This year’s Capitol Hill Pride will bring familiar faces to Broadway. The Broadway Business Improvement Area announced that traffic signal boxes up and down the street are now wrapped with new Pride portraits of LGBTQIA+ heroes in Seattle history.

Portraits include Cal Anderson, the state’s first openly gay legislator and park namesake, Judge Mary Yu, who officiated many of the city’s first same-sex marriages the day Washington legalized the vows in 2014, Ingersoll Gender Center founder Marsha Botzer, ACT-UP organizer Brian Day, and Wildrose bar owners Martha Manning and Shelley Brothers.

“Through our economic recovery grant, we employed local queer and trans artists to portray individuals who made a difference in the LGBTQIA+ community in Seattle, as chosen by a PrideFest selection committee,” the BBIA said about the new project. “The process took two and a half years but we are finally there.”

The BBIA is funded by assessments on area properties to provide “7-day-a-week cleaning of Broadway, Graffiti removal, event marketing, advocating to the city, and clean and safe streets and sidewalks.” In 2019, CHS reported on the failed effort to expand the Capitol Hill district that also took down the neighborhood’s chamber of commerce.

The new wraps depict a mix of icons as the city has begun celebrations marking 50 years of Pride in Seattle. The anniversary celebrations got underway starting last weekend with a day of music and performance in Volunteer Park that organizers say drew around 12,000 people.

Pride’s major celebrations will be back on June 29th with plans for PrideFest Capitol Hill to close Broadway from John to Roy, turn Barbara Bailey Way into a festival street, and fill Cal Anderson with Drag Queen Storytime, a pet drag show, and the PrideFest Capitol Hill Dance Party with C89.5 DJs to close it all down.

The BBIA says the new Broadway wraps will soon have biographies with help from the Seattle Gay News and a map to help you track down your favorite icon for a selfie or two.

Learn more at facebook.com/BroadwayCapitolHill.

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