NORTHAMPTON — Under new organizers and a nine-week planning schedule, Pride returned to the queer capital of Northampton last year after a three-year hiatus, and it’s back to stay.

Hampshire Pride, the nonprofit that revived Pride in the Pioneer Valley last year, will host the queer celebration again on May 4. This year’s event is already shaping up to be bigger than last year’s Pride, with a larger parade, a specific stage just for drag and twice the number of vendors.

“We’re just basically doing what we did last year, but it’s going to be a little bit more amplified,” Clay Pearson said, founder and director of Hampshire Pride. “So it’s gonna be twice, twice as many people and twice as many vendors.”

With a short preparation time and not a lot of planning experience, Pearson said the organizing and fundraising for last year’s Pride event was very abrupt and improvised. Hampshire Pride’s second effort in planning is being undertaken with a little more experience and an additional four weeks of time to reach out to vendors, raise money and create inclusive programming, like a drag story hour complete with an American Sign Language interpreter.

Floats and performers in the Pride parade will follow the same path as last year. About 60 groups will start their march at Sheldon Field and continue down Bridge Street to downtown, where the parade will turn onto Crafts Avenue and end at Old South Street.

“Once the parade is over, meaning the last float goes by, we’re going to have everybody join in a Pride March. The Pride March is going to basically clear the streets to get everybody back to the festival, and the festival’s going to be even bigger this year,” Pearson said.

Stages and vendors will still be located behind Thornes Marketplace, but take up much more space than last year. Almost 100 vendors, from local businesses and queer artists to nonprofits and government service agencies, will set up tables with information, merchandise and clothing.

Pearson said the vendors are directly or indirectly related to the queer community, whether it’s promoting the nonbinary-owned Raskl, a clothing brand featuring western Massachusetts flora and fauna prints; or an organization supplying services to LGTBQ+ people, like the Venture Out Project or Massachusetts Fair Housing Center.

Drag is always a feature of Pride, but Hampshire Pride decided to turn the crowd-pleasing performance art into a major facet of the event. Immediately following the parade and the mayoral address, there will be a family-friendly drag story time for attendees to enjoy. A stage dedicated to drag performances will rotate through groups of drag performers until the end of the event at 6 p.m.

The drag stage will feature artists from western Massachusetts and northern Connecticut, including Hampshire and Franklin County drag performers Andrew Curran as Magnolia Masquerade, and Harry Scruff.

“Hampshire Pride had to be formed — it was formed out of necessity of the old tribe kind of falling in on itself,” Pearson said.

NoHo Pride had run the annual festival since 2010 before COVID shut down such public events for a couple of years; the previous organizers were unable to stage it in 2022 and Hampshire Pride stepped up in 2023.

The first $1,000 that was raised for Hampshire Pride was exclusively from drag queens,” Pearson said. “I think this is a great homage to those that helped out.”

The festival also will have a stage dedicated to music acts, from live bands to DJ sets to the Rocky Horror Picture Show reenactment troupe Come Again Players.

In the spirit of equality and acceptance, Hampshire Pride underwent a slight rebrand this year. Pearson said that last year, he sought to expand the reach of the event to encompass the Five Colleges region by naming his organization Hampshire Pride; this year, Pearson and his co-organizers altered the Hampshire Pride logo to include the transgender and BIPOC colors in addition to the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag.

Hampshire Pride’s May date is specific to Northampton’s celebration. Most Pride events occur during Pride Month in June, but the Northampton Pride event is held earlier to include the Five Colleges students who are normally back home during Pride Month.

“It’s really about keeping the youth in the community to celebrate, and we do it on the first Saturday of May to enable that to occur,” Pearson said.

More Pride celebration information can be found on Hampshire Pride’s new website, hampshirepridema.com. 

Staff Writer Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.