‘We've always known how to turn to joy': Photos from S.F. Pride
I asked people how they were feeling going into this year's Pride, and what I heard most was a desire to celebrate and come together. And it was absolutely a celebration. Every corner of the city was filled with friends and lovers. From Ocean Beach to Dolores Park, the queer joy radiating from San Francisco felt like a protest in itself, a bold, beautiful act of resistance. Pride may last a month, but we will continue using joy as our strongest form of protest year-round.
'This Pride means celebrating together, being joyful together, and most importantly feeling safe together. They love that we can all spend Pride with one another whether we are friends, partners, or strangers. We are all part of the same community.'
— Aurora Luque
'We need to fight for what is right. Especially trans and women's rights getting hit on and also our democracy is getting taken away from us and our freedoms are getting taken away from us. I'm here to support the gay community and my trans brothers and sisters. We're all a family in the gay community. We all have to stick together and fight together.'
— Jim Martinez
'There's a lot going on, so I'm really leaning into being fun and having fun. And also like, bad things happen to people and you can choose how you react to it. That's really all we have the power to do and to sort of pushed back against f—ed up things without letting it turn us f—ed up. And I think that's the test right now. Either we lose our humanity in this moment or we double down and lean into our joy.'
— Star Amerasu
'Cause I came out as trans as a kid, you know you're being raised with a lot of messaging and imagery that you're not protected by certain parties and so you have to find hope from community and hope from within. We've always known how to turn to joy as a community and we will continue to do so.'
— Eden Chaloemtiarana
'The Trans March is always like a really beautiful space and feels really powerful and really good to be around other trans people. I will say, though, there's definitely, like a heaviness and then especially, like seeing all the vans filled with cops. It was pretty triggering and, like. usually there's not that much of a cop's like, presence at the Trans March. So with all the ICE raids and everything like that, it definitely feels like. you know, targeted. And they pick June to do all this stuff too, in particular. And we're supposed to be a sanctuary city, you know. It's rough.'
— Camilo
'I mean, me going into the weekend, I just want to have fun. I just want to party, you know. It's Pride weekend and yeah. And I haven't been out for like Pride in a couple years now. So I just kind of want to do something different this year. I don't really go out anymore, so I want to really go out for the summer.'
— Kevin Jones
'Given the current state of our political system, I think, like when I attended like No Kings (protest), it's just a lot, it's just like motivating. Like it's so easy to like look at all the news that happens literally every single day and it's like, this is f—ing sucks. And then you come out to Pride and you come out to like a big protest or something and it just re-motivates you to keep going.'
— Richie Machado
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'Hundreds of actors in South America, Central America, Mexico, Spain, New York, Los Angeles, London and other cities,' remembers Condon. 'But it wasn't like with all those hundreds there were dozens of credible choices. There were really just a handful.' Among them, Tonatiuh grabbed attention on a self-taped audition. Condon sought someone who could be persuasive within the gritty realism of a prison movie, while also credibly being a larger-than-life Hollywood musical star. Tonatiuh inhabited both modes seamlessly. 'Tona has the most extraordinary, open, beautiful face,' Condon says. 'And his eyes just invite you in. There's a lot of camp humor and that's not something that comes naturally to someone of Tona's generation, but he just has it in his bones. But it's the depth of feeling that he can convey that mattered most.' Tonatiuh seized the chance to play two distinctly complex characters within one movie. His task, he says, was injecting contemporary ideas about queerness into a period piece. 'When I got this one, it felt super special because I don't think Hollywood always gives people like me an opportunity to play a character this dynamic,' Tonatiuh says. 'There is such a return when Hollywood invests in Latin talent and treats us like normal people. Give us a good story. We're not a genre.' And though he and Condon discussed Molina's mindset as well as the historical context and circumstances, Tonatiuh reveled in creative freedom because he wasn't the focus of intense supervision. 'There was a certain level of mischief and magic that was happening because I was the least-known person on set,' he says. 'And a lot of the eyes were on everyone else.' (That cover of anonymity might not last long.) Throughout the production, Tonatiuh felt that 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' spoke to his aspirations directly, not only to those of his characters. 'There was this moment where Jennifer looked at me in the song 'Where You Are,' and sang, 'Close your eyes and you'll become a movie star. Why must you stay where you are?' And in a weird way, it's happening.' Tonatiuh flew his mother and stepfather out to New York to witness 'Where You Are,' an imposing musical number involving close to 70 people in front of the camera. When Lopez and Tonatiuh performed their dance duet, his mother was in awe. 'Now she wants to be Kris Jenner — she wants to be the momager,' Tonatiuh says, only half-joking. 'In this time where Latinos are getting a lot of s—, it makes me really happy that I can bring her some pride.' Yet, his mother hasn't seen the finished film. He wants her to experience it at the upcoming premiere. 'I want her to get the full experience of getting to walk the carpet,' he says. His eyes wet, Tonatiuh recalls an emotional scene with Luna's Valentin, Molina's improbable love interest, that once again seemed to him as if film and his reality were in direct conversation. 'When I'm telling Valentin, 'The film's almost over and I don't want it to end,' it broke my heart because I realized that the film was actually almost over and I didn't want it to end,' he says. 'I bawled my eyes out as if I'd lost the love of my life, and that, for me as a person — what a gift, because it's fake but it was real for me.' Since wrapping 'Kiss of the Spider Woman,' Tonatiuh has acted in Jeremy O. Harris' play 'Spirit of the People' and Ryan Murphy's upcoming series 'American Love Story.' For his next act, he wants to start from scratch. 'I want to do something completely different than Molina because I love being a shape-shifter,' he says. 'I want to be unrecognizable every time I come on screen.'
