Tucson’s LGBTQ+ community and its allies will paint the town red… and orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, too, on Saturday, June 22.
In the heart of Tucson, this rainbow-clad collective will celebrate inclusivity and acceptance in the seventh annual Pride Bar Crawl. The crawl is hosted by Crawl with Us, a Minnesota-based company that organizes bar crawls and other social events in over a hundred cities across the nation.
“Our events are all about community and bringing people together to enjoy what these amazing and inclusive venues and spaces have to offer,” said Calli Cederberg, district manager and event coordinator for Crawl with Us. “We also recognize that June is not just a time for celebration, it's also a time to raise awareness about the issues faced by the LGBTQ+ community.”
For this reason, Crawl with Us donates a fifth of its Pride Crawl proceeds to LGBTQ+ causes. In 2022, the event raised $22,653 for the Trevor Project, which focuses on suicide prevention in the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, $14,905 went to the Trevor Project and local Pride organizations around the country. This year, donations will be directed toward Tucson Pride.
“What we do is support education about LGBT and history with the LGBT community,” said Jeff Fulgham, president of Tucson Pride.
Tucson Pride formed in 1977, after Tucson’s gay community, in the face of discrimination, came together to affect change in Southern Arizona. According to the Tucson Pride website, “their efforts led to some of the first LGBT anti-discrimination legislation in the country.” Nearly half a century later, Arizona's oldest LGBTQ organization continues to bolster the area’s LGBTQ+ Community through its outreach and advocacy.
“Tucson Pride has been around since 1977, so our community has helped members of the LGBT for decades,” Fulgham said. “Especially when it came to the AIDS pandemic, there were different parts of the community that came together. We’re a community that stands together to help each other, and to be excited when it comes to different things like gay marriage.”
Tucson Pride is a nonprofit, with a fully volunteer board, so every penny earned from the bar crawl will go toward funding its events, namely, the Tucson Pride Parade and Festival (Sept. 27 and Sept. 28, respectively).
“It’s basically our big event, our festival and parade,” Fulgham said. “We help give information out about the LGBT community in Tucson by bringing vendors together.”
Pride crawl details
The Pride Bar Crawl is 4 p.m. to midnight Saturday, June 22. Each ticket guarantees vouchers for free drinks or shots at select venues, exclusive drink and food specials, live music, professional photography, and waived cover charges at every location.
The night will begin at Highwire Lounge. Crawlers must check in there between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., where a custom pride badge, and specialty drinks like “Pride Punch” and “Let’s Get One Thing Straight, I’m Not,” await them. From there, attendees must blaze their own trails; the event doesn’t follow a particular flow due to the expected turnout. Luckily most locations are a stone’s throw away from one another, and the others just a short Sun Link or Uber ride away. Other than Highwire, the bars participating in the crawl include IBT’s Bar + Food, Sky Bar, Hi Fi Kitchen & Cocktails, Playground, Cobra Arcade Bar, The Neighborhood Bar Dwtn, and Venture-N.
For those looking for entertainment, IBT’s and Playground are expected to offer drag shows during the night. At 10 p.m., the night will culminate in an after party at Hi Fi Kitchen & Cocktails.
Pride Bar Crawl
WHEN: 4 p.m. to midnight Saturday, June 22
WHERE: Highwire Lounge, 30 S. Arizona Avenue, Tucson
COST: See website for details, 21 and older
INFO: crawlwith.us
