For NYC's Pride March, LIRR to be on weekend schedule; 2 Long Island LGBTQ leaders won't attend
A large rainbow flag is carried up Seventh Avenue in Manhattan during the NYC Pride March on June 30, 2019. Credit: Corey Sipkin
New York City’s Pride March will step off Sunday at 11 a.m. at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Any Long Islanders at the parade will see grand marshals actor Billy Porter, model Yasmin Benoit, activist AC Dumlao and authors Hope Giselle and Randolfe “Randy” Wicker.
Marchers will head south on Fifth Avenue before heading west on W. Eighth Street into Greenwich Village. After crossing Sixth Avenue, they will continue on Christopher Street past the Stonewall National Monument, turning north on Seventh Avenue and passing the New York City AIDS Memorial. Marchers will disperse in Chelsea at 16th Street and Seventh Avenue.
Parade organizers say about 80% of marchers are affiliated with nonprofit groups or schools and colleges; employees of for-profit companies, elected officials and others make up the balance.
The weekend — which includes dance parties, street fairs and other events — caps a month of smaller Pride events on Long Island and elsewhere in the region.
The New York City events can draw millions of people, though it is hard to estimate how many Long Islanders will attend. Long Island Rail Road ridership on Pride March days was 102,452 in 2022 and 75,058 in 2021. Ridership on the Sunday of the 2022 Pride March was more than 10,000 passengers higher than the previous and following Sundays, suggesting a possible Pride March bump, but a similar increase did not accompany the 2021 event. The march was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic.
The LIRR website shows trains running Sunday on regular weekend schedules.
An MTA spokeswoman said the agency would provide bolstered service on the No. 1 subway line on Sunday, running trains every six minutes instead of every eight. Transit officials also minimized the amount of planned work in the Central Business District to reduce potential disruptions due to maintenance and construction work, she said.
Two prominent Long Islanders said they would not attend the New York City events.
Tamika Mays, the Suffolk County Police Department's new detective sergeant and president of the Suffolk County Police LGBTQ Society, said it was important for her to be able to march in uniform — a tradition parade organizers in 2021 said they were putting on hold until at least 2025, citing the discomfort felt by members of their community "who are most often targeted with excessive force and/or without reason."
Mays said: "I'm going to a different event in Cherry Grove" this weekend, referring to the Fire Island hamlet known for its LGBTQ community. She marched in uniform earlier this year at the Long Island Pride parade in Huntington, she said.
City Pride spokesman David Clarke said: "NYC Pride is in an ongoing dialogue with NYPD about this [the uniform] issue.”
LGBT Network founder David Kilmnick said he planned to stay in Greenport after Saturday’s first North Fork Pride Parade. “The community out here is not going into Manhattan, and they also deserve to be celebrated, be out and be proud,” he said.
