CELEBRATE SUPPORT UNITE
We’re excited to announce that “Bent” writing group from Seattle will be taking the stage at this years Kitsap Pride.
Come out and enjoy incredible spoken word and slam poetry presented by “Bent”‘s own performers. “Bent” mission is to “To promote and encourage written and spoken word among LGBTIQ people and in our communities”
Weather is looking great for Saturday – Sunny not too hot! Bring sunscreen and chairs or blankets to enjoy the stage.
Kitsap Pride is at Bremerton’s Evergreen Park located where Pacific Avenue meets 13th Street and Sheldon Avenue.
The park is not far from downtown Bremerton on the Washington Narrows between the Warren Avenue Bridge and the Manette Bridge.
View Kitsap Pride in a larger map
There are many places to park in the area including lots of on-street parking with fairly short walks. We encourage you to ride with friends. The lot a 13th and Sheldon will be reserved for vehicles of people with disabilities and loading in/out musicians.
Do not park in the spaces reserved for the boat ramp. If parking seems tight look south of 11th only 2 blocks away.
Join the fun at Kitsap County’s Pride Celebration on Saturday July 19, 2008. Festivities are being held at Evergreen Park in Bremerton, from noon to 5PM. The Kitsap Pride Network organizes the annual event for the local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and ally community, and the 2008 planning committee has been working hard to put together an event that exceeds expectations and showcases the talent and supporters in and around our community. Bring family & friends and be ready to enjoy a fabulous day at the park.
Although Kitsap Pride is being held in the same beautiful location, this year several great new features have been added, thanks to suggestions from previous year’s participants. This year change is good. We’ve added an area for families with children to come and enjoy. There is a covered picnic area for eating, gathering to socialize or just people watching. If you want to be closer to the action there will also be tables nearer the stage, or you can bring a blanket or stadium chairs and make your own viewing area. Don’t forget the Frisbees!
ALL FAMILIES MATTER: We’re really excited this year to be having a “Kid’s Zone”, hosted by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Bremerton. We’ll have balloons, crafts, sidewalk chalk, face painting, plus Corky the Clown will be back with Clancy the Wonderdog. The “Kid’s Zone” will start at noon and go to 2:30pm so bring the kids! You could even bring a picnic lunch! We look forward to seeing you! Children must be accompanied by an adult at all times.
We’ve not just added activities for the little ones. The Kitsap Safe Schools Network is sponsoring a Teen Space that will be hosted by The Q Center. The Q is a local drop in center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and allied youth from 14 to 19 years old. They’ll have a special space to hang out with friends and meet new ones. The Q Center will organize some special fun stuff.
Non-stop entertainment from the stage, sponsored by Red Star Events, will include drag kings (Tacoma’s Royal Knights) and queens (Faces Drag Show from VIBE in Kent), live music from local favorite Inga Nova and the heavy soul and funk sounds of the Kim Archer Band. The Kim Archer Band often plays Tacoma Pride, Bite of Seattle and other local events and venues. We are hoping to have some great queer slam poetry to end the day performed by Bent, Seattle’s Queer Writing Institute. Plus, we will have some special guest speakers. Go to our website (kitsappride.org) to keep up on the schedule. The stage will be in a great new location with plenty of lawn to spread out on and take in the show. Look for the giant rainbow roof to find the Red Star stage!
This year we’re proud to announce several new sponsors, including Pure Med Spa, Ameriprise Financial, the Slaughter County Roller Vixens, and Clear Creek Psychological. Plus our Community Partner organizations the Kitsap County HIV AIDS Foundation, Kitsap PFLAG, Kitsap Safe Schools Network, Positive Solutions, The Q Center and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The Vixens will be showing off their skills and selling cotton candy and sno-cones.
Our vendor marketplace should be a bustling avenue of GLBT Support & Education Information, Local Businesses and Merchants. This year there will be jewelry, apparel and accessories. We have many new vendors this time around as well as some of your favorites from past years.
Stop by the Kitsap Pride Network booth for some great pride merchandise and this year’s t-shirt. The Kitsap Pride Network wants to hear from you about how else we, or one of our partner organizations, can serve the community. What is needed in Kitsap County that is not happening now? Newsletter? More activities? Your feedback is important! We’ve responded to many of your previous comments and want more input from OUR community. At the Kitsap Pride booth, there will be free rainbow friendship bracelets for the first 200 to complete our quick survey. Everyone who answers the survey will be entered in a drawing for some fun prizes.
This year our food vendors will have burgers, polish sausages, hot wings, kettle corn, funnel cakes, elephant ears, and strawberry lemonade. Plus this year we’re even adding coffee drinks and smoothies to our selection of festival food. That was just some of the highlights.
After the Pride Celebration, come to Pride Party ’08 presented by Red Star at 9PM at Bremerton Eagles just blocks away on 6th at Washington. Red Star’s generous donation, raised at their monthly event, helped to underwrite the cost of the stage.
For answers on what to bring, where to show up, how to get there and what’s going on exactly please visit Kitsap Pride’s website often at kitsappride.org.
Will you be attending Kitsap Pride this year? Gay pride can mean many different things to many different people. For some it’s a purely social event, a place to catch up with old friends or have a picnic with new friends. To some, gay pride is a place to party. Others see gay pride as a chance to celebrate who they are and who they love, a chance to literally be out and proud.
After OutKitsap shut its doors, people have wondered if there is enough interest in continuing to hold a gay pride event here in Kitsap. People have wondered if there is anyone willing to volunteer the time it takes to organize such an event. The answer to those questions is a resounding “yes”. Since the last pride event held at Evergreen Park in 2007, volunteers have been working on pulling off another gay pride event in 2008. Not only have they been working on “pulling off” the event, they’ve been working on making it the best event in Kitsap Pride history.
One of the reasons we gather at Evergreen Park, or any pride celebration, is to honor those LGBT figures that persisted despite their persecution for being honest about who they were, for coming out of the closet. There have been many notable figures that have struggled in the pursuit of gay rights. For all of the names we’ve heard, there are many thousands more that have struggled personally and even privately to live their lives as they saw fit, to love who they saw fit to love.
On July 17th, at Evergreen Park, let’s gather our friends and family for a social outing where we might just meet some new like minded people. We might have a great time catching up with old friends. We might learn a thing or two about what resources are still available to our community. We might party all night and recover all the next day. While we are doing all of these things, we will be celebrating our common belief that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity. We will celebrate our right to Live, Love and Be who we truly are.
Donations are needed. SUPPORT your local Pride. Click here.
Interested in being a VENDOR at the 2008 Kitsap Pride Event? Click here.
VOLUNTEER at the 2008 Kitsap Pride Event Click here.
Kitsap Pride is a network of local organizations collaborating to celebrate community in Kitsap County. Networking together eases the planning and execution burden off of any one organization and allows for more community input.
Here’s something to tickle your funny bone: the Seattle Men’s Chorus interpretations of some of the funniest musical works that were (not so coincidentally) either written, directed or performed by some this country’s most hilarious gay men. On June 21st, the Seattle Men’s Chorus will treat Bremerton to Comedy Tonight – a concert of familiar works adapted from the likes of The Marx Brothers, Stephen Sondheim, Monty Python, Mel Brooks, Carol Burnett, and Noel Coward.
Comedy Tonight features Captain Smartypants (aka the Pants), the Seattle Men’s Chorus’ nine-man vocal comedy ensemble. Captain Smartypants was formed in 2000 by Seattle Men’s Chorus Assistant Artistic Director Eric Lane Barnes. They have but one goal: to make you laugh while creating exquisite harmony.
With baritones, bass-baritones and tenors in the group, “sometimes we’re a unit of nine guys, but about half the time the guys are performing as individuals,” Barnes said. “What I like is throwing new thoughts at Smartypants. As of yet, we haven’t found anything we can’t do.
Barnes spent 15 years in Chicago working in musical theater, directing and writing shows, and with ensembles for the Windy City Gay Chorus before Dennis Coleman, the artistic director of the Seattle Men’s Chorus, hired him to run Captain Smartypants After a few tries at a name, Barnes fixed on Captain Smartypants, based on the childhood taunt, which has inevitably provoked laughs. “We do some serious things, but we’re primarily about the comedy and the theater,” Barnes said. “My style is to get the audience on your side with comedy. We don’t do anything serious in the show until we’ve got the audience laughing for a long time.”
Captain Smartypants has gained a reputation for telling it like it is, telling it like it isn’t, and telling it like it probably never will be. Part improv-comedy troupe, part a capella showcase, part vaudeville extravaganza, these boys sing and dance like the lovechild of ‘N Sync and Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Tom Carlisle, a “Pants” member, had been a member of Seattle Men’s Chorus on and off since 1982. To be accepted into one of the largest choral groups of its kind in the U.S. “was a huge milestone,” he said. “The chorus became my surrogate family, and that’s true with a lot of guys that join,” Carlisle said. “It not only provides a musical outlet, it provides a spiritual, emotional and social outlet.”
Comedy Tonight marks the 11th anniversary of Seattle Men’s and Women’s Chorus concerts in Bremerton, sponsored over the years by the Kitsap Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (KUUF) and other community groups.
Ann Lovell, of KUUF’s Board of Trustees, remembers “When we first started, we had to have police back stage. For several years, we would call the police to let them know we had had some threatening phone calls so they would patrol while the chorus was here.”
“This doesn’t happen anymore. This community is not the same because of these concerts. Bremerton and Kitsap County are better places for gay and lesbian folks and their families. Some of that directly relates to having the choruses come and entertain everyone.”
KUUF is making special arrangements so that important parts of the community can attend Comedy Tonight. Complimentary tickets are being distributed to peninsula Gay Straight Alliance high school groups and to the Kitsap County HIV/AIDS Foundation for clients and families infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.
About the Seattle Men’s Chorus/Seattle Women’s Chorus
Founded in 1979, the internationally renowned Seattle Men’s Chorus, along with Seattle Women’s Chorus (founded in 2002), are the largest community choruses in America; and the largest gay choruses in the world. Flying House Productions, home of Seattle Men’s Chorus and Seattle Women’s Chorus, ranks third among the state’s music organizations with over 300 members of SMC and over 200 members of SWC. Their mission is to entertain, enlighten, unify and heal our audience and members, using the power of words and music to recognize the value of gay and straight people and their relationships.
The Slaughter County Roller Vixens, Kitsap’s own Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby League has signed on as a sponsor for the 2008 Kitsap Pride event. We’re excited to have them be a part of our celebration of diversity. Check out their website or MySpace page for more information. Read on for information about this weekends bout.
Derby Summer Bout
Date/Time: May 31, 2008
Time: Doors: 5:00pm Bout Begins: 6:00pm
Admission: Tickets
Location: Sk8Town
Street Adr: 1501 Piperberry
City: Port Orchard
Zip: 98366
Notes: Double Header featuring the Terrormedixxx vs the Rainy City Roller Dolls and the Death Rattle Rollers vs the Rockin’Roulettes.
TIME Main Stage sponsored by Red Star Details
Noon Opening/DJ Music
12:20
12:40
1:00 The Royal Knights – Tacoma’s Drag Kings www.myspace.com/theroyalknights
1:20
1:45 Inga Nova – Local Folk Musician www.myspace.com/inganova
2:00 Pride Committee’s Welcome
2:15 Guest Speakers – TBA
2:30 Kim Archer Band – Heavy Soul & Groove http://www.myspace.com/kimarcherband
3:15 Drag Queens
3:45
4:00 The Blue Mouseketeers – Tacoma’s Rocky Horror www.myspace.com/tacomarockyhorror
4:15 Poetry Slam
5:00 Closing
Save the Date: June 7, 2008 is our Italian Mystery Dinner. Get tickets now. Click on Sponsor/Donate Now.
Seattle Men’s Chorus perform “Comedy Tonight” at the Admiral Theatre Saturday, June 21. We’ll throw the after party!