It’s the Thursday of Pride Weekend here in the Twin Cities and I hope you have a wonderful time, whatever you decide to do. I’m sure I’ll see many of you at the numerous events. There are also plenty of us who decide or need to stay out of the fray for whatever reasons. Choose your own adventure, with pride.
We’ve got a lot of events in this issue. It’s not necessarily a beach reading issue except for some of the travel pieces and columns, but the Pride What to Do and the extensive listing of Twin Cities Pride performers are meant to make this issue into more of a guide. That’s also true for our online calendar at www.lavendermagazine.com. When we added that to our website almost six years ago, I wondered if people would use it. Now, since I approve each event that’s added to it, for free, by anyone in the community, I know it is used by the promoters. But do our readers use it?
Our website traffic says yes. Sometimes that’s what I have to rely on, when I’m not hearing much as far as qualitative feedback is concerned. Then, I went to one of our First Thursday events that was at the Saint Paul Athletic Club, and I met a lovely gentleman who was trying to poach food from the appetizer trays with me. We weren’t very good at it, but joking about food is always a comfortable way to get to know people at an event. When he learned who I am, he mentioned that he learned about these First Thursday events from our online calendar. And that our online calendar helped him meet other people by going to events after he went through a breakup. It really made a difference for him.
Gosh. What’s not to love about that feedback? Other than the break-up part of it, that is a success story if I ever heard one. Not only is the calendar useful, but the events he attended were also worthwhile enough so he kept seeking and finding more of them to go to. It’s not just Lavender’s rep on the line, it’s that of the organizations who host events for this community. And if it makes a difference for even one person, that’s a wonderful stat to hang on to.
So, please use this issue as a guide. Use our website. Find events on our calendar. Add events to it, too. We make this function work for all of us, organizers, attendees, and those here at Lavender. It’s our community, they’re our events, and you’re our people. We’re proud of who we are and what we do, and I can’t wait to see you out there or at more of the community events this summer.
With you and with pride,
Andy