Event Highlight: Watertown Pride 2026

I sat down for a conversation with Watertown Pride organizers Anna Strohmeyer, Carey Conkey-Finn, and Xin Peng about building a Pride celebration that feels like a real community home. We talk about the event’s origins as an idea from Watertown Library staff, how the organizing of the event has shifted over the years to include more groups and residents in the planning, and what you can expect to see at Watertown Pride 2026 on Saturday, June 6th (including a parade, performances, vendors, food, education and resources and more). We also get into some of their personal connections to Pride and other safe spaces, stories from previous Prides, and how it's shaped their own lives and the lives of others who interact with the event.

Released May 26th, 2026

(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)

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Find out all the details for Watertown Pride 2026 at watertownpride.com

Saturday, June 6th 

11am-4pm

Parade starting from Moxley Park at 11am (with queer family decoration meetup at 10am) and ending at Saltonstall Park next to City Hall where the rest of the festivities will take place.

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Thanks to podcast promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting local businesses and strengthening our community. Check them out at watertownbusinesscoalition.com.

Thanks to promotional partner Watertown News, a Watertown-focused online newspaper. Check them out at watertownmanews.com.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Matt 0:02

Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I'd sit down for a conversation to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is a special event highlight episode for Watertown Pride, which is coming up on Saturday, June 6th, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. But we'll get into all those details in the conversation that I have with three people who are helping organize this year Carey Conkey-Finn, Anna Strohmeyer, and Xin Peng. So I'll let them introduce themselves and we'll get a bit into what is Watertown Pride, how it came about, what to expect this year, and of course, I always like to get some of the personal stories and their connections to Pride in general. So hope you enjoy.

Matt 0:47

I'm sitting here at the Watertown Free Public Library, and I'm sitting with three people who are involved with Watertown Pride coming up. And so why don't you introduce yourself briefly, just say your name, a little bit of what you do and how you're involved with Pride. Go around this way.

Carey 1:00

Sure. My name's Carey Conkey. I'm the city liaison between the city and the Pride Committee. And I try to make things work, all the different bits and pieces, and guide the group. And the city has lots of requirements and so I try to make it as easy as possible to put off a great event. So that's my role.

Matt 1:16

And you're the city liaison because you're part of the library staff, correct?

Carey 1:19

Correct. It's kind of the city and library, part of the same thing. And I just love this event. It's like the highlight of my work life. So but I'm the Teen Services Supervisor here at the library. I've been here for 38 years, so I kind of know the lay of the land.

Matt 1:32

Yes, I guess so. Yeah. Awesome. And go ahead.

Anna 1:35

Hello, my name is Anna Strohmeyer. I'm helping out with Watertown Pride for the first time this year, in a contrast to Carey. I moved to town roughly a year ago around this time. And I was lucky enough to go to the 2025 Watertown Pride. I had a great time and wanted to get more involved. And my friend, who I don't want to pre-introduce him, but my friend told me about the fact that Watertown Pride was looking to set up, or the city of Watertown was looking to set up a community advisory committee to get more feedback and more citizen input on what they want to see out of Pride. So I was like, I can do that. And now I'm the communications co-chair for the Watertown Pride Advisory Committee.

Matt 2:18

Awesome. Now mystery will be revealed. Our last guest.

Xin 2:21

Hi, my name is Xin Peng. Actually serving on the Library Trustee Board and also the Watertown Human Rights Commission. For that reason, instead of being a voting member like what I did with Watertown Pride last year, I took a step back to be an only advisory role. But yeah, that's my connection with Watertown Pride.

Matt 2:38

Yeah. And for those of you who have been listeners of the podcast for a while, he is now a podcast veteran, second appearance here. So yes, you can coach the rest of them through this. Yeah. Great. Well, let's start off with the basics. What is Watertown Pride?

Carey 2:51

It's happened now for five years, and it's probably the best event in Watertown as far as joy and advocacy. We draw from a lot of different folks. We want to make it as inclusive as possible. The mission statement for this year was, you know, just include everybody, include the deaf, disabled, youth, immigrant, BIPOC communities, mixture of race, gender, ability, age, classes, included languages, immigration status. So it's kind of more and more broad. I think it's much more intentional. And so it's a big party.

Matt 3:16

And so I think previous years it had been like a one-day thing, and you've kind of tried to expand it a little bit this year. Is that right? 

Xin 3:23

Yeah. Sounds like you already asked the question that's a little later.

Matt 3:26

I'm mixing it up.

Xin 3:27

Yeah, I think that's the power of having a very diverse Pride committee this year that have all different kinds of backgrounds. Some of the committee members, but big kudos to our co-chair Harrison Ford, who cannot be here today, and also former committee member Todd Rivers. They were leading a series of events, partnering with Ritcey East once a month, queer friendly, like Watertown Trivia, queer karaoke, and there's a befriending. So it feels nice that instead of just a one-day party, it is this ongoing, consistent, low barrier events for people to find connections.

Anna 4:07

And that's been like a trend where because we had a community-based advisory committee for pride this year, and because we had a community kickoff back in October of last year, where we asked our, you know, Watertown folks, like, what do you want to see out of Pride? Like, what's your priorities for Pride? And the number one thing that people all agreed upon was one day is not enough. One day is too little of Pride. We want more queer, friendly events. And thankfully, as Xin already mentioned, Todd, Matthew, and our co-chair Harrison made that happen.

Xin 4:38

AKA Charles River Mermaid. Just want to give it a shout out to that.

Anna 4:42

Yes, yes, yes. Charles River Mermaid. Made it happen. And every Tuesday at Ritcey East once a month, they would make it an interesting event that could bring together different, various disparate groups in our Watertown Pride community.

Matt 4:53

Great. And how many people are on the committee that organizes? How big is that group?

Anna 4:57

I think it's maybe eight. 

Carey 4:58

Eight now. Yeah.

Xin 4:59

And there's some voting members, there's some advisory members, because some of the committee members are wearing many different hats in different organizations and all family ties.

Anna 5:09

Yeah, we’ve been trying to make it work.

Xin 5:11

Yeah.

Carey 5:12

But even if they only give an hour, a couple hours every week, it's amazing. The passion is really cool and that they give what they can. That's really neat about Watertown. People really want to give to the community.

Matt 5:22

Yeah. And does this committee meet all year round, or is it just leading up to like this half of the year?

Carey 5:27

We start in September.

Xin 5:29

Yeah, it's been a while now. And it's fascinating to every time we meet, there's some new ideas coming out. Yeah.

Anna 5:36

Yeah.

Xin 5:37

We would have even a lot more programs if we would have a bigger committee.

Anna 5:41

I agree. Yes. And the thing is that earlier in the year we would meet once a month. And then as we ramp up to Pride, which is June 6th, 2026, at 11 a.m. until 4 p.m., yeah, we've been meeting twice a month. So we've had more conversations and also more room to grow because we've seen like what we could work on in future Pride events.

Matt 6:03

Yeah. I think I'll leave the details for the big Pride party at the end so that people can leave with that information.

Matt 6:10

So what is the origins? How did Watertown Pride, the first one, come about?

Carey 6:15

Back in 2022, we were just coming out of COVID and we were just struggling as an institution like how can we reach out to the public in a constrained environment? And we decided that we would have a hot dog stand out in the back and some ice cream and call it the Pride event. And then it just expanded. Library staff got together. And what happened in the outer larger world is Boston Pride collapsed 

Anna 6:37

In 2022. 

Carey 6:38

2022. There was a lot of strife as far as corporate sponsorship and things like that. And my initial thought was like, we're not gonna have a lot of corporate sponsorship, you know, in this event. It's really community based. So we did that. The first year we had, I think 1,100 people attend. We had music, things like that in Saltonstall Park. We just really wanted to focus on meaningful events, just a way to bring the community together, not just because of Pride queer stuff. It was also just for helping the community heal from COVID. And then in 2023, we did the same thing. We had about 1,200 people attend.

Matt 7:10

How did that first group come together? Like even to think about Pride. I know you said it was a small thing at first, but.

Carey 7:16

It was library staff. The nice thing about working at the library is that we have a lot of freedom to find projects we want to work on. And administration is very supportive as far as new initiatives, and this was really fun. Like things like Zinefest and other things are 

Anna 7:28

Huge hits. 

Carey 7:29

Huge hits. So that's why I'm here for 38 years. I really love it. You know, it's you know, I can go into how it personally, you know, just the alliance with my values and things like that. But I'll let you go on with the.

Anna 7:39

Yeah. So what Carey was saying is true that Watertown Pride was a library initiative that kind of grew out of those bounds into I think more of like a Watertown community initiative. And the original, the name for the event was Watertown Pride Extravaganza. And now we're just calling it Watertown Pride, but it is an extravaganza. That's that's not changed. So I think the number one thing that we wanted to maintain from the original origins of Pride back in ‘22, 2023 was that collaboration with not just the library, but the city, and to make this as much of a community feedback-oriented event as possible. In 2024 and 2025, I believe that the city took direct control over it, the city events team. And there was some feedback that, you know, maybe things could be different, it could be more queer inclusive, it could be more education and resource-driven and less like bubbles and bouncy castles. Not to say that I didn't, I had a great time at Pride 2025, to be clear. But I respect Watertown, the city administration and the efforts by the bureaucracy as a whole, but especially library and librarians like Carey for stepping up and saying, okay, we'll make that happen. We can see where we can improve and make that effort to make this even better event.

Carey 8:50

Yeah, we really had to expand the footprint as far as people organizing. It was way too much for the library to do it as it got bigger and bigger and bigger. So it just keeps adding on people to the process. That's pretty cool.

Matt 9:00

And are there other cities that actually run their Pride, or is it usually just a separate group, you know, all volunteers from? It seems from what I've heard, it's kind of unique that it's a city-run initiative. Is that true?

Xin 9:12

So I can take this one. So, first of all, I want to like go back to the other questions. I want to just give a big shout out to Carey and her library and staff, because they were too humble. They were the trailblazers, right? And I just moved to Watertown in 2019 and stuck in COVID. As a new resident, I was like longing for connections and back then didn't feel like Watertown was a place like that. And then boom, Watertown Pride Extravaganza happened. It was just so educational and community focused. It was an enter point for me to feel that Watertown is a home and can be a home. And I think that's why I joined as a Pride committee member in 2024 for the 2025 Pride. The city event team took it over because, as Carey mentioned, the library just feel like they were stretched too thin, and the event team of the city were helping out. The challenge was when an event is not planned by the community itself or not led by the community itself, the audience who attend the event from the queer community didn't feel like that's for them.

Anna 10:18

They feel alienated from the event.

Xin 10:20

And so I like it, this is why I kept telling people Watertown Prime is almost like a startup. We're trying to figure out things. And I think all those challenges we've been through are necessary steps for us to finally arrive at 2025 Pride committee. We probably still need more improvement, but we reached a great balance, coming back to your just question, that we reached a really good balance that we have input directly from the community because we hold a community input kickoff. But also community members who stepped up to be the community member to provide the ideas and content. But the city is also the backbone of making sure that logistics and those things are still happening. When we met with other cities' Pride committees, we're very lucky that the city of Watertown is actually supportive in that sense because many other cities' Pride committees they actually have to petition the city to shut down the main street for parade or even write a really big check to the city to get that. And that's just in these days when fundraising is so difficult already, that is a very difficult decision many Pride committees have to face when Watertown Pride Committee don't have to deal with.

Carey 11:28

I just want to back up and give the kudos to the city events team and Tammy.

Xin 11:32

Yeah.

Carey 11:32

They did a great job and it's not an easy process. You know, they were allies, certainly. 

Anna 11:38

They tried their best with the resources they had. Yeah, and just to follow on the question about what Pride looks like in local communities all around Mass. I had to miss that event, the networking event, I'm sad to say. But what I heard was that multiple different constellations of organizing work well for different localities. Some groups are 501c3 nonprofits, others are just like general nonprofit orgs or like community groups. And they, like Xin was mentioning, have to go through a very specific bureaucratic process to be able to do the parade. But they have more leeway in terms of how they spend funds and having their own bank account. So there's pros and cons to both ways to do it.

Matt 12:20

Yeah. Anything else to add on to the history of this specific Pride event before I go maybe into more of your personal experiences with that?

Xin 12:28

Yeah, I also want to highlight that the Watertown Pride has evolved towards a direction that's getting better and better with collaborating with other organizations in the city, not just the City of Watertown. I think we're bringing people together, especially the organizations who are aligned with our missions or there’s overlap with our missions. Like this year, I think Perkins School for the Blind will be at our Pride and more queer-owned business will be at Pride and World in Watertown and Watertown Human Rights Commission, they all have been partners of this year's Pride.6

Matt 13:00

Yeah, and maybe before we skip into your personal stories, we didn't, I mean, you mentioned in your kind of preamble there, but who are you specifically trying to target with these events? Who is it for? And what do you want people to leave with after experiencing one of your events or the large event?

Anna 13:15

Yeah, that's a good question because it is true that the first time in the history of Pride, Watertown Pride, we've had monthly events in the lead up to the main Pride extravaganza, parade. Most of the focus has been on making this an event that not only aligns with the values of the library, in the sense everything is free, signing up for booth as a vendor, as a nonprofit, or as like a small business, even like a for-profit business, you don't have to pay any fees to have a table and to reach out to community. While also making it an event that is accessible to everybody. So we have interpreters for ASL. 

Carey 13:51

ASL, yes. 

Anna 13:52

We have captioning.

Carey 13:54

Perkins is gonna do a digital map for folks, which is really cool. I think, I don't want to interrupt you, but I think.

Anna 14:00

Go for it. Yeah. 

Carey 14:01

I think no one person can play on Pride. And I think all of us on the committee bring different affiliations and groups, and we all come together and say, well, we've got to make sure we include this person. What about this? We aren't including that person. What about seniors? How do we do that? So everybody comes together with their own connections. It's more broad than just one group that we're trying to reach out to. It's many, many, many. Families of queer kids, things like that.

Anna 14:22

Yeah. And I think that's been part of that community-driven initiative that, you know, we have community members in the advisory committee for Pride. That means that community members can say, hey, I feel like there should be. Like one of our community members, Liz, was like, I want to have a young families-focused event decorating bicycles and like strollers before Pride kicks off. So at like 10 a.m., I want us to gather at the local park and have some fun and make the kids feel like ready and amped up for something that might be a little bit overstimulating. Can get them ready for it. Yeah, that's something that you know I would not have considered to start off first thing in the morning. I'm so happy that we have somebody that is willing to take that up and have that as their initiative that they're gonna work on. So that's been part and parcel of the entire process.

Xin 15:03

So basically it's for everyone, but especially for those who don't always feel seen. Because I think when people think about Pride, people think about a gay guy with six packs dancing on a floaty, right? But it's actually for everybody from LGBTQ plus community, but also youth and the families, the allies. And to be fair, like my understanding of Pride at this point is everybody is a little bit queer. Queer is the meaning of it is you're different. You might be different the way you water your lawn, you might be different the way you handle your relationship, you might be different the way you handle your, how you do your job. So, like everybody who is looking for connection, but also can be respectful of others who is different in their ways because you are different in your way just as much as how other people are different in their way. This is a safe place where you come to educate, you learn, you celebrate. And some of them you might be still figuring things out, and it is okay as long as you left Pride, feels a little bit more connected than when you just got here.

Carey 16:03

I think for me too is, like for trans kids who have gotten it particularly hard the last few years, that's my primary role at the library, is working with teens and middle school kids, high school kids. And I really want them to see that the community supports them. They don't get so many messages of support. And I want them to feel that all these people care about them and what they go through.

Anna 16:23

Yeah. We've made an effort to have outreach with different parts of the queer community, be that parts that aren't as celebrated, like everyone knows drag queens, but they're also drag kings. And then, you know, like have speakers that represent the trans community. So we've done that in past years, and this year is no different. Like we want to make sure that every part of the community feels included. And to do that, we need to hear different voices and try different initiatives to see what works best. It's like throwing spaghetti at the wall, but it's like multicolored rainbow spaghetti to see what sticks.

Matt 16:51

Nice. Awesome. All right, I think it's time now to move into the personal stories. So as much as you're comfortable sharing or want to share. Xin, like why has Pride been important for you? How does it affect you personally?

Xin 17:03

I think going back to earlier, my comments, is the feeling of belonging. And growing up being a little bit queer. It's very interesting, my family thinks I became queer after I moved to this country. Because I was feeling queer even when I was back at home. That was before I figured out my sexual orientation. I just feel like I was different from any other people in my village or in my school that when it comes to masculinity, when it comes to my relationship with nature, when it comes to my relationship with education. Pride provides a space that you get to see so many people that who oftentimes don't fit into the box. And they just come into this one event that it almost feels like when you go out to the nature and you see such abundance of biodiversity, it just brings so much joy, so much feeling of belonging and so much hope as well that you know you'll be fine, even though you're a little bit different in your way. 

Xin 17:58

So that's why I've been serving at the Watertown Human Rights Commission, because I knew that for events like Pride or other mission-aligned events, we need support from our institute, like the City of Watertown. And the best way to advocate for programs like this is be in part of those institutes and share the voices from our queer community, not just at Pride, but also during all the commission meetings as well.  And in the meantime, World in Watertown has been doing a lot of mission-aligned programs as well, like a safe space project. It's been very heartwarming to hear from some of the neighbors I've never met before. They told me that they moved to Watertown, they saw those little rainbow stickers on the local business, how it made them, especially some of them moved from the south, that is a lot more conservative area, it made them feel a lot safer when they see that. So it's also that kind of day-to-day interaction with some of your friends, some of them strangers or just your neighbors that you hear about the changes you've seen happening in our community in the last five years or 10 years, sometimes it might look like a small thing like safe space project, sometimes it looks like a big thing like a Pride. I think all of that contributed to creating that city that we want all of us, including ourselves, to feel safe and welcome here.

Matt 19:18

Yeah. And do you have a specific moment or memory of you encountering some safe space or Pride-related event or something that sparked a strong memory in you?

Xin 19:28

Yeah. So World in Watertown, two years ago at the Pride actually hosted a workshop about the history of a Black trans activist in this country. It was not the main flow of Pride then, but it still attracted a lot of people. And we also introduced the concept of the wheel of power, meaning that even among queer communities, there's different power dynamics, like because of your race, your gender, your citizenship status, your language, and all of that. And it attracted really diverse voices. That there was some difficult conversation happening on the spot. But it was really good to hear that folks that are feeling seen at the program, but also folks having different opinions feels like they were able to have a civilized conversation to understand that concept a little bit more. So hopefully they will keep that in mind in the future when they interact with other people that is a little bit different from them. So that was one of the memory of Pride that I hold close to me. Yeah. 

Matt 20:27

Nice. Let's move on to you, Anna.

Anna 20:30

Yeah, that's a hard act to follow, but I will try. So my experience as an immigrant is a bit different than Xin’s. I came here when I was five years old, and my dad is already an American citizen. So he kind of was experienced with life here. But when I grew up in Armenia, my family dynamic there was quite different. And it was not much as much focused on the nuclear family. It was much more of a community-oriented lifestyle. Most of us were looking at how we could support our neighbors and how we could make somebody in our neighborhood smile, I guess. And everybody kind of knew each other, grew up together in the same like block of housing. So it was very easy to connect and feel seen. That's not to say that it was like an especially queer-friendly community, but there was that sense of, you know, there would be somebody there to hold you if you tripped and fell and hurt your knee. 

Anna 21:21

And when I came to the States, there was culture shock of like the experience of being in a very capitalist individualist space. Not to say that it wouldn't have been the same if I'd moved to, I don't know, Switzerland or something, but I did not know what I didn't know as a kid. I did not know why I felt like so alone, but part of that was also moving to the States in the year 2000. And by 2001, me mentioning that I knew Armenian or spoke Armenian or had been in Armenia at some point, people are like, that's not, you're not a patriot if you talk about that. You have to talk about how much you love this country, even as like a six year old child. So I kind of had this alternate version of myself, like the Armenian version of myself at home, and then the American version of myself out and about. 

Anna 22:04

And I feel like those two dichotomous pieces have slowly been merging together over time because I started an Armenian American school club back in undergrad when I was going to university in Virginia. I could see like how much people, Armenian Americans, yearned for just that community feeling. Then when I turned my attention to even more minority group, which is queer Armenians, I was like, what can I do to step up and be a voice? And Xin definitely encouraged me, which I appreciated immensely, that, you know, I could be instrumental in planning Pride and in future years, hopefully make Armenian voices that are here in Watertown, of course, because Watertown, some people don't know this, is like an historical Armenian diaspora community, and one of the biggest and the oldest in the United States. 

Anna 22:50

So the fact that I just happened to move to this area and have an opportunity to connect to a wider community that whether they like it or not, I'm part of, you know, as a queer Armenian, they can't, they can't exclude me. I want to make those queer voices heard because I've met some queer Armenians and they have all said the same thing, which is they don't know how to be Armenian and be a proud, queer person. So they do know maybe, but they don't know in this community how best to do that. And I want to make that opportunity more accessible over time. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but over time. Yeah, I keep working towards it.

Matt 23:24

Yeah. And then how about a personal story for you of some interaction with Pride or a safe space that really made you feel welcome?

Anna 23:32

Oh, absolutely. When I was first coming out, it was a bit of a rocky time. My mom did not know how to react and I didn't know who to turn to. And my safe community was the online drag race, RuPaul's drag race fandom. We all have thoughts and feelings about RuPaul's drag race these days. But when I was 14, it was much more of a simple, happy time. And I learned about the fact that there is such a thing as a ballroom, that there's like drag shows that the queer trans community in New York started and progressively became more and more popular and then eventually became something that RuPaul's drag race made public or more accessible to the layperson. That inspired me as a young person. I was like, you know, I don't have any dancing skill, I don't have any sewing skill. But if I can even cheer someone on who's that proud and so much themselves, I can feel part of the community. So that made me really happy.

Matt 24:31

Nice. All right, Carey, your turn.

Carey 24:33

Okay. As you know, as I've mentioned before, I work with teens and high school kids. One of my personal drivers in my job is always to advocate for kids. It's kind of on a personal level, it's finding things I didn't get when I was a kid in northern Wisconsin. My high school class is 40 people. I was only out to myself. You know, that just really has helped. I might maybe I wasn't really conscious of it then, but that's been the theme of my life, my career here working with kids. And a story that really stuck with me, I think it was 2023. The Gender Sexuality Alliance kids wrote a thank you card for having Pride. And one of the things that the kids said on their card is like, thank you for having pride. I finally have the courage to come out to my parents. That meant a lot in a lot of ways. So, like, job well done. You know? So that's one clear memory that'll stick with me for the rest of my time here.

Matt 25:19

Nice. Well, any other personal thoughts people want to add in before we go to the details of Pride to round this thing out or anything I missed before? 

Xin 25:29

Yeah. I mean, as usual, I really just want to call out the community support of Watertown Pride because it's gonna happen every year, hopefully. Like it can be in the way of time, your resources, your money, or your ideas. We had a really good community kickoff for this year's Pride. It happened last October, and that's where a lot of great ideas emerged. And we'd like to continue to keep Watertown Pride to be community, especially queer community driven. And to make that happen, we would like to see more residents, especially residents who identify as LGBTQIA plus, to be part of this effort. It will be challenging because we're still figuring things out, but just want people to be able to speak up for themselves and others, but also be the change they really want to see, especially during these kind of times. So yeah, we're always looking.

Anna 26:16

Yeah. And we're here to, like Xin’s saying, like Carey, myself, Xin, all of us are eager to shepherd people into the process, even if maybe we can't be as involved one year or another. We'd be happy to give people advice and tell them what to expect if they want to become part of the Pride advisory committee.

Carey 26:33

One thing I want to emphasize is that this costs money, and that a lot of our fundraising has been through the Watertown Community Foundation, business sponsors this year. We have five of them. I'm not gonna mention them all because I'll probably forget one. The library building committee has thrown in some money, individuals have thrown in some money. It couldn't happen without that. And also, I think just I want to shout out to the DPW, the police department, the fire department, the rec department, all who have an integral part of this event. And I just want to say that because I want to make sure that those people aren't forgotten. You know, that we really do rely on them to make this into a fabulous event. And the Green Dragon Circus and all those other places.

Matt 27:09

Great. Well, let's give people the details. What should they expect on Saturday, June 6th? Take us through the whole day. Where do we start and where we end? You know, take us through.

Carey 27:17

So at 10 o'clock, people are going to gather in Moxley Field, Moxley Park, I believe. There'll be a chance for families and their kids to decorate bicycles and tricycles, make signs, et cetera, for the parade. The parade will kick off at 11 and come down Main Street. It'll be led by Good Trouble Honk Band, Brass Band, and then a lot of other folks. The Perkins School for the Blind will have a van. Hopefully, the senior centers will have a van. Just a lot of people joining in, and then hopefully Watertown High School Band playing at the end. When they arrive to the Saltonstall field, that's when our regular programs begin. I think we have like 30 tables now of vendors and organizations. On the stage, we're going to have Jean Sequins, drag king open the event, and also there'll be a keynote speaker. There'll also be a couple other bands that'll be playing. Carrie Ferguson Band is consisted of non-binary band members, and we'll end up with The Femmes, which is a Boston party band, basically. And they played at Boston First Night, so they're pretty well known. And that's kind of just a general overview.

Anna 28:17

We'll have lots of different vendor opportunities, as Carey mentioned. We'll have face painting, a bouncy castle. We'll have food trucks with various different kinds of snacks and main course stuff because that's something that we've got feedback on during the community kickoff. People wanted more food, more types of food. He said we will deliver this. Liz G has been really instrumental in making that happen. We also will have multiple performances from community members like Quyen Tran. There will be a separate performance from a local circus performing troupe. They're also going to do like an exhibition show to show what you could learn to do yourself if you joined their classes. So Green Dragon Circus will perform. And then we also will have a separate area for people to relax away from like the noise. We have a sensory overwhelm safe space. So if people want some quiet, they can sit there. 

Carey 29:09

It's going to be at the front of the library.

Matt 29:10

Can always pop in the library if they need a quiet space too, right? 

Anna 29:12

That's a good point. Yeah. I love the library.

Xin 29:15

And I also want to add on that thanks to the Pride committee, that this year we're very intentional with the vendors, the performers, and organizations we're partnering with. So I really encourage the community to take the time to walk around if they have the capacity. And if they are ready, there's a lot of opportunities for them if they want to be the change they want to see. There's a lot of opportunities. A lot of those organizations the committee picked are aligned with Watertown Pride’s mission to make just a general safer macro environment for the queer community. So there's many ways to be involved. I also want to give a shout out to our co-chair Harrison Ford again for his push on the sexual health clinic that they're going to come back again for those who are interested.

Anna 29:57

And the, like what Xin mentioned just now, the free HIV STI testing is sponsored by the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers. This is a free confidential service and it's provided in the Watertown City Hall lower level. That'll be from noon to 4 p.m. on June 6th.

Matt 30:14

All right. Well, was there anything else about the day that you wanted to mention that we didn't yet?

Carey 30:19

I want to just shout out to the Pride advisory committee. We've talked kind of a skirting about a few people here that are on the committee, but it's a group of dedicated people, the greatest group of people to work with. We have our ups and downs, but we could not make Pride the way it is, the success it is, without these people.

Matt 30:35

Great. Well, if people want to find out more information about the day of or just getting involved, where should they go to find out more information?

Anna 30:43

You can definitely check out www.watertownpride.com. And we've updated the website recently so that it says it's Watertown MA because there's other Watertowns across the states, and people have been confused sometimes. But we're definitely the Massachusetts one. So yeah, please check it out.

Carey 31:00

Check out our social media too. The city is getting it on their social media.

Matt 31:04

Yeah. Any last thoughts before I wrap it up? 

Anna 31:06

Thank you for having us. This is a lovely venue to just talk about why we love Watertown and why we want to be part of Pride here.

Matt 31:13

Yeah. Thanks for taking the time to talk about this and set up this now annual celebration in our city. 

Carey 31:20

Thank you. 

Matt 31:21

So that's it for my conversation with Anna, Carey, and Xin. You can find out more information on Watertown Pride at WatertownPride.com. Again, it's going to be happening on Saturday, June 6th. The parade starts at Moxley Field at 11 a.m. The family meetup that they were talking about, where you can do some decorations before the parade starts at 10 a.m. at the Moxley Playground. Then after the parade takes you to Saltonstall Park, there'll be a whole afternoon of activities and performances at Saltonstall Park right behind City Hall till 4 p.m. 

Matt 31:51

If you like this episode and you'd like to hear more episodes of the podcast, you can head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com. There I have all the episodes, information on upcoming live podcast events, and you can sign up for my weekly newsletter if that's your thing. And if you're a longtime listener and you like the podcast, you can support it by clicking the support local conversation button right in the menu. And you can become a little local friend, keep these conversations going. Again, all that is over at LittleLocalConversations.com. 

Matt 32:22

Alright, and I want to give a few shout-outs here to wrap things up. I want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at WatertownCulturalCouncil.org and MassCulturalCouncil.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First, the Watertown Business Coalition. Their motto is Community is Our Business. Find out more about them and their events at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.