The rainbow crosswalks in San Antonio’s Satisfaction Cultural Heritage District will quickly be gone, however the metropolis isn’t scrubbing LGBTQ+ historical past. Metropolis employees will start portray multi-colored stripes on sidewalks surrounding town’s longtime homosexual strip as quickly as Wednesday, January 7.
The plan was outlined in a January 5 memo from Assistant Metropolis Supervisor John Peterek to Metropolis Supervisor Erik Walsh, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, and the San Antonio Metropolis Council. The transfer follows Governor Greg Abbott’s October 2025 mandate compelling Texas cities to take away “political ideologies” from public streets.
The brand new sidewalks will hold the unique rainbow colours of the adjoining crosswalks, including striped white, pink, and blue-striped triangles to signify the transgender delight flag. In response to the memo, members of San Antonio’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board consulted on the design.
San Antonio’s rainbow sidewalks have existed on the intersection of North Important Avenue and East Evergreen Avenue since 2018, marking a cluster of nightclubs and different companies that cater to the LGBT+ group. Abbott’s directive adopted U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s July 2025 letter telling state governors that “roads are for security, not political messages or paintings.”
Whereas Abbott and Duffy maintained that the transfer was to get rid of roadway distractions for drivers and pedestrians, opponents countered that the removals aimed to get rid of progressive ideology from the general public sq., particularly concentrating on fashionable rainbow crosswalks and avenue murals discovered at locations 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 have been fewer pedestrian incidents on the intersection for the reason that sidewalks have been put in. The Hail Mary was in the end denied.
The Metropolis Supervisor’s memo estimated the price of the rainbow crosswalk removing can be $170,000, funded by Public Works operational {dollars}. Crews will begin resurfacing the street on January 12, adopted by the set up of a normal black-and-white crosswalk.
After the removing, the crosswalks gained’t simply exist in footage. The Metropolis Supervisor’s workplace says that items of the unique mission might be preserved to be used in attainable future artwork tasks.
