A crosswalk made me gay

St. Petersburg, Florida’s Progressive Pride mural on May 30, 2024. Credit: Photo via Maria Flanagan/City of St. Petersburg I was a happily straight woman until I crossed St. Petersburg’s Central Avenue. As soon as my Sketchers hit the rainbow pavement, they turned into Birkenstocks. The Kia I just parked, turned into a Subaru.

“Gah!” I cried as a septum piercing sprouted through my nose.

“How could the Florida Department of Transportation let this happen?” I wept, slinking over to Black Crow to find out what an iced oat matcha is.

I’m not alone. I was cheering on a cop chasing a homeless guy on a bicycle when the officer stumbled too far into a “Black History Matters” painting on the street. His blues were replaced with a thobe and kente cloth. The cop’s gun turned into a copy of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” He’s still standing there, ranting about the dangers of white devils.

Black History Matters street mural outside the Woodson African American Museum of Florida in St. Petersburg, Florida. Credit: Photo via cityofstpete/Flickr And, well, I cannot utter the unspeakable things I saw at Tampa’s “Bock the Blub.”

Turns out Floridians have been walking and driving across rainbow crosswalks for 10 years. Our tall, sexy, Gov. Ron DeSantis has been in charge for six of them, but now, in the sitting duck days of his last term, he’s finally banning pretty much all street murals.

OK fine, a crosswalk didn’t make me gay. They can’t cure racism either. The DeSantis and Trump administrations know this. They also probably know that painted asphalt has been shown to make streets safer.

But it’s the message behind the paint that they’re threatened by.

FDOT’s aggressive reminder about street art came just after St. Pete touched up its own progressive pride mural. Trump’s administration put out its memo two days later.

“Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks,” Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on X in a threat to withdraw funding from municipalities that keep “political banners” in place.

The question isn’t whether Tampa Bay’s street murals will go, it’s when. Tampa, St. Pete and Sarasota officials told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that they intend to comply with the law, along with at least four other Florida cities.

Officials in Tampa know of 47 places with painted streets “including multiple crosswalks students help paint for pedestrian safety purposes.”

“Many are quite faded and barely visible. We will remove them soon,” Adam Smith, Tampa’s Director of Marketing & Communications, told CL.

St. Pete is making a list of painted infrastructure at FDOT’s request.

“We will continue to work with our state partners to understand the scope of the memo, timeline for relevant actions, and discuss if any of the City’s public art qualifies for an exemption,” St. Pete Public Information Officer Samantha Bequer told CL.

Sarasota officials told CL they’re “working on an action plan to comply” with orders to erase at least three street murals, including a rainbow crosswalk.

Municipalities’ next steps are crucial.

Leaders could change their minds and join Key West’s fight against the mandates. Or they could follow in the footsteps of West Palm Beach, which spun its plans to erase rainbow crosswalks into a “reimagined LGBTQ monument.”

If Tampa Bay officials do the same, they won’t be celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. They’ll be celebrating their own cowardice—a historical marker to the time supposed advocates rolled over to Trump and DeSantis’ homophobic white supremacy.

Whether our leaders resist or replace the murals with monuments to the loss of their spines, know this: No one can powerwash Black and LGBTQ+ rights out of existence. Whether you fight for us or not, we’ll stand on our own.

In the meantime, while our colorful crosswalks are still here, take a walk. I dare you.

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This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2025.

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