Long Beach’s annual LGBTQ celebration is nearly here.
Thousands of people are expected to descend on Long Beach’s waterfront this weekend for the city’s iconic Pride Parade, as well as the accompanying — though this year, separately organized — festival. The festival will take place on Saturday and Sunday, May 18-19, while the parade will take place on Sunday morning.
This will be the 41st iteration of the LGBTQ celebration,
Given its four-decade run as one of the city’s most enduring celebrations, here is a look at the history of the parade and festival, and the nonprofit that founded them.
October 1983: The Long Beach Pride organization, which would go on to host one of the region’s largest annual LGBTQ celebrations, is established as Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride.
June 1984: The inaugural Long Beach Pride Parade and Festival draws 5,000 people across two days. The second festival, in 1985, expanded to Shoreline Aquatic Park, while the third iteration was notable because headliner Eartha Kitt didn’t show up.
1987: Long Beach Pride was particularly political this year as the LGBTQ community celebrated the failure of Proposition 64 the previous November. Prop. 64 would have put AIDS back on the list of communicable diseases, which opponents feared would cause HIV-positive folks to lose their jobs and would force them into quarantine. Voters rejected the measure 71% to 29%. Long Beach Pride named the concept of “No on Prop. 64” as the grand marshal.
1989: Long Beach Pride celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York, which kicked off the modern gay-rights movement. Long Beach Pride would celebrate the 25th anniversary in 1994.
1993: Long Beach celebrates a decade of Pride. By this time, the annual Long Beach parade and festival had become the fourth-largest Pride event in the U.S.
1997-98: The Pride festival moves to Marina Green Park in 1997 and the following year, it expands to Rainbow Lagoon. Pride celebrates “15 years of unity through diversity.”
1999: Then-Assemblymember Sheila Kuehl, who was the first openly gay state legislator in California’s history, serves as grand marshal. Kuehl would also go on to serve as a Los Angles County supervisor from 2014 to last year.
2000-2003: Long Beach Pride begins a run of particularly iconic headliners and grand marshals, including Little Richard, RuPaul, Village People, Joan Jett, Gloria Allred, Pat Benatar and Chaka Khan. Long Beach Pride also turned 20 in 2003.
2009: At 3:34 p.m. Sunday, May 17, a 4.7 magnitude earthquake shakes the Pride festival’s grounds. It was the first time an earthquake had occurred during Long Beach Pride.
2010: Long Beach hosts the 28th InterPride Conference. InterPride is a network of more than 375 Pride organizations from around the world, according to its website. Long Beach Pride is among those.
2013: Long Beach Pride celebrates its 30th birthday. Appropriately, the organization’s founders — Bob Crow, Judi Doyle and Marilyn Barlow — serve as grand marshals.
2015: Then-Mayor Robert Garcia, who is currently a congressman, serves as a “grand marshal honoree” about a year into his first term. Garcia was Long Beach’s first openly gay mayor.
January 2020: The organization formally renames itself Long Beach Pride to be more inclusive of the entire LGBTQ community.
March 2020: Long Beach Pride postpones and eventually cancels its parade and festival amid the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic. The 2021 iteration was also canceled.
2022: The Long Beach Pride Festival & Parade returns after a two-year hiatus — and adds some new features. Those features include a roller skating ring, the Drag Makeup Dome and the Transcendence History Dome. Iggy Azalea headlines. The event, traditionally held in May, also moves to July.
2023: Long Beach Pride celebrates its 40th anniversary. The nonprofit also moves the parade to August.
January 2024: Long Beach Pride asks the city to help organize this year’s parade because of multiple challenges facing the nonprofit, including financial issues, a reorganization and the parade and festival returning to May — creating a tight turnaround.
Feb. 26, 2024: Long Beach announces that it will pay for and organize the 41st Pride Parade, with an estimated cost to the city of estimated $130,000. This marks the first time in its history that the parade is not organized by Long Beach Pride. The nonprofit, though, is still organizing the festival.