Ann Arbor Pride returns on August 2 from Noon-9pm This event features 200 vendors, entertainment, and never-before-seen events taking place at the yearly celebration.
In 2024, The Ann Arbor Pride featured a historic two-stage setup, nearly 150 vendors, and performances on Main Street and State Street. The event shattered their prior attendance, estimated between five and seven thousand people during the 2023 event. In 2025, the event looks to provide a significant upgrade to the yearly festival.
According to Joe Halsh, President of The Jim Toy Community Center, an organization that provides information, education, social events and advocacy for the Queer and Ally community in the Washtenaw County area, this year will once again follow a similar two-stage setup while addressing feedback they received from last year’s Pride event, which Halsh says optimized this upcoming festival.
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“We got some good feedback about how we can better distribute entertainment to make sure that traffic is flowing into the right areas,” Halsh said. “We are extending the entertainment on the community stage into the night. We are also doing different things on the community stage. You can expect the entertainment, the drag and the musical performances.”
According to Halsh, this year’s Pride event is a grander exploration of the annual celebration, with 20 more vendors than the previous year and bigger names performing on their duel-stage setup. These performers include Ru-Paul’s Drag Race stars Detox, Lucky Starzzz, and a special guest, who will host a drag king show, a first at Ann Arbor Pride.
Celebrating love
Ann Arbor Pride, in a historic move this year, will feature a group wedding, which will officiate multiple ceremonies at once, allowing couples to tie the knot as the event gets underway.
“With what is happening with same-sex marriage and lessons learned from other Supreme Court cases, we want to encourage the community to come and get married, at least get it on paper,” Halsh said. “We want to show it as a sign of celebration and solidarity with our communities, the families that we build as queer people, and try to protect ourselves as best as we can.”
According to Halsh, the organization is working with a local wedding planner, and the weddings, which take place from 12 p.m. – 1 p.m., will provide one-on-one ceremonies on the stage.
“We will have a green room for people to be comfortable as they wait.” Halsh says, “We are going to kick off the community stage with a celebration of love and support and give legal protection there.”
A new location
In addition to planning this year’s Pride, Halsh and the Jim Toy team also finished one of their longstanding projects, completing its relocation efforts, a task they have attempted since February 2020 following the closure of their original location at 319 Braun Court, the center served as a resource that helped people find inclusive services for LGBTQ+ community members.
Now in its new location at 560 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor, the community center hosted its debut ribbon cutting and open house on June 20 to celebrate the grand opening.
The new location will host events and has private rooms to host therapists for members of the LGBTQ+ community for resources.
“We are continuing to polish. We have this great foundation, but we need to grow and scale,” Halsh said. “We also need to recognize what got us to this point might look different from what gets us to the next level. So, what adjustments do we need to make as a community center and a nonprofit? We are looking at those operational changes and involvement, bringing in more people and support and figuring out what that looks like in practice.”
Pride 2025 in Ann Arbor
While he’s excited to open their new location, Halsh’s focus has remained focused on the upcoming Pride celebration, which he says will have a distinctively more political tone than last year’s event.
“Ann Arbor Pride should look different from Ypsi Pride and Motor City Pride. I think that it should be reflective of the political situation and political climates of what our community needs at that time,” Halsh said. “Last year, you saw a lot of celebration. There was a lot of community building and strengthening. This year, it will still be available, but it will look a little different, with more advocacy built in. The vendors will include a variety of nonprofits, mental health services, spiritual groups and small businesses.”
For more information on the Jim Toy Center, contact (734) 274-9551 or visit their website at jimtoycenter.org.
Antonio Cooper is a freelance journalist from Detroit, Michigan. His coverage of music festivals and interviews with local celebrities appeared in The E-Current Magazine, The Detroit Metro Times, XXL Magazine, RichMagDigital, The Ann Arbor Observer, and Pop Magazine.
