But what should have been the biggest celebration in its long history - its 2020 golden anniversary bash - was a dim vestige of every Pride event that went before it. Pride observance, a controversial, three-day extravaganza drawing hundreds of thousands of spectators and costing millions of dollars to stage. Over the last 50 years, that first ragtag parade evolved into the annual L.A. Who could believe would happen in this area, where it was so scary to be gay?” She was 30 at the time, and she watched the parade in front of a diner called Coffee Dan’s, her partner by her side. “I just remember thinking, ‘This is so fantastic,’” Faderman said of that long-ago celebration. The Metropolitan Community Church choir in flowing robes singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” But she will never forget the scene that caused them: hundreds of people marching down Hollywood Boulevard in the nation’s first legally permitted gay pride parade.
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She no longer feels the tears that coursed down her cheeks at that busy corner on that summer night. Lillian Faderman can tell you exactly where she was standing on June 28, 1970: at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.