TWIN PEAKS — Patrick Carney’s mother, Edith, always embraced his taste for the extravagant.
That includes the tarps he and a dozen friends purchased from Home Depot on a shoestring budget in 1995, painted “Mardi Gras pink” and installed on Twin Peaks on a dark June night. He’s stepped up as the annual event organizer ever since, inspired by the legacy that started with a light-hearted renegade (and technically illegal) craft project to add a DIY pop of color to San Francisco’s Pride.
“A pink triangle went up, rather than a rainbow flag – there are plenty of those in the Castro,” Carney said, “People thought it was just another abstract, colorful symbol for the gay community. It was only after that that I realized so many people didn’t know what it was, even people within the gay community.”
The display spans nearly an acre of the hillside – visible to drivers navigating San Francisco’s freeways and bridges, as well as people taking in the view of Twin Peaks from windows, rooftops and streets up to 20 miles away. Ahead of the 30th anniversary this year, volunteers will start preparing the site Saturday for the 175 mesh tarps that will be pinned down with 5,000, 12-inch steel spikes, complete with a border of reflective pink sailcloth that makes the display pop in the pre-summer sun.
The Pink Triange spans nearly an acre of the hillside on Twin Peaks – visible to drivers navigating San Francisco’s freeways and bridges connecting San Francisco.On the ground, the long, skinny triangle’s shape changes slightly each year, but the iconic imagery is rooted in the 1930s, when Nazis would force gay men to wear a pink triangle so they could be easily identified during the Holocaust.
But the influence for Carney and his pal’s then-rebellious art was modern. In the mid-1990s, San Francisco was embroiled in the AIDS crisis and feeling the traumatic loss of thousands of primarily young gay men. The pink triangle was reclaimed by 1980s activists with ACT UP, used as a symbol in their “silence=death” campaign for healthcare, medical research and basic respect from local and national representatives, as well as activists protesting homophobia a decade prior.
Years later, that pressure was crucial in the development of medications for those infected with HIV that reduces the once-deadly virus until it is no longer transmittable. Federal cuts to foreign aid, including funding for supplies to treat 20 million people with HIV, now threaten progress to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic by 2030 and puts millions of lives in jeopardy.
“This needed to be a giant, in-your-face educational project, with the goal of bringing the community together to help build it,” Carney said of the annual display. The 69-year-old San Francisco resident, himself a long-term HIV survivor, said the LGBTQ community has been forged by people choosing to openly be themselves, including simple acts like wearing a shirt with a pink triangle.
The Pink Triangle is illuminated during the 27th annual commemoration and lighting ceremony at Twin Peaks in San Francisco on Wednesday, June 1, 2022. The Pink Triangle marks the beginning of Pride Month across California featuring over 2700 LED lights and more than 1 1/2 mile of sparkling pink streamers. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)Paired with the rainbow flag, which Gilbert Baker created for San Francisco’s 1978 Pride parade, Carney said the pink triangle completes a visual yin yang that bookmarks the gay rights movement.
“Now in 2025, they’re trying to ban rainbow flags in some states, even in California. The Pink Triangle is up there as a warning and reminder – a highly visible, moot reminder of inhumanity,” he said.
But the real inspiration that’s powered the Pink Triangle for 30 years may be the hidden history lesson.
“People just want to participate, because it’s kind of like Muslims going to Mecca – they have to do it once in their lifetime,” Carney said, explaining that there’s opportunity for everyone, introverts and extroverts alike, to help. “You can build a float and be in the parade, you can dress up in some elaborate outfit or you can just show up on Twin Peaks and carry a bag of nails up the hill for 10 minutes. We have this world famous pride, so be part of it, in some way.”
A group photo is taken of the volunteers sitting on the pink triangle after the completion on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, Calif. in June of 2024. (Photo by Hossein Carney)In 2025, he said, the hunger for community engagement is especially palpable, and he expects volunteer sign-up tallies to exceed 1,000 by the weekend. While he’s capped out on the number of T-shirts – the Bob Ross Foundation paid for 800 – he invites anyone who wants to chip in free labor.
Starting with a commemoration ceremony June 7, the Pink Triangle will be on display for three weeks of Pride month in June, before it’s broken down following the annual parade along Market Street.
“There’s never room for subtlety during Pride month – participation is the goal,,” Carney said the annual art installation continues to transform the hillside at 1 Christmas Tree Point Road into a beacon of hope — kicking off San Francisco Pride with a lesson on history and resilience and belonging. “The community building aspect is one of the most gratifying to me – seeing all of these people, families from far and wide, driving in with their kids to meet gay people, one-on-one, and to learn.”
Though his mother Edith — who handed out coffee and donuts to volunteers, and became a “mother of all mothers,” as one person described her in a poem, to anyone whose parents rejected them — passed away in 2018 at the age of 95, her warmth and welcoming spirit lives on in the Pink Triangle’s annual festivities.
“Masses of people miss her. In fact, people would come to the pink triangle to see her,” he said. There won’t be Safeway donuts, Starbucks is bringing coffee and pastries to suppliment volunteer-supplied water, energy bars and other snacks.
In the South Bay, former Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager became the county’s first openly gay elected official in 1992 — three years before the Pink Triangle debuted on Twin Peaks’ hillside. Himself a trailblazer for LGBTQ rights, Yeager has spent the past several years chronicling and compiling the South Bay’s history into a single, project: Queer Silicon Valley.
He said the historic Pink Triangle installations can act as a mirror, tying a thread between homophobia and other barriers for LGBTQ people that have changed over the years. That includes his own campaign in the ’90s, which was clouded by fear and the unknown that dissipated as the larger community saw daily examples of gay people existing in every day life — supported by public figures and works of art that proudly shines a light on the queer community’s struggles and victories.
He noted that San Jose is celebrating its 50th annual Pride in August, while Los Gatos is kicking off its first month-long event on Sunday.
“In 1992, my victory “sent a wider message that the city of San Jose was a place that cared and supported gay people,“ Yeager said, adding that he encouraged fellow city staff who were wary of coming out of the closet. “If you don’t have any openly gay people, you don’t really have a lot of proof that it’s an accepting community.”
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