Culture & Community | LGBTQ | Arts & Culture | New Haven Pride | New Haven Pride Center | Ninth Square
Top: Ryder Die, a drag artist who is based in Norwalk. Bottom: Sapphire O'Brien enjoying their first Pride. Lucy Gellman Photos.
In a glowing blue bodysuit and high-heeled black boots, Ryder Die stepped into the center of Crown Street, transforming it instantly into a stage. A traffic light changed overhead, and they extended arms to their full wingspan, their body caught in a rare moment of stillness. It didn’t last: they dropped to a crouch and began to vogue, legs bouncing to the sound. Above them, even the low-hanging sky seemed to be watching.
“Yesssss!” yelled Sapphire O’Brien from where they watched, seated on a blue skateboard. As Ryder Die glided into the crowd, O’Brien’s jaw dropped. Color rose to their cheeks; their eyes sparkled. It was their first Pride, and the party felt like it could go on for hours.
Sunday afternoon, O’Brien was among hundreds of attendees at New Haven Pride, presented as a block party on Orange and Crown Streets in the city’s Ninth Square neighborhood. Organized by the New Haven Pride Center with several community partners, the event both celebrated LGBTQ+ joy and marked a return to the center’s origins, which are based in community care and mutual aid.
Juancarlos Soto, executive director of the New Haven Pride Center, with one of Sunday's drag performers.
“It’s amazing! It’s just amazing,” said Executive Director Juancarlos Soto, cradling a gem-colored violet lemonade from the LGBTQ-owned restaurant Blue Orchid. Despite two weather-related postponements, he and center staff were was delighted to see the community gather to support the event. “Honestly, it feels like a coming out for the Center after the year we’ve had. It feels so good to see the community, and all the diversity of the community, around us.”
He added that it comes as the Center, which has in the past year braved an abrupt leadership transition, loss and reinstatement of its nonprofit status, staff furloughs and most recently a bomb threat, is working to grow its visibility and footprint in New Haven. Since Artspace New Haven left its 50 Orange St. building in June, “we have been continuing to plant seeds and work with funders” to secure and move into the space, Soto said. He praised the city for its recent support, which has brought that dream one step closer to fruition.
From Center Street all the way to State Street, Soto’s excitement for the day echoed across vendor tents, artist pop-ups and tables from organizations offering everything from reproductive healthcare to all-ages support and affinity groups. On Orange Street, a team from Anchor Health CT handed out prompts asking people to write or draw their own interpretations of queer joy, with answers that ranged from two sentences to bubbly, bold illustrations that took up half a page.
Top: Adam Cohen, Michael DeWolfe, Emma Yesucevitz and Joe Canarie of Anchor Health CT. Bottom: Ryu and Bubbles (a.k.a. Tia Lynn Waters) at a table for the Rainbow Elders Support Group at the New Haven Pride Center.
Michael DeWolfe, head of communications and events at the organization, said that the answers will go in Anchor’s second-ever zine, which launched around the theme of LGBTQ+ visibility last year. This year, he said, it felt important to center queer joy with Anchor’s wider community: since January, over 500 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation have been proposed across the country. To focus on joy, for the nonprofit and for LGBTQ+ people across the state, is an act of resistance.
“It’s important to show that we’re active and present,” chimed in Adam Cohen, director of development at the organization. Currently, 60 percent of Anchor’s patients come through its doors because they are seeking gender-affirming care, from puberty blockers and behavioral health care to hormone replacement therapy. As more states have passed bans on such healthcare into law, Anchor has been fielding questions from families across the country.
Joe Canarie, a pediatrician with the organization, told the story of one such family that has been flying from Texas to Connecticut for puberty blockers, coming through Anchor’s doors every three months. While it is Canarie’s joy to help them, “it’s also a really awful thing to see that happening,” he said. That isn’t Anchor’s only lifesaving work, he added: the organization is currently doing a study on HIV prevention with Yale that could change the course of treatment.
“I find it gratifying,” he said, praising doctors A.C. Demidont and AJ Eckert for the wealth of knowledge they have shared with him since he began at Anthor. “It feels like a way to give back to the community.”
Young artist Chloé Lawson.
Just around the corner on Court Street, young artists Chloé Lawson, Olyssa Mack and Trinity Smith invited attendees to stop at their tables, the surfaces covered with bright canvases that the three had churned out in the past several months. On one canvas of Lawson’s, fabric scraps stood out from a sea of pink paint, fluttering in the wind. On another, a spill of rainbow color spread against a matte black background. In a third, eight different shades of green mixed into a marbled appearance.
An eighth grader studying theater at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS), Lawson said she had come out to support both as an ally and a superfan of the Center, where her mom works as the youth services coordinator. As an artist who has loved painting “for as long as I can remember,” Lawson was grateful to see the Center supporting young creatives and entrepreneurs as part of its event. She added that she doesn’t yet know how she identifies—and she’s very, very okay with that.
“Today was a really fun day,” she said, gesturing to Crown Street as Ala Ochumare took the mic. “The community space is amazing.”
Top: Artists Trinity Smith and Olyssa Mack. Bottom: Some of the festivities on Crown Street.
On a canvas one table over, Chuckie Finster’s face began to melt on a powder blue background, as if an episode of Rugrats had met The Walking Dead. Just beyond his nose, a fat green snake emerged from his left eyeball. Wrapped in the bisexual pride flag as if it was a superhero cape, Mack smiled mischievously, her eyes crinkling behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.
Chatting between performers—and dancing when they came to the stage—both she and Smith said they were thrilled to be part of the festival after serving as members of a youth committee at the Pride Center during their time in high school. Now both freshmen at Gateway Community College, the two returned to the Ninth Square to both display their own work and soak in the atmosphere.
“We’re here for the vibes and to represent LGBTQ+ youth,” said Mack, a graduate of Metropolitan Business Academy.
A gust of wind rolled down the street, as if it was directing attendees back to the mainstage. Within moments, an audience had formed, friends wrapped in flags celebrating trans, pansexual, bisexual and LGBTQ pride. Music floated over the street, and the bands of color seemed to ripple and glow beneath a slate gray sky, dancing in time with the sound.
Stepping into the street, Ryder Die made the space entirely their own, rocking a costume that fell somewhere between drag king and Marvel superhero who could vogue like it was their business. They strutted across the asphalt, heels striking the ground as if they owned it, then dropped into a crouch. They blessed sewer covers and cracks in the pavement, striking pose after pose.
Each freeze frame may have only been seconds, but attendees savored them, some fishing for dollar bills as Ryder Die came closer to the knot of people that had formed.
As they watched, friends Mira Parapatt and Emma Corley cheered loudly, both rocking some new rainbow-printed swag over their layers of wool and cotton. Students at Choate Rosemary Hall and Common Ground High School respectively, both said they were digging the afternoon’s energy, which hadn’t waned despite the dropping temperatures.
Corley, who has been to one other Pride before, said that it was important to her to come out and support fellow queer people. That—and the performers had captured her heart well before the end of the day.
Top: Mira Parapatt and Emma Corley. Bottom: Drag performer Judah.
Seated on an ice blue skateboard beside them, O’Brien said they were also thrilled to be experiencing Pride for the first time. As Learning Institute Coordinator Ala Ochumare introduced performers one by one, O’Brien was ready, cheering back at them (“What?!?!” they exclaimed at one point) before checking out the vendor booths that lined Crown Street.
At one point, a performer pretzeled themselves into a backflip, and O’Brien’s jaw dropped instantly, their mouth a perfect, wide O for the whoop! that came out.
“I love this,” they said. At home, they don’t always feel like they have support from their family. “This makes me feel like the community is supporting me.”
That sense of being held by the community was everywhere. As another fall breeze blew through the neighborhood, Ryder Die stepped back to the sidewalk on Orange Street, a mere mortal once again as they rooted on vocalist Ephraim Adamz. Watching Adamz ease into a set with the 2022 anthem “Pride Month,” Ryder Die said that they were glad to both soak in and be part of the festivities.
DJ and vcalist Ephraim Adamz.
Now based in Norwalk, they didn’t always feel like part of the drag community—and don’t take a moment of it for granted.
A self-described “theater kid” who didn’t pursue theater, they see drag as both an underrated art form and a still-rare outlet for self expression, they said. They credited queens Bella Bordeaux and Miss Chevious for helping them get into drag performance (“I like to say that I’m a drag thing,” they said of embracing ambiguity onstage), where they feel like a specific part of them comes alive each time they step onto a stage.
“Outside of things like RuPaul’s Drag Race, we don’t have that many chances to showcase us as artists,,” they said as Adamz donned a cowboy hat, and returned to the stage with “Sundown Town.” “Pride is for us. It exists for us.”
On both sides of the stage, artists and vendors braved the crisp fall air, welcoming attendees with everything from crocheted earrings and beady-eyed stuffed animals to plants that turned the street into a small, lively green alcove.
Top: Cousins Nicole Hayes and Synovia Walker. Bottom: Scotland Fitch (in crocheted hat) with dad Scott and Your Queer Plant Shop's Anika Stewart.
Surrounded by crocheted flowers, hoops, half-moons and bright hearts, cousins Nicole Hayes of YesQuare and Synovia Walker of SynLuxeBar both called Pride one of the more welcoming events that they’d attended in recent months.
Hayes, who is based in Bridgeport and started showing her work at New Haven Pride in 2021, said that she’s since “definitely learned a lot [as a small business owner] about finding my crowd.” Part of that is the sense of homecoming she has each time she comes back to Pride. As a queer artist, she said, she has a sense of both being around her people—and can roll in knowing there won’t be judgment.
Halfway down the block, Milford-based crochet artist Scotland Fitch of Heart of a Hungry Hermit applauded Pride New Haven for its focus on community, which has been a through line since he began attending as a teenager. When Fitch was 16 or 17—he can’t remember which—he attended his first New Haven Pride, and realized that he wasn’t as alone as he’d once thought.
Hecate Carey.
“It was just really cool to see people who were like me being authentic,” he said. He’s since seen the celebration in its many iterations, from a block party to a festival on the North Haven Fairgrounds to a big queer party on the New Haven Green. Sunday, he took time to chat with fellow business owners, including artist Anika Stewart of Your Queer Plant Shop.
As she perused items, Hecate Carey also shouted out Pride New Haven as providing the network of support that she was hoping to find. After hearing about the event through her partner and the staff at Elm City Games, she was glad to have checked it out.
“Supporting people like me is important!” she said. “These are hard times, and being there for people like you ensures that people like you are there.”
Closer to State Street, Drag Minister Marge Erin Johnson and artist Jordan Gage both spread the gospel of self-acceptance one conversation at a time. Dressed in billowing pink and rainbow robes beneath her tent, Johnson traced a 20-year career of preaching in drag that grew out of their studies at Union Theological Seminary and work in the United Church of Christ.
Top: Drag minister Marge Erin Johnson. Bottom: Emily Lorin and Jordan Gage.
“I’m all about being your authentic self,” Johnson said as Rev. Edwin Pérez stopped by the tent to say hello. “Queer people are made in the image of God.”
Surrounded by fine line drawings, Gage turned the clock back to 2019, when they suddenly found their health collapsing and they weren’t sure where to turn. “I lost every part of me and I was wrestling with a lot of my identity,” they recalled.
The drawings—intricate, labyrinthine black and white lines that weave in and out of each other, seemingly endlessly—became a physical representation of taking the bitter with the sweet. While they’ve attended Pride before, they were happy to be back as a vendor.
“It feels so good,” they said. “”It’s been nice just to be with happy gay people.”
Harmony The Valkyrie.
Back onstage, Harmony The Valkyrie strutted out to Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman,” a pink cape flowing from her shoulders as she criss-crossed the asphalt surface. O’Brien was ready: they turned their phone to record and scooted over to the middle of the street, gliding on their skateboard.
In the street, friends Nichelle Beverley and Pamela Jackson danced to the familiar song, Beverley waving a flag to celebrate her daughter, who recently came out as a lesbian. It flapped brightly in the gray afternoon, lighting up the street corner. For a moment, it felt like the afternoon could go forever.