Jack Fritscher marched in his first San Francisco Pride Parade in June 1972 alongside his lover, David Sparrow, the two of them photographed by the San Francisco Chronicle with clasped fists raised in a Gay Power salute. That early participation began a decades-long relationship with the event that Fritscher later traced back further than most: in his 2012 BarTab essay “Before the Parade,” he unearthed an 1896 San Francisco Call article documenting a “Cyclers in Gay Attire” bicycle parade, arguing it as an unlikely archetype for the modern Pride Parade seven decades before Stonewall. Fritscher also covered the parade’s Drummer-era history, from the magazine’s 1978 “Doctor Dick” health-awareness marchers to the charged 1979 parade held weeks after the White Night riots, and later filmed the event with Mark Hemry for Palm Drive Video’s documentary Hot Men Street Party (1996).

BarTab June 2012
“Before the Parade“

Videos Documentary on San Francisco Pride Parade:
Hot Men Street Party (1996)

Palm Drive Video: Jack Fritscher and Mark Hemry Production