Aurora Pride Fest from Aug. 3, 2019 at the Aurora Reservoir. This year’s event is being redrawn to accommodate the pandemic crisis. File Photo by Ali C. M. Watkins/Sentinel Colorado 
Aurora Pride Fest from Aug. 3, 2019 at the Aurora Reservoir. This year’s event is being redrawn to accommodate the pandemic crisis. File Photo by Ali C. M. Watkins/Sentinel Colorado 
Out IN Aurora
In another universe, the LGBTQ community flocked to the Aurora Reservoir on a warm sunny afternoon for a day of pride, music, swimming, drinks and drag.
Actually, that was only last summer — and before the pandemic — during Aurora Pride. But this year, Aurora’s own Pride festival won’t take over the city this year because of COVID-19.
“If anything, now, with the lockdown, I think people are just yearning for connection and being with their people,” said Jerry Cunningham, publisher of Outfront magazine, who helped launch Aurora Pride in 2017. “And so it’s a real disappointment, for sure.”
But Cunningham and organizers still have a few plans up their sleeves to get Aurorans out and celebrating their identities and Aurora’s strong LGBTQ community.
Front and center is a scavenger hunt of sorts to visit Aurora joints in outrageous outfits. It’s called Out in Aurora, and here’s how it works: for the entire month of September, patrons can pop into a slate of Aurora businesses, get some grub or beer and rake in a discount. The plan also involves tagging the business on social media to spread the word. And, there will be prizes for the best masks and best outfits rocked on the mini-tour of A-Town.
The businesses participating so far are:
• Third Culture Bakery
• ZERO market
• Dry Dock Brewing Co.
• Mondo Market at Stanley
• Neighborhood Music & Theatre
• Lady Justice Brewing
Cunningham said the event is more centered around celebrating “how awesome Aurora is” than the area LGBT culture this year. Plus, it’s one way to keep shopping locally. Aurora’s cornucopia of small businesses have struggled during the pandemic-induced recession.
Aurora Pride’s new phase follows a long list of other events and celebrations tabled this year, including Denver’s Pride festival. Normally crowded and colorful, Denver Pride went virtual earlier this summer.
But Pride-goers should keep their eyes peeled for more Aurora Pride events in the fall. Cunningham said the details haven’t been hammered out, but the Gaylord Rockies hotel and Town Center of Aurora parking lot could become the sites of pool parties and movies nights in October — with social distancing requirements, of course.
Aurora Pride and support of the community has grown during the last few years, along with the community itself.
Pinning down just how many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people call Aurora home is tricky. The city of Aurora and the United States Census don’t compile much data on LGBT people in Aurora, and many of the estimates available are dated.
A 2015 Gallup poll that looked at the 50 most-populated metro areas around the country said 4.6 percent of people in the Aurora metro area were LGBT, the same percentage as Los Angeles. San Francisco led the way at 6.2 percent and the national average was 3.6 percent.
A 2017 Gallup study found that 4.5 percent of Americans identified as LGBT. The rise was driven by more young people using the labels.
The Movement Advancement Project also tracks the LGBT population in Colorado. About 200,000 of the state’s 4.4 million population is LGBT, according to its estimate.
That’s about 4.6 percent. More than 30 percent of those people are raising children.