Rehoboth Beach to celebrate Pride July 13-16
Is Pride month over? Not if you ask Tony Zacchei. He and his partner have organized a four-day Pride extravaganza in Rehoboth Beach, Del., complete with happy hours, dancing, and yoga. “I’ve been coming to Rehoboth since 1996 and I absolutely adore this town,” Zacchei said. “And what we realized last year is that, even though Memorial Day, July Fourth, Labor Day are all great festive holidays, we didn’t have our own Pride.” So Zacchei and his husband took matters into their own hands: The two started planning the long weekend back in January, working with Sussex Pride, CAMP Rehoboth, and Rehoboth’s queer bars to create what they hope will be the first of many Pride events in the beach town.
The long weekend starts with a 9 p.m. kickoff party at Freddie’s Beach Bar on Thursday, July 13. The rest of the long weekend includes yoga and a drag show on Saturday, a drag brunch on Sunday, and a dance party at Aqua Bar.
The yoga and drag brunch are explicitly open to all – including those who don’t drink. The duo started out with more ambitious ideas for a big Pride production, but realized they had to dial it down. “We realized after talking to some folks at CAMP Rehoboth, at Sussex Pride that you really need a lot of infrastructure to throw a big Pride event,” Zacchei, a retired ophthalmologist, said. “So this year we kind of took a step back a little bit.” Infrastructure wasn’t the only challenge – time was, too.
Zacchei said he and his husband Jacob Anthony had to schedule around Pride events in Washington, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Provincetown, Mass., and New York as well as Market Days in Chicago and Disney’s Gay Days – all while letting people enjoy Rehoboth’s summer.
