us how to care for one another with profound compassion and resilience.
- The International Intersex Movement traces its roots right here, beginning in Sonoma County.
As with many other gay day parades and marches around the country, we struggled this year about whether to allow local police and sheriffs to march. In the end, they did, in smaller numbers than last year, led by a gay cop holding the hand of his partner. As a result, some prominent organizations declined to participate in the parade. The story was covered well by our local paper, the Press Democrat.
For old timers like me, who remember our fight to get the San Francisco police and fire to join our parade, it was bittersweet. In 1988, I broke down crying as I watched lesbian SFFD Lt. Anne Young drive a fire truck in the parade. The gay and women’s communities had worked for years to be recognized and included by the SFFD and for us this symbolized success.
The Santa Rosa parade is not the only queer celebration in Sonoma County. Other small towns each have their own, including Guerneville on the Russian River, whose gay parade is scheduled for September 20.
I like to photograph the participants as they’re getting ready and practicing their routines before the parade starts.
