Disappointment (AKA Dropping the Ball)

A few weeks ago at DC Pride there was a staff member from Six Flags America who was advertising that on July 7 was "Pride in the Park" which even included a concert with the Village People. If you got a group together you could get discounted tickets and the concert was free with admission. I figured it would be something fun to do with GreenBeLT Pride, so I put out an announcement and got a group together to go. Along with that, Metro Weekly, the local gay rag, advertised the day in their paper and even had a drawing to give away free tickets.

So what do we find when we are at the park this past Saturday? Absolutely no acknowledgment of what day it was. In all honesty, I wasn't expecting there to be rainbow flags flying everywhere or the park to be only filled with gay folk, but they pretty much squashed any recognition of GLBT folk and their families. I would have been fine with some sort of statement that Six Flags values the diversity of their patrons and employees. My boyfriend asked one of the staffers about it, and they were pretty much clueless, they said they had heard something about a "Gay Appreciation Day" but they knew nothing about it. As for the concert, it was referred to as the "Retro Rewind."

Before the blame is put entirely on Six Flags, a friend put some of it into perspective for me that even when it comes to Disney's Gay Days, it's other organizations that put it on. These organizations even go as far as to tell folks what color T-shirts to wear so that they can show solidarity. Since Metro Weekly was the one getting gung-ho about advertising, it was likely they should have been the ones stepping up to the plate to organize something, but they certainly weren't there on Saturday. It's funny, they seem to enjoy running around taking pictures of folks at the DC bars, but no one bothered to show to at least snap some pictures at an event that they were the media sponsor for? Something ought to be said to them about that.

As for solidarity, there wasn't much to be seen, other than those of us from GreenBeLT Pride showing up wearing our T-shirts. I maybe saw a few other gay folk there, if there were more, it wasn't clear. Maybe some of them didn't want to be known, maybe some didn't care, but I bet there were some like me who wanted to find other "family" there.

At least we were able to make the best of the situation, we did ride the rides we wanted to ride, and the Village People was a good concert since they did do some of the classics. I still would have liked to have seen better from Six Flags, and quite frankly, I'm going to say something about it to them. I mean, what's the point of advertising an event, and then completely squashing any recognition of it at the site of the event? If they don't want to listen, I can always hit them where they will listen, and that's in the wallet. No one says I have to buy a season pass next year, and neither do my friends.