Provincetown personalities Austin Tyler and Mackenzie hosted the town’s Pride celebration over the past weekend. On June 7, after a rally on the steps of town hall, revelers made the “Sashay to Tea” — that is, to a dance party at the Boatslip.
Singers Tori McClain and Qya Cristál performed, and state Sen. Julian Cyr made a rousing speech in front of the high-energy crowd. “Please, enjoy this revelry,” Cyr said. “Enjoy your queerness and allyship, and have a fabulous, wonderful, marvelous afternoon in this beautiful, special town.”
But after today, he said, the fight for justice continues. He quoted the late Harvey Milk, who in 1977 became the first openly gay person elected to public office in California: “Out of the bars and into the streets.”
Mackenzie, “dressed in as much neon as possible,” she says, also spoke to the crowd about the importance of action on a local scale, even (and especially) in a place as accepting as Provincetown. “It’s important that we celebrate as loudly as we can,” she said.
“As crazy as the world is,” said Tyler, “it’s good to look out at smiling faces and people clad in rainbows and trans flags. I couldn’t be happier to see it.”
The streets were “absolutely packed,” said Daniel Gómez Llata. “I was amazed by the roar of the crowd.”
Llata, Provincetown’s own town crier, was at the march for World Pride in Washington, D.C. on June 7. The every-other-year series of performances, parades, and rallies organized by the international organization InterPride was celebrated in the nation’s capital this year from May 17 to June 8.
Llata marched near the front of the parade, just behind the Dykes on Bikes, dressed in his town crier uniform — with a few additions. A rainbow cloth adorned his Pilgrim hat. Across his torso, he wore a sash that “boldly and visibly read Provincetown,” Llata said. He also carried a sign that read: “Provincetown, Mass. Where freedom of expression is never a crime.”
Every time Llata held up his sign, he says, people shouted, “Provincetown! Provincetown!”
Earlier that day, at the Lincoln Memorial, Llata read a proclamation prepared for him by the Provincetown Select Board: “Greetings from Provincetown, landing spot of the Pilgrims, home to the oldest continuous art colony in the nation, bastion of LGBTQ+ acceptance, where freedom of expression is never a crime.”
Llata was set to lead the raising of a rainbow flag at the Massachusetts State House in Boston on Wednesday, June 11.
