Santa Cruz Faeries 50th Anniversary for Pride

by Shaynala/Shane Hill

This year is the 50th Anniversary for Santa Cruz Pride, and the Santa Cruz Radical Faeries have a history for creating the highlight experience for Pride for many years.  The Santa Cruz Faeries are known for our strong community spirit, responsible follow through (rare in faerie circles), support for queer youth, large creative projects, and Pride Parade Floats!  

“Faerie Magick” is a book that chronicles a prolific period of events in the Santa Cruz Radical Faerie community from 1996 to 2008. These events included parade floats, tents at SC Pride, Kasbah Cabarets, Faerie Easter parades, heart circles, Faerie potlucks, Solstice and Equinox rituals, large Faerie gatherings on Farmer John’s land, Queer Youth Camps, Queer Youth Leadership Awards and a host of social activities.

In 2002, we created The Cockettes Float for the Pride Parade, and that year we received a Proclamation from the Mayor recognizing our contributions to the larger Santa Cruz community, especially due to all our community events to support and raise funds for queer youth. Most of us have been in organizational positions of high influence in Santa Cruz, so we are known and respected by the non-queer community here as being influential, out-spoken, systemic thinkers and creatively helpful to the entire community.

This year at Pride we plan to honor Trans/Non-binary people and Drag Queens, those who have been highly attacked in the queer community by the religious right and new Trump executive orders.  We will create four Faerie Drag Outfits on stands that represent the four elements: Earth, Fire, Air and Water.  People can stand behind them and it will appear as if they have TRANSformed into an Elemental Faerie Drag Queen for a fabulous photo opportunity!

These photos show examples of our Faerie Floats for the Pride Parades.  If you want to see more, check out the book “Faerie Magick”  by clicking  HERE.