Pride Festival of Central PA Embraces Inclusion and Respect
Celebrating its 31st anniversary, the Pride Festival of Central PA in Harrisburg is Saturday, July 29.
Eric Selvey has probably been asked more than 31 times why the Pride Festival of Central PA is held in July instead of June.
Selvey — who likens himself to Grover Cleveland because he’s serving his second stint as president — explains that it’s because they don’t want to compete for attendance with bigger Pride festivals in D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. “And so the powers that be decided to move the festival to the last Saturday of July,” says Selvey, a 63-year-old optometrist.
The food and performance-filled festival will mark its 31st anniversary — though technically, due to the pandemic, it’ll be its 29th Pride — with a beer called “Thirsty-One” that’s fruity in both literal (it’s flavored like strawberry and watermelon) and figurative (self-explanatory) senses.
The company behind the beer, Lovedraft’s Brewing, also made one for the festival for free last year, donating a dollar for every pint sold. The beer sold out.
This is just one example of how community support for the festival has blossomed since 1992. “People come out of the woodwork,” Selvey says, referring to the breadth of vendors and donors. “They say, ‘We want to do something for Pride. We realize it’s just one day, but we want to show our support for what you’re doing. We want to show support for your community.’ It’s a beautiful thing.”
The festival’s message about love, inclusion, and respect is always relevant. But it’s taken on a new resonance in 2023. This year alone, state lawmakers across the country have filed more than 500 bills impacting the LGBTQ community, about half of which aim to curtail the rights of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people.
“With the political climate that we’re in now, it’s important to be able to send that message out to everybody, to all communities,” Selvey says.
A bright spot this year: “We’re back at Soldiers Grove, and everyone’s very happy because it’s very shaded,” he says, referring to the area behind the Capitol that serves as Pennsylvania’s Medal Honor Memorial. “We are the first — and, as far as I know, only — Pride festival in the country that is actually on state ground.”
Soldiers Grove isn’t quite what it was back when the festival was first held there in 2018 — a few trees came down during a hailstorm last month. “We’ve had to adjust,” Selvey says. “But for the most part, everybody’s happy about being there.”
Speaking of trees, Selvey describes how the festival has bloomed into one.
“We’re kind of a mighty oak, and we want to see these little acorns sprout and grow,” he says of the other Pride festivals that have emerged in the area. The Pride Festival of Central PA used to be a lone oak. Now, “we just want to see other festivals do as well, if not better, than what we’re doing.”
In the past, the Pride Festival has donated to a variety of local LGBTQ groups. It is a nonprofit by virtue of being a project of the Black and White Party Inc., and has more than two dozen sponsors, including banks, PepsiCo, and more.
Selvey hopes to see attendees from outside central Pennsylvania. Harrisburg is, in fact, only about three hours from DC.
“It’s going to be a great day,” he says.
The Pride Festival of Central PA is Saturday, July 29, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Soldiers Grove in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There is a suggested donation of $10. For more information and an entertainment lineup, visit www.centralpapride.org.
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