Amid rumbling Harleys, a teal Caddy and a hearse with a blow-up flamingo strapped to its roof, a man waits in a parking lot beside an old Chevy step van.

As George Kessinger watches the opening of the fourth annual gay pride parade in St. Petersburg, Fla., Saturday morning, June 24, a plastic spool in the back of the van holds his homemade treasure: 1,900 feet of nylon rainbow.

Kessinger's six-color flag, unfurled by thousands each year, brings up the rear of the parade. It is the "crescendo" of the march, says Terry Norman, who is standing with Kessinger.

"Everyone seems to build to the point of when the flag comes in," he says. "It's been a very powerful symbol of the gay community."

Norman raises his hands and claps for the honking bikes that ride past Georgie's Alibi, a video cafe and sports bar at 3rd Avenue North, which Kessinger owns and where Norman works. The cafe serves as the landmark for the parade's lineup.

Kessinger, 55, says his 150-pound length of fabric is his way of giving back to the community.

Others say he's the one who unites St. Petersburg's marchers.

"He's like the gay P.T. Barnum," Norman says. "He gets everyone involved."

***

Jim Kessinger says he wasn't skeptical when his younger brother decided five years ago he would buy bulks of material and somehow create one of the country's largest rainbow flags.

"Usually when he says anything, everybody says OK," says Jim, 56. "Whatever he says usually turns to gold."

Jim says he learned to trust him after George announced he would open a bar in St. Petersburg - just a "little" bar, enough to make a living, Jim remembers him saying.

"This is what it's turned into in 10 years," Jim says about the hundreds who pack the cafe.

Now, George owns another Georgie's Alibi in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and Azul Lounge & Patio in Palm Springs, Calif.

George says the flag, which cost about $11,000, is his contribution to the annual Ft. Lauderdale and St. Pete pride parades.

"There's just not a lot of borrowers that have a lot of money to make a flag," he says. "And we do very well, so we did the flag."

Gonzalez, general manager of St. Petersburg's Georgie's Alibi, says customers have been calling about the flag for the past three months.

"I can't even tell you how many people," he says. "Ninety percent of questions were about the flag - whether it'd be here."

Last year, marchers went without the flag for the first time in the parade's four-year history. The step van, with its 130,000 miles, broke down as it was about to haul the flag from the Alibi warehouse in Ft. Lauderdale to St. Petersburg.

Brian McGough, another manager at Georgie's, says he comes to the pride parade just to see the flag - which marchers say represents pride, freedom and diversity - stretched out in the center of the crowd.

"There is an emotional attachment to that flag," says McGough. "It's not a thought, a dream, or whatever - it's something tangible that you can actually, physically touch that's being touched by so many other people."

***

"OK, everybody's gotta start!" Kessinger yells, as his brother, Jim, drives the van out of the lot.

George walks behind the Chevy, holding the horizontal end of the flag. Jim's wife, Martha, unwinds the fabric from the spool inside the van, assisted by their 10-year-old son, Brent, and George's co-workers, Norman, Ed Gonzalez and Julio Green.

"Can I help?" a woman asks George, walking up to the flag.

About 10 people grasp its lengthening sides as the parade crawls along 30th Street.

"You see how we didn't have to ask?" George says. "They just jumped aboard."

***

What did it for George Kessinger was a $250 pledge 12 years ago in New York.

It was a summer day, and he had paid to help carry a mile-long rainbow flag through the streets of Manhattan for the city's pride parade.

Kessinger says he'll never forget passing through what seemed like a million people with that flag in hand.

"Honestly, I saw people crying because of the flag," he says. "You know, there are some tough times. It's just different for older people now, to get to see stuff like this."

After the parade, the flag was cut into pieces and given to the donors. Kessinger got two pieces. Now, he has 1,900 feet of his own.

In 2001, he created the first 1,000 feet of flag by taking 4-foot-high bulks to his friend, Miguel Hernandez, of Miguel's Fashions in Ft. Lauderdale. Hernandez cut the material in strips and sewed them together on his industrial sewing machine.

Despite the months it took to put together, Hernandez says he didn't need much convincing.

"It's George," he says. "The way he approaches things, the way he talks to people, you just want to do it for him."

The next year, Kessinger returned to Hernandez to add another 900 feet.

"Every time I started I had tears in my eyes," Hernandez says. "It showed the world that we are proud of ourselves - that we don't have to hide behind anything."

***

About 30 people stretch out Hernandez's work as the parade rolls along, preparing for a grand turn onto the march's main route, Central Avenue. Booths of food and information line the street where a five-hour festival will begin after the parade.

Kessinger stays anchored at the end of the flag.

Brian Longstreth, a local real estate agent, motors past on a Segway.

"How long is it?" he asks Kessinger.

"That's kinda personal!" Kessinger replies, cracking up.

"Grab on! Grab on!" shouts J.R. Roberts, 65, of St. Petersburg.

As the Chevy and its rainbow tail veer onto Central, Jim, Martha and Gonzalez unwind the fabric, hand over hand over hand.

Next year, they may have even more to churn out.

Kessinger says he plans to add 800 to 1,000 feet for next year's parade. That would be his third addition.

He says his goal is to keep the flag growing so more and more people can be involved.

Adding to a rainbow flag, he says, contrasts what most rainbow flags go through: the cut.

Cutting a flag and sending pieces to people involved - as New York City and Key West did with their mile-long flags - is a nice idea, Kessinger says. But it's not for him. "I'm just preserving a time of enjoyment year after year after year," he says. "If I cut it up, it'd be a one-time shot. We wouldn't like that. And it cost me $11,000!"

***

An hour and half into the march, the full 1,900 feet of fabric - red, orange, yellow green, blue and purple - stretches along Central Avenue.

Kessinger estimates that about 1,000 people are carrying the flag at that moment.

He walks along, looking at the crowd gathered around him, and sucks on a cherry popsicle.

"Hail to the flag carriers!" women shout from the sidewalk.

A man runs up beside him to take a picture. Kessinger puts his hand on the man's back and pulls him to the flag's edge. People dart under the stripes of color.

As his family and friends spin the nylon back in the van, Kessinger quietly soaks it all in.

Amazing, he says, how a couple of heaps of fabric and a vision can touch so many people.

"It's just this piece of material! It's nothing! It's just six little colors!" he says. "But it means so much to them."

Click here to read our criticism of local coverage of the St. Pete Pride Festival.

Interested in more? Click here to see the related design project, "PRIDE: Not just a festival, more than a parade," or click here to see the related photo project, "Pride."

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