Driving down the business district toward Brown’s Island on Thursday evening, there was nothing but a sea of pink—pink dresses, pink overalls, pink cowboy hats, pink glitter, pink rhinestones, pink everything. Anyone who didn’t know better might have quietly wondered if they had accidentally time-traveled to July 2023, when the dress code was the same for another cultural icon: the Barbie film released last year.
My Lyft parked, and the driver, with whom I had been having friendly conversation, looked me up and down briefly and noted the elephant in the Toyota.
“I think you may be underdressed, honey.”
He wasn’t wrong. In my denim, black t-shirt, and beaten Chelsea boots, I was certainly not dressed appropriately for the event. None other than Chappell Roan, whose music is currently trending all over the internet in its various iterations, had made it to Richmond. She has been announcing various themes for her shows, and ours just happened to be “Pink Pony Club,” which, given that we’re a city in a Southern state, makes nothing but sense.
Roan is currently on tour promoting her album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which was released last year and has been speedily growing in popularity since. With appearances around the country and at various shows and events such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and most recently Coachella in California, by the time she made it to Brown’s Island, the excitement for her was palpable. With the show sold out, tickets resold for hundreds of dollars on reseller sites, and those who couldn’t even get access that way made it work by camping out outside the venue and even going as far as hanging out on the bridge above the stage watching as everyone did the dance to “Hot to Go!” and screamed to “just play a song with a fucking beat.”
Music has always been noted with the cliché of “bringing people together,” but in this case, the cliché holds true. Roan’s show wasn’t just a concert; it was a cultural moment for the Queer community of Richmond. From her target demographic of Gen-Z and Millennials to young teens and older Gen X couples, Roan brought together everyone for what ended up being an impromptu pride meeting.
From the moment you entered Brown’s Island behind the sea of card-carrying members of the Pink Pony Club, there was a palpable energy of welcome, safety, support, and unity that I haven’t felt at a concert in a long time. Everyone was there for not just Roan, but for each other, and to ensure everyone was safe and able to enjoy the show, all the way down to making sure each other made it to their vehicles and Lyfts or Ubers safely—an entirely different level that can’t really be properly explained.
When I climbed into my Lyft back home, the driver asked me about my night. Looking at the folks around us still clad in their pink cowboy hats and high-heeled cowboy boots, he asked me what kind of “country show” this was that he missed.
“It wasn’t. It was an experience. Just, an experience.”
Main photo by Ash Griffith
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