More than a month after the abrupt cancellation of this year’s Long Beach Pride Festival, the nonprofit behind the enduring celebration remains in a financial bind. It has so far been unable to repay its vendors, ticketholders and sponsors as it awaits a decision on whether its insurer will cover its losses.
That decision, according to Long Beach Pride president Tonya Martin, will factor heavily into whether they take more drastic action to cover the debt, such as selling or leasing out their headquarters.
“We do want to keep the building,” Martin said. “But if we have to sell it, we have to sell it, because right now all we can think about is how we’re going to pay back all the vendors and the rest of the ticketholders.”
According to the organization’s treasurer, Wayne Manous, Long Beach Pride filed a claim with its carrier, the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California, a few days after the festival was canceled on May 15. They expect a determination in the next week, Martin said.
“Once we receive the determination and award, we can begin refunding payments to our festival vendors which encompasses Information Booths, Seller Booths, Food Booths, Food Trucks, and others awaiting a refund,” Manous wrote in a June 10 email to vendors seeking refunds.
In an emailed statement Tuesday, the organization declined to offer the total amount it owes or elaborate more on its insurance claim, saying it will wait until “those processes are fully resolved.”
The festival was canceled last month after the city of Long Beach issued a cease-and-desist letter less than an hour before its opening event, saying Pride lacked the necessary permits to start.
Many vendors and ticketholders — some who flew in or drove from other parts of the country — say they were in transit or had already arrived at the festival grounds when they were given notice of the cancellation, either from the city or from friends on social media.
Erica Loring, who owns Shecanter, an online retailer of feminist and queer products, said she was driving up from San Diego the morning of the event when a friend texted her the news.
“I was very confused,” Loring said. “I had to try and figure out what the heck that meant, what it means for vendors, if we’ve gotten any emails to notify us. ‘Do we still go up there?’”
Kaitlyn Nguyen with Heritage 1857, a Vietnamese-style coffee brand, said she received notice not from Pride but from the city’s Health Department, telling her she no longer had permission to sell her goods there.
By that point, she said, her festival crew had already driven into town from Texas and set up a tent and driven an hour outside of town. When she tried to call Long Beach Pride’s general line to get more information, it was disconnected.
Nguyen said she spent around $2,500 on gas, fees, product, permitting and everything else she needed to participate. Now she’s uncertain how much, if any, she will recover. “With the communication that it is at right now, it’s just hard to tell, but I do hope that we get that amount back,” she said.
In the days following the festival’s cancellation, the city and Pride traded blame, offering dueling timelines over what caused it. Long Beach Pride argued it submitted documents and worked with the city in good faith through the final hours and was taken off guard by the city’s order to clear out.
Martin said she was stunned when officers delivered the cease-and-desist to the festival grounds. “You have two days to get everything off the site, or you’ll be arrested,” she recalled being told. “I was in shock, just floored. I was just weak at the knees.”
The city fired back in a 23-page memo, saying the nonprofit repeatedly failed to provide permitting materials and structural plans for stages, electrical systems and security. As the situation worsened, city officials offered to move guests into the Terrace Theater and open Bixby Park for a smaller event on Sunday, without alcohol sales or fenced festival grounds.
Pride declined both options, later saying the theater was too costly — more than $100,000, they said — while Bixby Park did not allow enough time to satisfy performers’ contractual requirements.
City spokesperson Laath Martin said Tuesday that Long Beach’s business licensing team has been offering refunds to vendors for city fees. But in the month since the event, vendors say they’ve heard little to no word from Pride itself on when or if they will be repaid for other expenses and fees.
Even before this year’s shock cancellation, the festival, established in 1983, had been struggling.
According to tax filings, Pride lost more than $1.8 million between 2022 and 2024 — $819,066 in 2022, $716,729 in 2023 and $306,000 in 2024. The organization has not turned a profit since 2019.
When Martin took over as president in 2023, she said she unknowingly inherited an organization already carrying $2.6 million in outstanding debt. A year after Martin took the helm, the nonprofit relinquished control of its long-running Pride parade. The city took over planning and funding for the signature event while Pride attempted to keep running the corresponding festival.
The festival’s budget this year was $500,000, and Pride had raised less than $100,000 of it by the time the event was canceled, with only 331 tickets sold as of late April, according to Q Voice News. Pride declined to confirm the number of tickets sold or provide any detailed financial information to the Long Beach Post.
Corporate sponsorships, once a reliable source of major revenue, had largely evaporated, Martin said, naming Walmart and Coca-Cola as examples of large companies that have quietly pulled back as the Trump administration has coerced firms to forgo LGBTQ+ and diversity initiatives.
“They don’t want to upset the president,” Martin said. “Nobody will come out and say it, which I wish they would.”
Normally, Martin said, Pride hires an outside operator to put on the festival, which can run upwards of $400,000. But under financial pressure, she and the board voted to avoid the expense and handle the festival setup themselves. As Martin has repeatedly emphasized since the cancellation, they are all part-time volunteers.
This year’s event was shaping up to be small, according to Loring; only 13 retail or merchandise vendors were listed to participate. “Smaller than a tiny farmer’s market,” Loring said. Another 10 or so food vendors were signed up, Nguyen said, about half of what she’d expect at a festival this size.
“I was like, OK, was the application process a deterrent, or have bridges already been burned, and these businesses have learned not to come to Long Beach due to prior experience?” Nguyen said.
In a letter over the weekend, Pride said it wants to bring the festival back in 2027 under new leadership, with lessons learned and, it hopes, a more stable financial footing.
The board also said that Martin would step down from the presidency in August, a transition the organization said had been planned before the cancellation. Martin confirmed her exit on Monday, saying she will step away from the role and intends to help whoever succeeds her get up to speed. She said she also plans to hold a debrief with Mayor Rex Richardson to discuss what went wrong.
The organization is also working with the city to hold a free Teen Pride event in September.
“I don’t think Pride will ever go away, no matter what they do, even if we change the whole scope of the event itself,” Martin said. “It will never go away. It’ll always be there.”
But Loring, who made her vendor debut in Long Beach, said she would not return if the event is run by the same people.
She was shocked when Pride asked in a June 10 email if vendors and ticketholders would consider donating back a portion of their refunds to the organization. “The audacity for that was on another level,” Loring said.
“It seems as though the entire Pride organization needs an overhaul,” she said. “It needs a fresh set of eyes, a fresh set of experience in order for the community to move forward faithfully.”