EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains language and/or content that might be inappropriate or offensive to some. Reader’s discretion advised.
For anyone, particularly someone who happens to be part of the LGBTQ (whew, that is a breath) community, there is something about Pride. And even further, there is something about Pride for anyone who ventures into this strange, hypnotic gathering where it doesn’t particularly matter who you are. It is, after all, the exclusive club of The Lack of Exclusivity: everyone is welcome and that is the point.
Long Beach’s Pride is the epicenter of this ideal. While I can’t speak for everyone, I do believe that therein lies its appeal to so many outcast, marginalized people: it is a space where one can be one’s self, even in that rocky, oft questioned terrain of sexuality. This statement isn’t meant to impose some kind of superiority, as if Pride is the ultimo representation of freedom; not necessarily so. What I am claiming is that, bluntly put, one can let their beast out and now worry about what’s gonna be eaten along the way.
Even better though, Pride supersedes its Dionysian façade in that sexuality is not – per se at least –the singular cog. Nor does the cipher lie in some ideal that one must be marginalized or dejected in some fashion to fit in. In fact, there is no single cog to Pride. All the other rocky, oft questionable terrains of humanity through which everyone has been through at least once – dress, behavior, language, personality, and myriad other traits – are open for acceptance. It is the pleasant surprise for anyone who has never attended Pride.
These points I have never questioned and I most likely never will (except for the hot mess stumbling down Ocean because s/he didn’t know just how much people at Pride drink). But these points have become redundant – not unimportant, just redundant – and I think it has to do with a rift between generations.
The youth and the older generation will always be displaced, dissonant, and discouraged by one another; it is a simple facet of human consciousness. On one hand, we want to continually break free of boundaries and norms and rules — a characteristic typically associated with the young rebel — and on the other, we vainly attempt to hold on to what comforts us via the recognizable and nostalgic and traditional — a particularity teamed with those who are the older, wiser men and women of society. I am most certainly not here to attempt to even proffer an idea as to how one can mend this divide; I think, for the most part, we’ve been improving quite steadfastly as we progress.
However, there is a reason I point this dichotomy out: Long Beach has been stuck in the thick of it. Whether it be the boards of non-profits, museums, and organizations or the fact that little change — despite the many attempts to do so — rarely occur, Long Beach has a stifling air about it that leaves many of its youth frustrated and, even worst, causes them to leave for places that are more receptive to their input, energy, and creativity.
But: things are a changin’. More and more students each year at CSULB are becoming residents rather than maintaining their status as a commuter. Younger, more diverse politicians and community leaders are rising up. Youthful artists and musicians are taking over corners and bars.
So where, oh where, is this change at Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride (LBLGP)?
And I am not (just) referring to their archaic website, their redundant “themes” each year (we know the overarch is Pride — you can step away from that word if need be. Amer-I-Can! Go to the 5:30 mark and you’ll get what Imma sayin’), or their Board (I often call it the “Ancients of the Sling” — something I am not quite proud to state in publication because I am not insinuating that people of a different age cannot be innovative or that they lack ingenuity; they are simply static in their ways). I am referring, first and foremost, at their lack of reaching out to what is becoming an increasingly younger gay crowd in Long Beach.
This city is no longer the place where people settle down after L.A. or move once they’re done with college. Many are staying because they are finally seeing the changes they’d like to see. And the largest area that is falling behind in this endeavor is Pride — unquestionably. Here we have an event that is — even I feel strange saying it — massive. It literally kicks off Pride in the nation every May. I’ve met people from New York to Phoenix to Chicago to Los Angeles. I’ve friends who have transplanted themselves to the East Coast and even when skipping Christmas, manage to somehow magically make their arrival tangible on Pride.
So again, the question is begged — and I say this with utmost sincerity and a tad bit o’ French: what the fuck is going on with Long Beach Pride?
Before I have presumptions made about what I’m trying to say, let’s back this parade float up. What LBLGP (even the name is archaic: LBP would be more appropriate considering it caters to both people inside and outside the LGBTQ community; and LBLGBTQP is just fuckin’ nauseating) has done for Long Beach as a whole, not just the community it directly caters to, is not to be understated or misaligned. And if anyone knows my writing or character remotely well, one knows my respect and reverence for history and that all history should be included in a critique. LBLGP’s history is fascinating as well as respectable: barely having any money to get its feet off the ground, it eventually grew into one of LB’s most successful groups, offering the community scholarships and grants while providing a sense of belonging within the city to those in the LGBTQ community. It redefined what the community’s role itself was in LB and also adapted to the changing times. This cannot and will not be downsized.
And it is in this exact respect — the idea that redefining and adapting, working in tangent, create a lucid, larger future where possibilities expand rather than contract — that I want to propose that we need to massively change our Pride. Reformation is not a bad word.
This is not me philosophizing as usual or being overtly metaphorical; I am not here to alter your definition of your own version of pride in one’s self. I am talking the tangible, the Pride Festival itself. Year after year, it is a offering of the usual: the same festival, parades, and gatherings that make our previously-subversive celebration nothing but a plate of statical repetition. It is dated, antiquated, and redundant — three adjectives I have never wanted to describe this vibrant community with. This is not to mention the horrific views (albeit funny, at least in my sickened, disturbing perspective of the What-is-Funny) that are fueled against LB — such as the festival, which my friend from San Francisco called “the origin of Syphi-gonna-lydia.”
The key lies not in the politicizing that comes with creating every Board (heaven forbid you — oh, I don’t know — put someone on there who perhaps isn’t involved in the politics of it all or happens to be under the age of 30) or the ideology of “It’s worked for the past 30 years,” but in engaging those who haven’t been asked to lend a hand in Pride (including the one holding a pen as of now). Pride, I beg of you: ask for help from someone different so we can make Pride even more proud than it already is.
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