Love and Pride: At the start of the Drag March in Tompkins Square Park

Participants in the annual Drag March last night gathered in Tompkins Square Park for the walk over to the Stonewall Inn.

With this being the 25th annual Drag March — coupled with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising — the crowd was larger and the mood even more festive than in previous years. (Gothamist described the March, which stretched two Avenue blocks, as "sexy, provocative and rowdy.")

Shortly after 8 p.m., the March left the Park and headed west along Ninth Street, marking the start of Pride Weekend.

EVG contributor Stacie Joy captured the scene in Tompkins Square Park in these following photos...





























































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Daniel Root also shared photos from last night...

Friday's parting shots

Steven shared these photos from this evening ... as the 25th annual Drag March left Tompkins Square Park and headed west along Ninth Street...





More photos tomorrow...

The Drag March is tonight

[Photo from 2018 by Stacie Joy]

The 25th annual Drag March is tonight ... starting in Tompkins Square Park, where hundreds of participants will being gathering at 7 before making their way over to Sheridan Square and then the Stonewall Inn.

The Drag March got its start during the Stonewall 25th anniversary celebrations in 1994.

Here's a HuffPost piece with more history:

Brian Griffin, aka Harmonie Moore Must Die, was a member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP and Women’s Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM) in the mid-1990s, an activist who saw the power of drag to confront intolerance and practice civil disobedience in a way that also celebrated queerness. But at planning meetings for the Stonewall 25th anniversary celebrations, Griffin told HuffPost, the committee made it clear that it was only interested in presenting a somewhat sanitized version of LGBTQ activism.

“The committee for Stonewall 25 had actually asked — and it still seems quite unbelievable — that they didn’t want anyone to show up in leather or drag. It still, 25 years later, blows my mind,” Griffin said. “They wanted to normalize the image of gay America for a mass audience. They wanted to present a palatable image of gay men and women, men and women who were normal.”

This year, of course, marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

You can revisit photos from last year here.

At the start of the 2018 Drag March

Dozens (hundreds?) of beautiful queens and kings gathered in Tompkins Square Park early last evening for the annual Drag March — the kick-off to NYC Pride weekend.

Joined by a small NYPD presence and a lot of photographers, the group made their way west to the Stonewall Inn.

EVG contributor Stacie Joy shared these photos ...





























... and Grant Shaffer shared as the March was getting underway on Ninth Street ...