SF Pride

SF Pride 2019: Exclusive preview of this year’s parade floats

It’s all coming together in the shadow of the Chase Center

By Adam Brinklow Jun 27, 2019, 2:41pm PDT

Over at the Parade Guys workshop on Pier 54, rainbow streamers and multi-hued glitter are scattered as far as the eye can see—along with signage warning workers to “protect your beautiful work; it’s almost parade time!”

Indeed, with the job of assembling this year’s floats for the San Francisco LGBTQ Pride Parade, there’s little time for Parade Guys owner Stephanie Mofson or her staff to correct any errors when putting together the rainbow-hued fleet, which is set to hit Market Street at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

In past years, Pier 54 has always seemed a remote waterfront outpost, one that features spectacular views of the city but little else.

But now, with the Chase Center coming in next door, the neighborhood around the Parade Guys warehouse is set for radical change in the near future. Perhaps with that vibe in the air, this year’s suite of floats feature a lot of new designs, some of them quite brash, including a unicorn truck and a lovely tribute to bay windows (long an underrated icon of SF).

By far the winner for creative audacity is the Postmates float that features a huge extended tongue for almost the entire length of the display.

Sure, it’s bawdy—but out of the entire parade, this is one of the few pieces that captures authentic campiness, as opposed to the more soft touch, corporate camp of neighboring floats.

Mayor London Breed sponsors a float replete with campaign-style signage—she’s on the ballot again in the fall, but the float does not specifically advertise her reelection drive—and iconography representing various SF landmarks.

That’s all standard imagery, but style points go to the pastel-hued City Hall dome the tops the scene, a color scheme that would look good on the real building sometime.

Reddit’s user base is not alway friendly to the idea of LGBTQ Pride, but the SF-based media site’s float featuring multiple versions of Reddit’s alien mascot, Snoo, is pretty cute.

Note the multiple allusions to the 1969 Stonewall riots, the 50th anniversary of which falls this weekend.

For more info about SF Pride, check out Curbed SF’s indispensable Pride guide here. For an exclusive preview of the festivities, check out the images below.