Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

by Robin Evans *

In a narrowly-distributed announcement, SOAP has said that will not hold its scheduled festival on Sunday, June 24 at Seattle Center. The news, unfortunately, hasn't even made it onto SOAP's own website. As of Monday morning that site still declares

Seattle Pride '07 will be an amazing and fiscally strong celebration for the LGBT community!

• Date: Sunday June 24, 2007
• Location: Seattle Center

It continues

For this event to continue to be free for the whole community, we need your moral as well as financial support. Make and individual donation and become an officially recognized Seattle Pride Supporter or contact Baccetti Consulting about sponsorship opportunities. We will also be collecting donations at the Pride parade and at the entrances of Seattle Center. Please be ready to support! Only with YOU as a supporter can we create the best PRIDE celebration in the country.

It's long past time for SOAP to come clean and admit that it is not a group capable of creating even a good pride celebration for the city, let alone "the best PRIDE celebration in the country."

SOAP's weekend statement was sent to The Stranger, but doesn't seem to appear anywhere on the group's web site, not even in a message board that was recently set up there.

The statement claims

[A] fiscally responsible 2007 March and Festival, no matter their physical location, is the most important goal. As such, new discussions are taking place about where both the march and festival make the most sense this year.

If they really mean that, then SOAP can best show its commitment to "a fiscally responsible 2007 March and Festival" by officially stepping aside and letting others hold the last-ditch discussions and make plans for a disaster-recovery march/parade and festival.

As SOAP said in its statement, "new discussions are taking place" about 2007 Pride events, but the most hopeful of those discussions are being carried on by others.

The litigiousness that SOAP, as an organization, demonstrated last year by claiming trademark ownership of the term "Seattle Pride" manages only to slow down the last-minute planning that must be done if there is to be some kind of Pride parade and festival this year. SOAP's slowness in semi-announcing the cancellation of their festival at the Center is yet another symptom of the group's closely-held, publicity-hostile "decision-making" process that has been demonstrated all too often for the past two years.

SOAP delayed the announcement of its financial problems and has now delayed the announcement of the cancellation that stems from those problems. Each delay has made it more difficult for others who want to create a great Pride weekend for the whole city and region. Far from demonstrating the semi-naughty theme of "Coming Together" that they'd chosen for their events this year, SOAP's recent actions have only served to widen the rifts that they themselves created. The current volunteers of SOAP should finally and mercifully admit that the task the group assumed for itself is better left to others.

* I post this under my name by-line in addition to my usual "WebWrangler" handle to make this obvious: This is my opinion. It does not, in fact, reflect the official opinion of Tacky Tourist Clubs -- the host (for now) of this blog. TTCA has declared itself an official "supporter" of SOAP.

Labels: Gay Seattle, Seattle, Seattle Pride