From The Editor: Party Like It’s 1995

I hope you’ve all got your party pants on. There’s a lot to celebrate in this issue!

First of all, happy Pride Month! Lavender’s Pride Issue is our annual celebration of Minnesota’s LGBTQ+ community — sort of a Pride parade in print.

I’m sure most of you are well familiar with it, possibly more than I am, with this being my first Pride Issue in the editor’s chair. For those of you who are new, as I am, there’s a little bit of just about everything we cover throughout the year here, plus some special features like our Community Pride Awards. This is our biggest issue of the year, by far. I hope you can find time between Pride Month festivities to read it. Our writers, creative staff and sales team have all worked incredibly hard to make it happen.

In addition to Pride Month, Lavender is celebrating our 30th anniversary in this issue! As someone who’s been around for less than one of those 30 years, I feel remarkably unqualified to be the one popping the figurative champagne. However, with the bottle now in hand, I’ll try my best to not keep you waiting much longer.

A toast: I’m incredibly proud that Lavender has been able to survive and thrive as an outlet for the Minnesota LGBTQ+ community for 30 years. In my young career, I’ve already seen firsthand what a difficult industry journalism is to sustain an organization in, even with financial backing from massive conglomerates. Lavender’s ability to persist as a small company despite challenges like a rapidly evolving journalism industry and a once-in-a-century pandemic is incredibly inspiring to me. In my short time here, I’ve already seen how impactful Lavender can be, especially while sharing stories important to this community that aren’t featured anywhere else. Thank you to everyone who’s made it possible: Lavender’s staff, everyone who supports Lavender by advertising or putting us on their newsstand, and you, the readers. Here’s to another 30 years and beyond.

With that out of the way, go ahead and pop your bottles, clink glasses with your neighbors and get to celebrating. This is a party 30 years in the making, after all.