‘Tickets, please!’ – Paying to be Proud
This weekend, Brighton Pride will take place in the beautiful and historically LGBT friendly city. The seaside city has already seen some interesting adaptations on the original march including doggy pride (yes, the woof-woof kind) and a rainbow run, but Saturday 2nd August hosts the official ‘Pride Festival’.
Now, I love pride as much as the next girl. Maybe a little bit more, actually – I’m not exactly a fan of religious-based holidays so I save up all that excitement and basically explode in a giant rainbow every summer. But, my smile began to fade a little when I realised that if I wanted to celebrate in Brighton, I’d need to pay.
Apparently, charges were introduced in 2011, and began at £8.50 for an Early Bird ticket, increasing to £17.50 if purchased on the day.
If you were hoping to attend this year, your cheapest option was the Super Early Bird ticket at £9, and a staggering £25 if you left it last minute.
Organisers claim that the money from ticket sales is used to control visitor numbers and dissuade troublemakers. Call me critical, but London pride this year ran pretty smoothly, despite the rain (good call, UKIP!) and the only homophobe I saw was booed out of the crowd within a matter of minutes.
Can’t help but feel that we’re losing the true essence of what pride is all about – collaborative struggle against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.
Do we really need to spend £25 to fight back? I’ve decided to give it a miss this year and hang a rainbow flag outside my window instead (AKA: the broke girls approach to pride).