City has a history of welcoming local pride 

Waltham Pride will host its fourth annual pride day this Sunday, June 8, on Waltham Common, with drag performances, music and children’s activities as part of the festivities. 

Waltham Pride, which was founded four years ago, is the city’s latest installment of community solidarity and visibility. 

In fact, the city has a deep history of LGBTQ+ activism, from the Tiffany Club, a social group for transgender women and cross-dressers that also hosted events and beauty courses, to Vernon’s, a Moody Street clothing store that specialized in clothing for transgender women and male cross-dressers. 

Then, before Waltham Pride formed, there was Way Out Waltham, an LGBTQ+ social group during the 1980s and 1990s. It was inspired by the group Gays and Lesbians in Watertown as a way to “meet people where they were,” said founder Jennifer Rose. 

At a time before gay marriage was legalized, a social network was needed to provide acceptance, said Rose. 

“It was just a really nice community, you know, at a time when it was still scary for many people to be openly gay,” she added. 

Rose said she had experienced fear in the past when organizing LGBTQ+ events, but she has since  shifted to promoting visibility and organizing events that the entire Waltham community can enjoy. 

Nick Hammond, co-organizer of Waltham Pride, said that the first Pride event was actually a backyard party held in 2021. 

As the community grew, Pride evolved from a few folks coming together in a backyard to occupying space at the Waltham Common for the first time in 2022 for the wider community to enjoy. 

The Waltham community also saw the need to have a celebration here in the city, citing the instability and corporatization of Boston Pride as a reason to keep the event local, according to Krysta Petrie, Waltham Pride volunteer and co-steward of the Little Queer Library. 

She said Boston Pride “was a very corporate event that didn’t feel like it was like a very to the roots, you know, grassroots, sort of community-focused event anymore.”

Displaying a Pride Flag at their house, Petrie and Katie Cohen, primary steward of the Little Queer Library, received many messages of support that drove them to become more involved in organizing. 

“A lot of people were feeling very isolated in that they felt like the only queer person in Waltham, and knowing the history, now that’s not true at all, but it was still that needing to come together and have that community connection was really important,” said Cohen. 

Hammond anticipates that this year’s Pride will be the biggest one yet, spotlighting local and queer vendors, performers and organizations. 

“So if you’re part of our community, you’re free to join us. If you’re an ally, you’re free to join us,” he said. And if people don’t like it, he said it’s their loss.

CORRECTIONS: The photograph was credited incorrectly to Nick Hammond. The story referenced a “pride parade,” but “pride day” is correct. There will be no circus act this year.