The inaugural Pittsboro Pride event got underway at 12:00 p.m. this past Sunday at the Plant in Pittsboro, and the community showed up right on time. Hundreds of people flowed onto the grounds of the festival in the first half hour it was open.
M.B. Clark was a volunteer at the welcome table at the front of the festival.
“It’s been amazing. Nonstop,” she said. “I thought there would be a lull here, but there has been no lull. We thought, ‘do you think we’ll have a hundred? That would be nice.’ We clearly we have more than a hundred.”
Any time an event happens for the first time, the challenge is to get people to show up. But the idea of Pittsboro Pride events seemed to gain momentum from the moment it was first spoken. Brent Levy, one of the events original organizers, spoke with Chapelboro.com before the event. “Eight or nine months ago I called Tami (Schwerin, owner of the Plant) and emailed Sera Cuni, who is a local restauranteur, and a member of the team,” he recalled. “And I said, ‘Hey, we should have a Pride event. There’s no reason that Pittsboro shouldn’t have one.’ And that got the ball rolling.”
It seemed the more people heard about the idea, the more interested the community got.
“We had an initial sort of gathering to sort of name that we wanted to do this. The beautiful thing is that every time we met we had more and different people show up. It started with a core group of people, but the planning team just got bigger and bigger.”
That trend continued once the planning started to turn into reality. Elizabeth Thomas was the vendor coordinator for the festival. She remembered how interest picked up as more and more people found out about the festival.
“At first we had a slow trickle [of vendors] and I was worried that we wouldn’t have very many, and then…” She gestured toward some tents that have overflowed from the vendor area to in front of the welcome tent. “We got to a point where we had to cut of applications because there was so much support and interest in the event.”
Lyona and the Confluence perform at Pittsboro Pride.
In addition to vendors, the event had a KidZone, a courtyard stage with well known area musicians, and several local food options. There was also a dance party and a pride parade, which Clark organized.
“We had a band scheduled, a really nice big band, but they had to cancel on Monday,” Clark said. “So I asked my neighbor if we could borrow his Japanese fire truck. So we are going to have our parade led by a Japanese fire truck with speakers and a playlist.”
All the planning and hard work by the organizers led to an event that the community seemed to need. Nick Murray and Frankie Hayes are Chatham County residents who had been looking forward to the event for months. When asked why they were excited for this event, Murray said, “It’s happening in Chatham County!” in a way that suggested he could hardly believe it.
Nick Murray and Frankie Hayes at the Pittsboro Pride Festival.
Hayes added, “That’s why we had to show up and be loud!”
They both laughed, and then Murray added, his tone more serious, “It’s…being noticed. Being recognized. And not being attacked. It’s feeling safe.”
If Levy and the other organizers have their way, this is just the beginning.
“There’s no intention of stopping and letting this be a one and done,” Levy said. “There are plans to keep this rolling and make it even bigger and better in years to come, with an incredible team behind it.”
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