Jersey’s Pride Celebration Is Cancelled

"Pride Month" takes place in June, but obviously this year nothing went as planned. It was back in April that Jersey Pride made the decision to postpone their annual LGBTQ Pride Celebration from June until October 11th.

Back then, we were still hoping the pandemic would be over after a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, maybe once the heat of summer kicked in...yet here we are, still dealing with it.

It is somewhat of a cliche to say "who knows what's coming up next?", but it still holds true that we don't know what is on the horizon. We don't know if large group gatherings will be permitted, we don't know if we'll hit the second wave of COVID, we don't know if the usual fall allergy or flu season will impact us.

With all of those variables, Jersey Pride made the announcement via Facebook that they would be cancelling the 2020 celebration, and looking forward to 2021.

Pride has been a huge event every year in Asbury Park, with thousands of people gathering around the town. There really would have been no way to put a cap of 500 (or whatever number Governor Murphy picked) for an event like this. If it was an indoor celebration, sure, you can limit ticket sales and have someone at the door with a clicker to make sure things stayed under the limit. But for something like this, a big outdoor festival with huge crowds that are always moving from restaurants to businesses to the boardwalk to the parks, there's just no way to control the crowd size.

It's unfortunate that yet another event had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, but it's good to see organizations do what they have to do to keep people safe.