This year’s 46th annual San Francisco Pride Celebration was charged with an energy that was at once hopeful and conflicted.

Sunday’s event is just two weeks after 49 people were gunned down at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Though the pain is fresh, tens of thousands of LGBTQ folks from the Bay Area and around the world came out to the nation’s largest pride parade and celebration.

Sierra Valencia consoles her roommate Ryan Kleiner at a memorial for the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida on the corner of 18th and Castro Streets. It's their first San Francisco Pride but their friend Tyler Adamson (right) has been to a different Pride celebration every weekend this month.

Patrik Lundh carries his 3-year-old daughter, Anika Nayak-Lundh on his shoulders. Lundh says that the Orlando shooting only made me want to celebrate Pride more, to feel the unity against the hatred with so many horrible things happening in the world right now. Pride for Lundh means "tolerance, love, openness and hope."

Ralph Boethling, with the Church of 8 Wheels, skated around the parade. "People just want to love each other," says Boethling. "What could possibly be wrong with that?" Boethling has been coming to Pride for almost 10 years.

The parade started at the Embarcadero and followed along Market Street for almost two miles before ending at the Civic Center Plaza where parade-goers were met with metal detectors and police screening.

Some groups were notably not in attendance. When SF Pride organizers announced last week that a greater police presence would include screening by officers, organizational grand marshal Black Lives Matter withdrew from the event.

“The increased police presence at Civic Center, as well as the ban on shopping carts and items typically belonging to marginally housed and homeless people will only make Pride less safe and accessible to our communities,” said Stephany Ashley in a press release from the Black Lives Matter Network. Ashley is the executive director of San Francisco’s St. James Infirmary, a free clinic for sex workers and their families. “These policies do not reflect the theme of racial and economic justice which we sought to march under proudly.”

St. James Infirmary was slated to receive the Heritage of Pride Award.

“I understand why they did it," says Michael Albert, 63, San Francisco resident who has been coming to SF Pride since the late 1980s. "I’m not sure it’s necessary; it’s more than we needed.  But I’m not going to second guess the people that are running this. “

"This pole has become a tradition," says Matilda Holtz (on the right). "We're too short to see through the crowd."

Ivy Schlegel is a Castro resident and chose not to attend this year's Pride parade. She says that the parade is too much of a corporate  march and went to the Dyke March on Saturday instead.

Salesforce was one of many corporations marching in uniform.

San Francisco Pride is one of the world's most notable Pride celebrations. Matthew Wade (center) and Chrisi Camp came all the way from Australia to support San Francisco's LGBTQ community by volunteering at queer film festival Frameline.

"In Melbourne we have Pride celebrations but nothing compared to SF," says Wade.