Volunteers climbed the eastern side of Twin Peaks on Friday to anchor a one-acre pink triangle facing downtown San Francisco and visible for miles in observance of Pride Month.
About 100 people signed up to don pink t-shirts and fight persistent winds to place a 5-foot border of shiny pink sailcloth, organizer Patrick Carney said. It takes hundreds of 12-inch steel spikes to hold the edges in place.
The outline makes it easier for volunteers to fill between the lines with 175 pink tarps on Saturday.
Volunteers split into groups to pick up trash and ferry power bars and water to their fellows, and, in one case, uproot a stump.
Jenny Bowhay volunteered to work on the stump so she wouldn’t have to stand around wondering what to do while the materials were arranged.
“Four of us, we had to get down under it,” Bowhay said. “We got the whole thing out. I was shocked.”
Carney said 800 volunteers have registered to finish installing the triangle on Saturday before a commemoration ceremony with speakers including Mayor Daniel Lurie and several LGBTQ+ leaders.
The Twin Peaks Pink Triangle was created in 1995 when Carney and some others sneaked a much smaller triangle into the public park under cover of night.
“Then we snuck down to the Castro and had breakfast,” Carney said. “Then we’d stop people and go, ‘Look up on the hill — it’s a sign!'”
They had wanted to extend Pride beyond the parade, but when Carney realized how few people knew the symbol’s history, he became determined to make the Twin Peaks Pink Triangle official.
In Nazi concentration camps, homosexual men and transgender women were marked with pink triangles, pointing down.
By highlighting its grim past, the commemoration calls attention to the persistence of homophobia and discrimination worldwide.
“It’s a giant, in-your-face educational tool.” Carney said.
Leia Phipps said she started volunteering to set up the pink triangle shortly after transitioning a few years ago.
“With I think all the political stuff that was happening, with Trump being elected and all of that, I wanted to find some way to give back or to contribute,” she said. “So I saw that there was a volunteer opportunity and that first year all I did was the cleanup part. The next year, which was last year, I signed up for as much as I could.”
Carney said that they’re still looking for volunteers to help pack up the triangle after the Pride Parade on June 28.