Twin Cities Pride Picnic

Logo for the Twin Cities Pride Picnic in 2005, From the 2005 Twin Cities Pride Guide. Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.

St. Paul’s only Pride-sponsored event resulted from a substantial contest between the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It began in America’s bicentennial year, 1976, when St. Paulites urged the Pride committee to relocate an annual beach party from Bare-Ass Beach (B.A.B.).(1) Located on the Mississippi River’s eastern flats below the Franklin Avenue bridge, B.A.B. was a notorious cruising ground, a clothing-optional retreat for men, and a topless beach for women. Negative attention from the city of Minneapolis prompted community members to seek a more family-friendly event, and St. Paul citizens requested a picnic in Como Park.(2) St. Paulties were infuriated when their “brothers and sisters” in Minneapolis refused to show—volumes of food and hours of preparation seemingly went to waste.(3) This controversial event was part of a longstanding paradigm; the separate cities competed for queer visibility before the repeal of equal rights in the capital city (see: The St. Paul Hotel) in 1978.

This repeal ended the dispute; many queer St. Paul citizens moved across the river, and the capital city began its long struggle to redevelop a comparable GLBT community. For almost two decades, the Pride committee largely ignored its eastern neighbor.(4)

The picnic reemerged during a revival of earlier pride events in the 1990s ,when a newly reorganized Pride committee sought to expand the event beyond the political realm. Ron Lischeid, a politically-active heterosexual ally from Minneapolis,(5) spearheaded the effort for a family-friendly event in the capital. At first the event was not enough to rectify the Grand Old City’s hard feelings—as Capital City Pride attests—but the picnic has come to symbolize St. Paul’s queer life.

Typically held on a Father’s Day, the event is presently one of many that cater to GLBT families—once a rarity in the community.

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(1) Tretter, Jean-Nickolaus. Interview with the author, 3/23/10. Tretter helped to organize the original picnic in 1976.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Evident in the "GLBT Pride / TC Collection," at the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies, University of Minnesota Libraries. The author processed and organized this collection in 2008.

(5) Author unknown, "Ron Lischeid, Independence [Party]." The Minnesota Daily, Metro & State Section, 10/26/2004.

Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)