The rainbow crosswalks in San Antonio’s Pride Cultural Heritage District will soon be gone, but the city isn’t scrubbing LGBTQ+ history. City workers will begin painting multi-colored stripes on sidewalks surrounding the city’s longtime gay strip as soon as Wednesday, January 7.
The plan was outlined in a January 5 memo from Assistant City Manager John Peterek to City Manager Erik Walsh, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, and the San Antonio City Council. The move follows Governor Greg Abbott’s October 2025 mandate compelling Texas cities to remove “political ideologies” from public streets.
The new sidewalks will keep the original rainbow colors of the adjacent crosswalks, adding striped white, pink, and blue-striped triangles to represent the transgender pride flag. According to the memo, members of San Antonio’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board consulted on the design.
San Antonio’s rainbow sidewalks have existed at the intersection of North Main Avenue and East Evergreen Street since 2018, marking a cluster of nightclubs and other businesses that cater to the LGBT+ community. Abbott’s directive followed U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s July 2025 letter telling state governors that “roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork.”
While Abbott and Duffy maintained that the move was to eliminate roadway distractions for drivers and pedestrians, opponents countered that the removals aimed to eliminate progressive ideology from the public square, specifically targeting popular rainbow crosswalks and street murals found at places like Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C.
San Antonio filed for an exception to Abbott’s decree in November 2025, arguing that there were fewer pedestrian incidents on the intersection since the sidewalks were installed. The Hail Mary was ultimately denied.
The City Manager’s memo estimated the cost of the rainbow crosswalk removal would be $170,000, funded by Public Works operational dollars. Crews will start resurfacing the road on January 12, followed by the installation of a standard black-and-white crosswalk.
After the removal, the crosswalks won’t just exist in pictures. The City Manager’s office says that pieces of the original project will be preserved for use in possible future art projects.
