The theme for this year’s Pride celebration is a rallying cry demanding equality for all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons. This year, more than any previous year, the organizers of San Diego Pride are making sure that declaration is not only being heard outside the community, but throughout the local GLBT population as well.

Pride is presenting a different celebration this year. Along with the original events are more dances, added stages and entertainers, additional features, expanded festival areas and much more. More importantly, there are new partners – Pride Partners, as they are called – working in conjunction with Pride to represent the true diversity of the San Diego GLBT community.

“The image that people get of a Pride festival is an event for young white males. San Diego has really moved way beyond that stereotype of a Pride event for many years. What we have tried to do this year is keep going the direction that San Diego has gone,” said Ron deHarte, executive director of San Diego Pride.

As the newly-appointed executive director, deHarte has spent the past six months building partnerships with organizations that represent seniors, youth, and the Latin and African-American communities, as well as the women, bisexual, transgender and faith communities.

“I’ve long been a proponent of partnering with all of our community organizations and making it a big presence in the Pride weekend; to come together and work together as a community, to really showcase the cultures and the beliefs and what makes each of our communities special and unique,” deHarte said.

These diverse communities have a new and strong presence at the 2006 celebration, which takes place Friday through Sunday, July 28-30.

The changes to Pride began even before deHarte joined the Pride staff. Last year, the Pride board of directors initiated an online survey to gather feedback from the local community. San Diego’s Pride celebration is already considered one of the best events in the country, drawing 150,000 people to the Saturday Pride parade (the largest one-day civic event in the city) and welcoming more than 40,000 people to the two-day Pride festival. The goal of the survey was to learn what people liked and disliked.

“Basically, we asked: ‘If you don’t come to Pride, why don’t you come? What would you like to see?’ It was really getting the feedback from the community directly,” said Anne Hewitt, co-chair of Pride’s board of directors. “We got quite a bit of feedback.”

The Pride organizers hosted a town hall meeting in 2005 to get even more feedback, and also met with local leaders to discuss how to improve upon the popular weekend celebration.

“Truly [the changes this year are] a direct result from the survey we did online, listening to the community, asking our friends, asking other leadership folks in other organizations of what they would really like to see,” Hewitt said.

“We’ve met with a lot of community groups to see what they think of Pride – we don’t know how may people we’ve brought to the table to open dialogue,” said Phillip Princetta, co-chair of Pride’s board of directors. “So we’ve incorporated a lot of changes this year.”

“There [are] different perspectives, different ideas coming to the table that we didn’t have last year,” deHarte said. “That’s really what drove the surface changes on the festival itself, to the parade – to make things a little more exciting, to give it a shot in the arm. That came right off the online surveys that we had going for months on end. Hundreds and hundreds of people had responded.”

The list of changes is large and comprehensive, covering every aspect of the scheduled Pride events. It’s created a lively buzz around town.

“One of the comments we had heard repeatedly, year after year, when the press would ask, ‘What’s new at Pride,’ we would not have as much to report,” Princetta said. “Not like this time around. This is good to incorporate these changes.”

Of all the changes and additions to the 2006 Pride schedule, the list of entertainers is receiving top billing. It was the most popular subject – or least favorite – in the feedback gathered from the community.

“One of the number-one things was the entertainment. The entertainment needs to be brought up to speed,” Princetta said. “That’s one of the things we’re doing this year.”

“Entertainment is really the driving factor for people who may not come to the festival,” deHarte said. “How many times can you go in and walk the route and see the exhibitors and buy a sausage? You can get into that only so many times. Entertainment plays a key [role] in keeping it fresh, keeping the festival exciting.”

With 10 music stages showcasing almost 100 performance groups this year, Pride’s entertainment lineup now rivals any other music festival in the city.

“A lot of times, people said the entertainment was the same old thing. There is nothing new,” Hewitt said.

That, too, has changed.

“We’re not just focusing on one core main stage, but focusing on three primary stages that are presenting entertainment – from headliners to local bands,” deHarte said.

One of those core stages is the Jack FM Stage. Located just inside the festival gates, the Jack FM Stage hosts Friday’s Spirit of Stonewall rally and stages nonstop music on Saturday and Sunday. Headliners this year include Deborah Gibson, Tiffany, Jason & deMarco, When in Rome and Flock of Seagulls.

Another core performance space, the Buzz Great Lawn Stage, sits at the end of the festival loop, where performers like Shitting Glitter, Slow Mo Erotic, Camille Bloom and Sean Wiggins will perform throughout the weekend.

As an added feature, Pride is using the natural bowl landscape of the Buzz Great Lawn Stage and transforming the space into a movie theater Saturday night for Cinema in the Park. Two gay-themed films are showing: Gay Pioneers and JIM IN BOLD.

“I know there are a lot of people who don’t want to be dancing on Saturday night or are not particularly interested in what we have going on at any of the stages. Yet having a nice relaxing evening under the stars in Balboa Park, participating in the festival experience and being able to watch a few movies with true meaning – there is an audience for that,” deHarte said.

Formerly called Dance Attack, the Rocket HiNRG Dance Floor not only gets a makeover but a new location as well. The dance floor moves to the parking lot at the end of the festival (across from the Buzz Great Lawn Stage). After all-day dancing, this area welcomes two new T-dances each night.

“That’s just to give [an opportunity to] people who want to come and have a great time dancing,” deHarte said. “They can come into the festival and there’s this focused dance, whether it’s the … Pride T-Dance on Saturday or the Latin T-Dance on Sunday.”

Saturday’s T-dance features a live performance by Debby Holiday, and India performs at Sunday’s Latin T-Dance.

The festival T-dances do not compete with the official Pride parties and are scheduled around the other dance events. The T-dances end at the closing of each day’s festival before San Diego’s nightlife begins.

“We’re not about making the festival a huge circuit party. That’s not what the festival is about,” deHarte said. “The T-dances are a happy fit with what we’re doing at the festival, with what the clubs are doing and what’s going on with the Pride parties.”

The Main Beer Garden is moving to a new shady area on the east side of the festival site and is getting its own performance stage, the 21+ Stage. Amber Norgaard, Rhythm and the Method, John David Shepherd, Liquid 360 and AJ Thompson are just some of the bands performing on the 21+ Stage.

For the ladies, Pride has included the Lavender Lens Women’s Space.

“The Lavender Lens Women’s Space gives lesbians, bisexual women and their allies not only an opportunity to celebrate the outstanding talent of our community, but also visibility and an opportunity to meet women in a safe space throughout the two-day festival,” said Bixi Craig, publisher of Lavender Lens.

Lauren DeRose, MC Flow, Angie Evans and Terra Naomi are a few of the artists scheduled to perform. Also on Sunday night, DJ Kiki spins at the third festival dance party: the Women’s T-Dance.

“Expect the area to be fun, busy and featuring nonstop music,” Craig said.

Expanding from the one Rhythm of the Nation’s Stage from previous years, Pride now hosts the Latin and Ebony Pride stages.

“One of the new things that Ron [deHarte] has done is get more diverse entertainment,” Hewitt said. “That was really something that was sparked for different groups in the community.”

“People of color can have something that they can clearly identify with,” deHarte said, “but beyond that, it breaks down borders and it lets everyone else in our community enjoy some of the music and some of the spoken word and some of the celebration. Folks who may not be exposed to that type of thing normally will have a chance to be exposed.

“The same thing with the Latin Stage,” he continued. “The whole reason why we wanted to incorporate entertainment from the Latin community is not specifically for the Latinos coming to Pride, but it’s for everybody – it’s for everybody to enjoy the cultures.”

Diversity Dancesport presents dance on Sunday on the Couples Dance Floor, including cha-cha, tango, swing, waltz and two-step.

Longtime entertainment favorites are still part of the Pride festival. The San Diego Chapter of the Golden State Rodeo Association organizes the Country Dance Floor. The Live and Let Live Alano Club hosts the Coffee Terrace and Eric Swanson returns with the popular Karaoke Stage.

The list of entertainment goes on and on, and is constantly changing and expanding even days before the festival celebration begins. For the most accurate and complete lineup of entertainers, check the information booth just inside the Pride festival or log on to www.sdpride.org.

The entertainment lineup at Pride is just one change in an exhaustive list of additions. The Spirit of Stonewall rally has a new agenda, the Pride parade has expanded and the Pride festival has several innovative areas.

Most of the work could not be completed without the assistance of the newly-recognized Pride Partners. The partnering organizations are not sponsors, but have been working closely with Pride to create an expanded and more diverse event for 2006.

Local theaters, museums, galleries and performance groups have joined together to present a Pride Cultural Arts Week, already under way. Seven senior organizations are working to expand the Senior Connection at the Pride festival. Several local churches are organizing a new Interfaith Pavilion. Pride Partners are also collaborating on a Bisexual Area, Transgender Area, Women’s Health Fair, Leather Realm and an artwork area called Art of Pride.

Some of the partnering groups have already been working with Pride, like the organizers of the Leather Realm and Bisexual Area. Others are new. Those collaborations, deHarte said, are creating several “firsts” for San Diego Pride – or any Pride, for that matter.

“The Women’s Space is brand new. Never been done before,” deHarte cited as an example. “Very few Prides have something geared toward women. That idea just came from talking with folks and asking if they thought it would work.”

The Interfaith Pavilion is another Pride first. Almost a dozen churches and religious groups are creating a space at the Pride festival to share the acceptance and diversity of their faiths.

“The feedback I’m getting from them is they are so thankful that Pride is doing this. It’s really giving them an opportunity to come together as a community,” deHarte said. “Just the faith message – there’s a huge desire and involvement for our community in organizations of faith. It’s only logical that something like the Interfaith Pavilion would have a place at Pride. That’s a great addition. It represents community partnership in its truest form.”

The organizers of Pride are hopeful everyone can enjoy this year’s celebration and find something new to experience.

“We are encouraging people who have not been to Pride [in a while] to come on back,” deHarte said. “What we worked hard on this year – and the board was very instrumental in this – is trying to make Pride what the community was asking us to do.”

Yet even with a great deal of optimism, deHarte and the board of directors are realistic about the additions to the festivities. Most will be successful, but they also admit that some may not work this first year.

“This Pride is called one of the best events in the country,” Princetta said. “A spirit must watch over it because a certain magic happens that week and everything just falls into place.”