Denver Underground Pride: The Alternative to Corporate Pride

I’ve always been of two minds about the way big Pride festivals are handled. On the one hand, I think a lot of good comes out of Pride. Some people get a chance to see what it’s like to be their authentic selves for the first time because of Pride. I wrote previously about how my coming out was largely about wanting to join in this celebration of who I am at Pride. And a big, huge Pride festival isn’t going to be easily organized without a corporate sponsor. Furthermore, I know of many organizations that do a lot of good for the LGBTQ+ community who make a significant portion of their yearly budget off of being involved with Pride festivals.

On the other hand, it does seem strange to me that we celebrate a group of oppressed people fighting back against a discriminatory police raid by sending a Coors Light float down Colfax Avenue. My punk rock instincts tell me not to trust that any large corporation is going to support a minority group without seeing us as a means to an end first and foremost. Even now, as I look at the small Pride flags on my desk that I’ve collected from past years at Pride, I see a rainbow flag bearing the Xcel Energy logo and a trans pride flag with Smirnoff written across it. Does my pride in my identity still feel as authentic when it’s also an advertisement at the same time?

One person in Denver wants to at least make sure that there’s an alternative to the corporatization of Pride. In 2022, Lucyfer (any pronouns) had recently lost a job and had a string of other bad luck, leading to them starting the queer event planning organization BiteSize Productions, with the inaugural event being her own version of Pride, a version with no corporate sponsorships which would maintain the revolutionary spirit of Pride’s history.

“The first year, about 100 people came through, pretty much just my friends, drag artists, and local musicians that I wanted to have,” Lucyfer says about his event. “And it was also the first time Seventh Circle (Music Collective), which is the venue that it’s held at, had an actual drag event. And so, from there, I wanted to  bring more drag to Seventh Circle.”

Seventh Circle Music Collective is an underground music venue and arts space nestled in the corner of Federal Blvd and 7th Ave. in Denver. While the venue hosts multiple different genres of music, its bread and butter has always been hardcore and metal shows in heavily graffitied, open-air silos that give the place its real DIY reputation. After a modest start the first year, the feedback for Underground Pride resulted in Lucyfer turning this into an annual event.

“It blew up after the first year, which I was shocked by,” she recalls, “because it was just a little thing I was trying to put together, because we were starting to really feel—as a queer community—-pushed down by corporate America coming in and rainbow-washing everything. It just didn’t feel genuine. And I knew a lot of queer performers and queer artists that were friends of mine that would apply to other Pride events and would not get in, but then they would be like, ‘But Xcel Energy got in and not me?’ Why aren’t we giving money to the local queers here?’”

But for the fourth annual edition of Denver Underground Pride, Lucyfer is adding another dimension to his event, incorporating an event theme for the first time ever: Wrath. “I don’t think any of us feel OK or happy or very prideful right now,” she explains. “I think we’re all scared, and we’re all angry, and I think we need to be able to have a platform to show that anger, to show that fear, to show that passion that we all have bubbling up inside of us right now, instead of having a, like, ‘Woohoo, yay, I’m gay and I’m happy!’ (kind of event). That’s great, and that’s beautiful, and I still think there is space for that. … But I think it’s also very beneficial for us to be able to have a space to say, ‘I’m pissed off at everything that’s happening to me, to my friends, to the world around us, to our country, to countries outside of our own. We’re pissed off and we’re mad!’”

As for what kinds of artists they pick, Lucyfer says that all artists have to be queer, local, and underground, and that he will even go so far as to reject some bigger name artists for the sake of getting more underground acts on the bill. “I want to showcase the underground artists, the queer artists, the people that got a day job, and they’re doing this art on the side, and they’re really trying to make it,” she explains. “However, I will say, of course, for headliners and stuff, I’ll sprinkle in some people that will have a good pull, that you’ll be like, ‘Oh, I know them. I’ll come see them.’ But really, it’s to get people to come out and see these underground folks and the ‘undiscovered.’”

This year sees the festival, which was originally one day and later expanded to two, finally expanding to a three-day event. “Honestly, I just didn’t want to keep telling people no,” Lucyfer explains, saying that they hated having to turn down great artists due to lack of space. This year’s Denver Underground Pride will see performances from dance-punk sensation Church Fire, R&B artist C.L. Fondal, melodic death metal act Hel Hath Fury, prog punk act Sexy Coyote, and Latinx riot grrrl act Soy Celesté, just to name a few.

So who is Denver Underground Pride for, exactly? “Queers!” says Lucyfer emphatically, although they add that they do want cis and straight people to feel welcome in the space. “If they’re spending money at underground pride, they’re giving that money directly towards queer folks,” she says, contrasting a large, corporate Pride where companies benefit from write-offs and clout from their donations. “This is a space where every single dollar that is spent there goes towards local queers and local queers who want to turn their art into a living or use this fest as a bounce board to grow even further.”

Denver Underground Pride is being held this year on June 6-8 at Seventh Circle Music Collective. There’s a suggested donation of $15 per day plus a $5 yearly membership to Seventh Circle. No tickets are sold ahead of time, and nobody is turned away for lack of funds.

Photo Courtesy Denver Underground Pride