Celebration Features Diverse LGBTQ+ Events From June 14-16
Each year, the City of West Hollywood celebrates the artistic contributions of the LGBTQ community with its WeHo Pride Arts Festival. This year, the WeHo Pride Arts Festival will take place with events from Friday, June 14, through Sunday, June 16, 2024. For nearly four decades, the City of West Hollywood has been home to the largest Pride celebration in Southern California, as many thousands of LGBTQ people and allies from around the world make West Hollywood their destination for the Pride season.
Visit www.wehopride.com/events for more information and a complete list of this year’s WeHo Pride Arts Festival events and #WeHoPride grant-funded community group programming.
WeHo Pride Arts Festival and community group programming include:
- The Studies (Untitled Flags) Art Exhibition – now through Monday, September 16, 2024 – at West Hollywood Library, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard. Rubén Esparza’s Untitled (Flag) series challenges the symbolic meaning of the American flag and questions the social and political history that has made it so recognizable across the globe today. A symbol of the American dream for some and capitalist imperialism for others, the history of the American flag is fraught and complicated. In choosing to construct his flags out of familiar utilitarian materials, table clothes, cardboard, and cast-off remnants of cloth (a nod to Rasquashismo and ready-made art) that speaks of his Chicanidad and queer identity. Esparza is the founder and director of the Queer Biennial and Queer Califas.
- Vitam Picturarum (Life in Pictures) Exhibition – (Arts Festival) – Friday, June 14, through Sunday, June 23, 2024 – at Plummer Park’s Long Hall, located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard. An LGBTQ+ photography exhibition that explores the quotidian, framing a snippet of everyday life of and through our queer lens. Expounding on existential issues, tribalism, creativity, love, joy, and more, from the humdrum to the fantastical. With a presentation of more than 30 local and international artists. Curated by Amina Cruz, Antonio Zaragoza, and Rubén Esparza.
- Best Life: A Three Part Look Back – (Arts Festival) – beginning Friday, June 14 – on the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division YouTube channel. Best Life is an online series created, written, and filmed by Jordan Michael Green, where he explores the slings, arrows, and joys of the entertainment business as an artist, actor, and performance artist. These episodes feature a chat with the series’ most notable characters as the actors look back at some of the series’ biggest moments.
- Poetry Scrabble: Interactive Community Poetry Exhibit – (Arts Festival) – Friday, June 14, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. – at Plummer Park’s Long Hall Courtyard, located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard. Poetry Scrabble is an interactive community poetry experience conceived by West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Jen Cheng, inviting community members to play with word tiles on a word art sculpture. Together, in the courtyard of Long Hall, the community will create collaborative poems with words celebrating the visual art of the Vitam Picturarum (Life in Pictures) Exhibition. At 7:45 p.m., Cheng will perform the newly created poems celebrating the experience of this word art experience.
- Q Con presented by Prism Comics – (Arts Festival/Arts Grant-Funded) – Saturday, June 15, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. – at Plummer Park’s Fiesta Hall and Community Center, located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard. Q Con is Southern California’s only LGBTQ comic convention (comic con) celebrating the diversity of LGBTQ comics, games, and popular media. Meet comics creators and get autographs. Enjoy panels and gaming. Show your Cosplay Pride and enter the Costume Contest for prizes. As a special bonus, Pride Poets will write custom poems celebrating love and the LGBTQ community from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the park.
- Rainbow Family Day Picnic – Saturday, June 15, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. – at West Hollywood Park, located at 647 N. San Vicente Boulevard. Bring the kids, pets, picnic baskets, and blankets. There will be art, food, music, and vendors!
- Dapper Puss Pride Brunch – Saturday, June 15, at 12 p.m. and at 3 p.m. – at Mama Shelter Hotel, located at 6500 Selma Avenue in Hollywood. Ticketed Event. A drag brunch will highlight a diverse cast of drag kings, things, and queens. Dapper Puss Entertainment is a trans masc/drag king-produced company with a mission to highlight the drag kings, things, and all drag forms underrepresented in the drag community.
- Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles Free Concert – (Arts Festival/Arts Grant-Funded) – Saturday, June 15, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. – at Plummer Park’s Vista Lawn, located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard. GMCLA performs a free concert in the same park they began 45 years ago, featuring songs from their recent concerts and a sneak peek at their upcoming concert performance, Solid Gold: Aretha, Dionne, & Whitney! This is an outdoor event. Attendees may bring low-backed chairs, cushions, or blankets to sit on. No alcohol is allowed in the park.
- Life, Love, and AWT Ball Hosted and Curated by Icon Sean/Milan Garcon – (Arts Festival) – on Saturday, June 15 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; competition starts at 7 p.m. – at Heart Nightclub, located at 8911 Santa Monica Boulevard. Come to a mini-Vogue Ball celebrating Life, Love, and AWT (Artists Working Together) displaying some of the best artistic talents from the House/Ballroom community. Attendees must be 18 years old or older. More information and entry categories are available on the WeHo Pride website.
- Figurative Drawing Class – Saturday, June 15 at 7:00 p.m. – at the Connie Norman Transgender Empowerment Center, located at 1001 N. Martel Avenue. Join this figurative drawing class of the trans and non-binary body, non-nude, as a celebratory event of inclusion, self-love, and diversity, led by figurative master artist Miguel Angel Reyes and curated by Steve Galindo at THESTYLEGUYDE.
- Big Dad Energy: A Transmasculine Comedy Night A Marval Rex Production – (Arts Festival) – Sunday, June 16, at 6:30 p.m. – at the Actors Company Let Live Theatre, located at 916 N. Formosa Avenue in Los Angeles. Big Dad Energy (BDE) is the world’s first-ever exclusively transmasculine stand-up comedy showcase hosted by trans everyman Marval Rex. Highlighting breakthrough transmasculine comics such as Ever Mainerd, Joey Soloway, D’Lo, and Janaya “Future” Khan, BDE champions humor as a form of activism and teaches audiences about diverse transmasculine experiences. Come prepared to laugh, learn, and sweat because the dads are funny, smart, and hot!
- Drag Story Hour – Saturday, June 29, 2024, at 11 a.m. – at the West Hollywood Library Community Meeting Room, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard. The City of West Hollywood and LA County Library presents a series of story-time readings by drag performers for children of all ages this month featuring the City of West Hollywood Drag Laureate, Pickle.
Flagging in WeHo – Sunday, June 30, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. – at West Hollywood Park, located at 647 N. San Vicente Boulevard. Closing out WeHo Pride festivities, brought to you by The Lavender Effect, this joyful musical and visual event will feature DJ Casey Alva. Flags and flagging lessons will be offered by our community partners during the first hour of the event. All ages, identities, and abilities are encouraged to participate. The tradition of Queer Flagging started in gay clubs in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Discos such as Studio One encouraged “flaggers” to warm up and/or maintain the energy on the dance floor.
