“I appreciate the care that San Diego Pride is taking to ensure the safety of our LGBTQ community for this year’s Pride celebration,” Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. This year’s eight-day Pride will begin on July 10 with the annual She Fest and will continue through July 18 with several events, including the Spirit of Stonewall Rally and the Virtual Pride 5K. “San Diego Pride is doing exactly that as they work to honor our annual celebration in ways that are safe and meaningful.” It is a testament to the strength of our LGBTQ+ community that even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, we can still find ways to be proud and celebrate each other,” he said in a statement. “I appreciate San Diego Pride’s resiliency and adaptability in this moment. On Tuesday, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria expressed his support of the decision. This year, the streamed Pride parade - dubbed Pride Live - will be held July 17 in conjunction with “smaller, COVID-19 compliant and scalable in-person satellite events across San Diego County to allow us the ability to adapt to the changing state of public health guidance while allowing our community to participate in the ways they feel most supported and safe,” according to a statement from San Diego Pride, which said specifics surrounding in-person events will be announced in early June. It changed course a month later when it announced it would instead mount an eight-day virtual Pride celebration that would culminate with a virtual parade. Last April, a month after the pandemic began, San Diego Pride announced it would cancel the annual summer tradition due to a statewide prohibition on large gatherings to curb the spread of COVID-19. The annual Pride weekend - normally held in July and highlighted by the parade and festival - is the region’s largest civic event, attracting more than 350,000 annually with an economic impact of $26.6 million. For the second year in a row, San Diego Pride will be a mostly virtual event after organizers acknowledged Tuesday that the ongoing COVID-19 crisis does not give it a clear “path to safely produce Pride events at the same immense scale we did prior to the pandemic.”