Pride celebrations continue in New York City leading up to Sunday's march
NEW YORK -- Pride Weekend celebrations are being held around New York City ahead of Sunday's march.
The Harlem Pride Festival was held Saturday afternoon after being canceled last year because of COVID.
Vendors lined 12th Avenue between 135th and 138th streets, providing food and fun for families. There was also live music and two performance stages.
The event is also a platform to welcome and educate the neighborhood about the LGBTQ+ community.
The 41st Front Runners New York LGBT Pride Run was held in Central Park on Saturday morning.
The heat didn't stop more than 7,000 runners from hitting the pavement, running four miles through the park to celebrate Pride Weekend.
This year, the event raised money for Sylvia's Place, which supports the city's LGBTQ+ youth in crisis.
The 30th Annual Dyke March was also held Saturday in Bryant Park.
On Friday, the Annual Drag March stepped off in Tompkins Square Park and made its way to the Stonewall Inn. The march started as a protest in 1994 after the main march banned drag queens out of fear of offending corporate sponsors.
Sunday's march starts at noon at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue, then passes the historic Stonewall Inn and ends in Chelsea. It was announced Saturday that Planned Parenthood will lead the parade.
The NYPD provided the following statement regarding security:
"The New York Police Department provides a significant and complex counterterrorism overlay to the events and celebrations around Pride month each June in New York City. The department's Intelligence Bureau also closely monitors all relevant streams of intelligence, in real time, as they relate to foreign terrorist groups or domestic violent extremists. This level of preparedness and awareness has been honed over time and informed by such events as the fatal terrorist attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, six years ago, and the targeting by ISIS of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people for terror and hate crimes. As these realities have become manifest, the NYPD's alert posture in these matters has remained ever-vigilant."
The theme this year is "Unapologetically Us." Organizers said it's influenced by the pandemic, which gave society a reset and forced people to reprioritize their lives.
To find a list of Pride-related street closures this weekend, click here.