Queens Kicks Off Pride Month With Annual Jackson Heights Parade

JACKSON HEIGHTS, QUEENS — Queens residents will celebrate LGBTQ+ pride and visibility this weekend with the 27th Annual Queens Pride Parade and Festival in Jackson Heights.

HIV/AIDS activists Candy Samples and Jesse Pasackow, the Queens Pride Lions Club and Mirror Beauty Cooperative — a cosmetology business found by four transgender, Latina women — will headline this year's parade as the grand marshals.

Sunday's parade starts at noon at 89th Street and 37th Avenue. Participants will march along the avenue to 75th Street. All registered marchers will qualify for a Queenie Award.

The Queens Pride Festival, located at 75th Street and 37th Road, is from noon to 6 p.m. and features vendors, food and information booths for community and social groups.

Queens' annual Pride parade started in 1993 to commemorate the death of 29-year-old Julio Rivera, who was attacked in a Jackson Heights schoolyard for being gay. The march now draws more than 40,000 spectators. It is the second-largest Pride parade in the metropolitan area.

For more information, visit the Queens Pride website.