DC Gets a Rainbow Road for World Pride 2025

May 23, 2025
HANK ORSO

If you happen to make it to DC for World Pride this next month, you will no doubt be festooned with rainbows, if the current administration doesn't pull their shenanigans to remove them. And if you are on 15th Street NW between O Street NW up to V Street NW, look down and you'll see what could be the longest Rainbow Pride mural to date, the Rainbow Road. World Pride is an international biannual event, occurring this year in Washington DC with events running now through June...and beyond!

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“This is a really special time for the city, and we really… want to celebrate,” lead artist Lisa Marie Thalhammer said. “We don’t want to shy away from showing our colors and celebrating who we are and being visible.”

Over 100 volunteers alongside 8 artist are transforming the space between the parked cars and the bike lanes into a vibrant display of queer expression and joy. “The piece is called We Exist. Recently, our administration has literally said that non-binary people and people who live outside the binary gender don’t exist. And that doesn’t mean we just poof and disappear,” contributing artist Mx Mundy said. “But also, there is so much joy and celebration in knowing who you are. And that is what I wanted to express in this piece.”

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Besides stripes representing the rainbow and trans Pride flags, individual smaller murals by the artists are interspersed along the half-mile stretch. And people's reactions are naturally gleeful. “It’s stunning. Like I walked by and just put a big smile on my face. I like how they’ve separated here at, like, a stop sign, so there’s not as much crisscross,” said visiting New Yorker Nicholas Field.

This person walked by the other day and they were like, ‘you know, I’m from a small town, and this just makes me so happy,' I said, 'I want you to look at this piece. I want everyone to look at this piece and know that they are seen and that they are safe.' (Mx Mundy).

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With this administration's policies regarding the LGBTQ+ community, one may wonder how this was pulled off right in his backyard. Somehow, the artists kept the whole thing under wraps until it was almost done, for fear of it being shut down in some way.

You can learn more about World Pride 2025 by visiting their website.