On Pride, Preston Park, and the Sunday That Wouldn't End

There's a moment on the Sunday of Pride weekend when Brighton stops pretending to be a normal city. It gives up the act entirely. The streets have been loud for days by then. The glitter has migrated into places glitter has no business being. And by the time the sun starts to dip over Preston Park on that final evening, something shifts — a kind of collective exhale, tinged with the knowledge that it's almost over.

I was there in 2019. The Sunday. LoveBN1 Fest. Two headline acts that, on paper, couldn't have been more different.

Jessie J and the Homecoming

Jessie J opened in pink. Standing centre stage like she'd been born there, she launched into 'Masterpiece' — a song that sounds like it was written for exactly this kind of moment: urgent, unapologetic, a little too loud. She played thirteen songs. She spliced tracks together, threw in medleys, turned the crowd into a choir. She has always been open about her sexuality, always vocal about loving who you want, and you could feel that alignment in the park. This wasn't a performance. It was a homecoming.

Grace Jones and the Suspension of Disbelief

But before Jessie J, there was Grace Jones.

Grace Jones is not a person you describe. She is a thing that happens to you. She walked out in a PVC corset and opened with a cover of Iggy Pop's 'Nightclubbing,' and from that point forward, the normal rules of entertainment ceased to apply. She covered The Pretenders. She covered 'Amazing Grace.' She hula-hooped in heels — and I want to be very clear that this is a woman in her seventies doing this — and she did it with a kind of regal indifference, as if the physical world were merely a suggestion.

She closed with 'Slave to the Rhythm.' Of course she did. What else do you close with when you are Grace Jones and you have just reminded twenty thousand people that ageing is optional?

The Monday After

And then it was over. The park emptied. The city started the long, quiet process of sweeping up after itself. There's a melancholy to that — to the Monday after Pride. The colour drains. The volume drops. Brighton goes back to being a seaside town with seagulls and parking problems.

But something lingers. It always does. That Sunday wouldn't quite let go of me, and I think that's the point. The best nights never do.