Be Proud! Fest returns this October as a three-day event honoring LGBTQ+ resilience, culture, and local pride through neighborhood-based programming that centers visibility, community support, and resistance. This year’s event moves beyond the traditional fenced-in festival model, activating public spaces, local businesses, and community venues throughout Long Beach. From Broadway to Retro Row, from the beach to the bike path, Long Beach will see three days of community-powered visibility and local activation. And this year, the stakes are higher than ever.
“We’re in a moment where queer people and spaces are under attack. Nationally, politically, even economically. And we’re feeling it right here — local queer businesses are struggling, our rights are being threatened, and Pride events are canceled. We had two choices: cancel, or go back to the roots. So we’re going back to the places and business that started all.”
The shift away from a central, fenced-in location wasn’t about doing less — it was about doing it differently. Be Proud! Fest 2025 will feature local businesses hosting everything from drag shows and DJ sets to arts & crafts and sidewalk vendors. Every event is free to participate, there is no fence, no exclusivity. Just people, showing up in public, visibly queer, and radically present.
“Pride didn’t start with sponsorships or stages. It started with resistance. With people taking up space in cities that tried to erase them, and that’s what we’re honoring — not nostalgia, but the real legacy that our previous generations gave us”
What’s Happening During the Three Days:
The weekend begins Friday evening with the Light-Up Bike Parade & Visbility Protest — a community ride from Rosie’s Dog Beach to Marina Green, lighting up the coastline with bikes covered in lights, glitter, and flags. Saturday is “Be Proud in the Neighborhood,” a full-day of events hosted at local queer and ally-owned storefronts, amplified by sidewalk vendors, nonprofit booths, and free shuttles along the way — including a 21+ party bus featuring drag performances and specialty drinks that will take riders on a Big Gay Bar Crawl. The festival closes with Sunday’s Big Gay Beach Takeover, a free, sun-filled day of music, dancing, vendors and visibility on the sand.
“This isn’t about the headliners or the sponsors, it is about showing that we belong, that this is our city and reclaiming our space, our neighborhood and being proud.”
What’s happening here is more than a festival. It’s a call to action. With rising anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country and the struggle, sometimes disappearance of queer spaces. It is both celebration and survival strategy. It’s a love letter to the businesses that opened their doors when no one else would. A reminder that Pride is lived year-round — in every transaction, every gathering, every street corner made safer by presence and purpose.
You Can Support The Movement
In place of admission tickets, the festival is offering community members ways to contribute — including tax-deductible donations, supporter wristbands and bar crawl packages that come with perks like discounts, priority shuttle boarding, exclusive discounts, and more. Every dollar raised goes back into the community, local artists, and the queer-owned businesses keeping this our Gayborhood alive.
“Even though this is a free event, but it’s not free to make it happen. So we’re asking people to show up in all the ways that matter — with your presence, with your dollars, with your voice. Because this isn’t just about one weekend. This is about re-building ourselves, our community, and reminding us that the fight isn’t over”
More details — including a full list of participating businesses, shuttle stops, performers, and vendors — will be announced in the coming day. But for now, the message is clear: It is time to bring back our neighborhood, continue our activism, stay in the fight, learn from our history and go back to our roots.
Be visible. Be together. Be Proud!
