Altadena Pride 2025

Altadena Pride has grown stronger each year and we were preparing to celebrate our fourth anniversary when disaster struck. With plenty of improvements, additions, and surprises in store, all seemed to be suddenly lost on January 7th of 2025. The natural disaster that combined a once in a lifetime wind storm with a terrible set of fires destroyed over half of Altadena including the majority of venues where Pride had taken place each year.

Undeterred, within the first few days we knew we would still stand strong together on the second Saturday in June as we had been doing every year since 2022.

The unique celebration was structured like and had the spirit of a small town community pot luck. No one ever pays for a thing when they come to Altadena Pride, the vendors donate their services, volunteers step up for every aspect, and we basically make it happen all by ourselves. I’ve made a point over the years not to ask for sponsorship and to keep our Pride local and essentially ad free.

This year, I have no intention of asking anyone in Altadena or the area to donate services, goods, or cash. They have lost too much and deserve to be taken care of. The LGBTQ+ community suffers historically from higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide rates.

So instead of asking any of our locals to step up, I am reaching out to those beyond Altadena who might be looking for a way to help our community heal. I intend to pay all the local artists that entertain us, all the food vendors that feed us, and all the incidentals to make this happen. This will free up participants to spend their hard earned dollars at our local businesses as we take our traditional walk through Central Altadena. Most of those businesses are destroyed or unable to currently open up, but the remaining ones desperately need our support.

This year our walk through Altadena will take on familiar themes that will be intensified by what we’ve gone through in recent months. As always, we will walk with resilience, resistance, and the joy of standing together.

Our community is displaced from our safe spaces and the comfort of knowing our neighbors who accept us as who we are is gone for the moment, but we will return to our hometown on June 14 and hold each other up. Please help me make that happen.