Pink triangle shines during dark times
LEDlight installation illuminates symbol of Pride on Twin Peaks
During a Pride season and a year marked by makeshift and loss, one tradition not only persisted but shined anew.
At 9 p.m. Saturday, June 27, as fog and wind blasted the eastern slope of Twin Peaks, a countdown began: “54321,” and then one moment’s held breath among a small crowd of onlookers, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, state Sen. Scott Wiener, Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Assemblyman David Chiu. Would the pink triangle, now marking its 25th anniversary as a symbol of love, hope and pride, reclaimed from a symbol of hate in Nazi Germany, light up as planned?
Then, the triangle’s 2,700 LED nodes, arranged in 43 rows, surged to thistlehued life, whipping across the acresize display. A few rows stayed dark at first, but soon they joined the others.
Designed by Illuminate, the organization behind Leo Villareal’s “Bay Lights” on the Bay Bridge, the triangle’s lights aren’t static. They can undulate or thrash like calm or turbulent waters. They can suggest a flock of birds darting across a sky. They can skitter. They can slowly, almost imperceptibly evolve in hue, the way a sunset smolders or a complexion flushes.
Like an ocean, they’re visible from afar, but might be best appreciated up close. They’ll be lit up through July 10, the last day of AIDS 2020, the 23rd International AIDS Conference. This year’s program is completely virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic. The triangle has been lit before, but with floodlights that pointed at the hillside, not with lights that pointed out at the city.
Patrick Carney, cocreator of the pink triangle installation, had been worried about trying to place the display, which is typically made of 175 pink tarps. By late February, the idea of gathering his standard pack of hundreds of volunteers already felt “iffy.”
Still, Carney’s determination is longstanding. He and a small band put up Twin Peaks’ first pink triangle at night to elude city authorities.
In the 1930s and ’40s, the symbol was used by the Nazis to designate the homosexuals in its concentration camps, part of a whole color classification system that branded different groups it targeted, including immigrants, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others, in addition to Jews.
Since then, gays have reappropriated the symbol. It’s now both “a reminder of hate and brutality” and “an act of defiance and courage,” Carney said. “We’ve owned the symbol, just like the word ‘queer.’ We just take ownership of things that are negative.”
This year, even if socialdistancing guidelines would prevent his troupe from descending upon Twin Peaks en masse, Carney knew he would mount at least the triangle’s outline, “even if I have to put it up myself with my husband and my sister,” he recalled by phone.
In March, Carney got a call from Ben Davis, founder of Illuminate, which has also created public art made of light at Grace Cathedral, the Conservatory of Flowers and the bandshell in Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse, among other locations.
“I’ve always been fascinated with his project, which I view as part of the spiritual infrastructure of the city,” Davis said by phone. Twin Peaks had become one of Davis’ few excursions from his Glen Park home during the shelterinplace. With the area’s gates closed to cars, it’s “been this really beautiful gift, this perspective without traffic.” Running and bicycling on it regularly, he said, “I started to get this strong vision of the pink triangle illuminated this year, rather than canvas.”
The project took three months from conception to illumination. LEDs use very little power; the Illuminate team was able to route its entire supply from the two closed JCDecaux public toilets on Twin Peaks’ summit.
A skeleton crew of Carney’s volunteers laid out the triangle’s outline on Thursday, June 25, so that the piece would still have a strong presence in daytime, when the LEDs register as a more muted sparkle.
At Saturday’s event, Assemblyman Chiu remarked that in his 12 years attending the ceremony, this was the first time it took place at night. The timing made him think of Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and how the author believed that “to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time,” as Chiu put it. He also found hope in the symbolism. “One thing about night is that it turns into day.”
As the light display turned on, violinist Kippy Marks played an original, cosmic composition that magically seemed in tune with the lights’ movements.
Then came the roar of Dykes on Bikes, who since the early afternoon had been escorting a Pink Torch Procession from Oakland’s Lake Merritt, where Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and others spoke, all the way to the San Francisco summit. Handheld pink light met a hillside of pink light — a moment of connection at a time when so much connection is forbidden.
Part of the reason Carney still does the pink triangle is that he meets people who don’t know its history. Another is sheer joy.
“We can have things that are beautiful and citywide, large enough to inspire a whole community, even during social distancing,” even during a pandemic, he said. “It is possible.”