Palm Springs Pride has played an important role in the Independent’s history.
The 18th story published at CVIndependent.com, eight years ago now, was a brief photo piece about the 2012 festival—published when the website was still in beta, and we were more concerned about having content to build the site around than people actually seeing what we produced.
The 2013 festival was the first major event at which the Independent had a presence. We gave out logo reusable grocery bags—along with copies of our first Pride Issue, which was our fourth print edition overall.
In the years since, the Independent has had a booth at every Palm Springs Pride festival, as the celebration moved from Palm Springs Stadium, to the streets of downtown Palm Springs, to that odd area sort of in front of the Palm Springs Art Museum, back to the streets of downtown Palm Springs. We’ve given out logo frisbees, refrigerator magnets, fidget spinners, chip-bag clips, Palm Springs Craft Cocktail Week shot glasses, and thousands of copies of each year’s Pride Issue.
This year, however, that won’t be happening. While both Palm Springs Pride, largely in a virtual format, and our annual Pride Issue are still here, we can’t currently gather because of this damned pandemic.
Sigh.
It’s often said that change is the only constant in life, and a lot of things have certainly changed in 2020—and who knows what the last two months of this year will bring?
I do know that the end of 2020 will be bringing some exciting changes to the Independent. I’m proud to announce that in mid-December, if all goes according to plan, we’ll be launching a brand-new, state-of-the-art, beautiful website. We’ll also be making some design tweaks to the print edition, starting with the January 2021 edition.
But before all of that happens, we’ll be announcing our amazing slate of Best of Coachella Valley winners—online on Monday, Nov. 23, and in our December print edition. But again, there will be change there as well: We can’t have our winners’ party like we always have in the past, so we’re looking at doing either a virtual celebration or perhaps a drive-in party. Watch for details on that as we figure them out.
While we here at the Independent are certainly embracing change, I really hope that in November 2021, we’re all back on Palm Canyon Drive for the Palm Springs Pride festival, gathering joyously like before.
As always, thanks for reading—and be sure to pick up our November 2020 print edition, our special Pride Issue.