LGBTQ
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’s sparkling drag culture returns to the iconic Queen Mary this coming Monday with Queens on the Queen. After its sold-out inaugural voyage last year, this glittering celebration of drag culture and community will once again transform the ship into a fabulous night of glitter, sequins and drag! On Monday, September 8, 2025, 6–9 PM, the Queen’s Salon will
Before the certifications, before the energy work, and before The Subliminal Stylist was even a name, Jessie Santiago was already doing the work. She just didn’t know it had a name yet. “I opened my first brick and mortar, Salon Benders, in a building I had admired since 2011,” Jessie says. “It was this condemned little corner on Alamitos and
There’s something about stepping off that ferry in Avalon that just… hits different. The pace slows down. The light shifts. The buildings feel like they’re from a postcard someone actually mailed you — not the kind you buy and forget to send. And the air? It’s not just ocean breeze. It’s like the island exhales for you. It’s hard to
Whether or not you’re heading to the official Long Beach Pride festival, there’s something important to remember: Pride is not a gated event. It’s everywhere we are. It’s in our bars, cafés, bookstores, art shows, dance floors, and street corners. It’s in the day-to-day work of queer-owned businesses, nonprofit organizers, and neighbors who hold this community together — not
Support Local. Celebrate Queer. Party with Purpose. Long Beach Pride isn’t just a weekend—it’s a whole damn vibe. From community bike rides and cleanup days to late-night dance floors, drag brunches, and queer joy in every corner of the city, our Pride is powered by us—by grassroots organizers, queer creatives, local businesses, and the very people who live, love, and
This week was one of those rare, maddening, inspiring reminders that being queer in America means holding conflict in one hand and joy in the other. We saw breakthroughs in drag representation, and we saw the Supreme Court quietly side-eye our civil rights. Again. We saw cities raise Pride flags in public solidarity—and lawmakers try to claw back marriage equality
Pride didn’t start with a stage. It didn’t begin with DJs, floats, or wristbands. It began with resistance. In 1969, trans women of color stood up against police brutality at the Stonewall Inn in New York. That act of defiance sparked a global movement—one rooted not in sponsorships or production value, but in survival, dignity, and the urgent demand to
The Ghosts of 1914: Long Beach’s Purity Raids and the Queer Histories We’re Not Supposed to Remember
In the heavy heat of a Southern California summer in 1914, Long Beach launched one of the earliest known anti-queer crackdowns in U.S. history — a dark chapter known now, quietly, as The Long Beach Purity Raids. It didn’t make national headlines the way Stonewall eventually would. It wasn’t taught in history books or commemorated with a city plaque. It
