With Pride celebrations kicking off this week, there are rainbows everywhere! On coffee cup sleeves, on windows, on sidewalks and we are 2000% here for it! We are also here to show our support for what the rainbow stands for: love, acceptance, and protest.
To show our support this year, we reached out to Mike Morrison of Mike’s Bloggity Blog to design a T-shirt and host a ride that supported Pride and the LGBTQ+ community. 365 days a year, our studio welcomes everyone that walks through our doors with open arms and that’s something to celebrate!
PRIDE WITH PURPOSE
On the surface, Mike says Pride can look like it’s no different from events like Stampede and Canada Day with decorations and stickers and, yes, even T-shirts. He says it is important for businesses to recognize that Pride is a protest and that if they are going to do something with the rainbow or with Pride there has to be meaning, there has to be a purpose and there has to be an outcome.
This year we wanted our Pride Ride and T-shirts to have just that.. meaning, purpose and an outcome! That’s why $10 from every T-shirt goes to Camp fYrefly along with all the proceeds for our Pride Ride on September 1st.
THE CAUSE
Camp fYrefly is a place for queer children to have a place to be their true selves and feel safe and loved. Mike told us that realistically, a queer child might feel safe for four days a year, and those four days are at Camp fYrefly, “for four days they get to be themselves, they get to choose their pronouns, they just get to be who they are.”
But Pride is also so much more than one week out of the year, Mike reminded us that showing up and showing your support of LGBTQ+ every day is the next step. He gave us and everybody, including himself, the challenge of asking yourself ‘what does my support look like?’ and ‘how can I be more supportive?’
To us at YYC Cycle, that means celebrating our gender-neutral change room at our Marda Loop location, our amazing LGBTQ+ team members, and our efforts to refer to our Bikergang in class without using gendered language. It also means looking at how we can show up every day, how we can incorporate LGBTQ+ theme rides throughout the year, taking every opportunity possible year-round to evolve our studios to be an even more inclusive and welcoming space for our people.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Over the years, Mike has seen people and businesses declaring their support for the LGBTQ+ community grow exponentially and he LOVES it. The support from these businesses is influential and seeing those rainbows flood the city is important for people in the community to feel they are supported. But it’s time to speak louder than before!
Mike says, “I hope as people celebrate Pride this year if they go to the parade or they go to any events, they have the conversations with themselves and with their family and friends about how they want to contribute to the protest and the idea of equality year-round.”
During this week we encourage you, Bikergang, to raise your water bottles in support of Pride but also in support of the efforts we can take to show our love and allyship for the LGBTQ+ community every day. Because here, we will always ride with pride.
