From Protests to Pop Stars: The Evolution of PRIDE in Los Angeles
- Thom Vest
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
This year, OUTLOUD returns to West Hollywood Park from May 31 to June 2, 2025, with a lineup that reads like a love letter to queer artistry. Headliners include Lizzo, Remi Wolf, Kim Petras, Honey Dijon, and Paris Hilton, alongside a constellation of performers such as Pabllo Vittar, Rebecca Black, Sasha Colby, and one of our newest personal favorites - Rose Gray- among many others. But to understand both Pride & OUTLOUD’s significance, one must trace the arc of Pride itself in Los Angeles—a journey marked by resilience, reinvention, and radical love.
By Thom Vest // LA EXPLAINED
In the kaleidoscope of Los Angeles’ cultural calendar, few moments shine brighter—or louder—than Pride Month. From the iconic streets of West Hollywood to the historic rooftops of Hollywood, an incredible array of organizations and communities come together each June to produce events that celebrate, uplift, and reflect the full spectrum of LGBTQIA+ life. Among these, one production has carved out a singular space within the city’s sonic landscape: The OUTLOUD Music Festival.
Spearheaded by veteran producer Jeff Consoletti, OUTLOUD has grown from a pandemic-born digital series into a full-scale, three-day live experience—merging music, community, and unapologetic queer joy into one of LA’s most vibrant Pride weekend highlights.
Unlike cities with a single signature parade, LA celebrates Pride the way it does everything else: with style, scale, and a symphony of perspectives. Each June, the city transforms into a sprawling stage of celebration, protest, and pure joy. From LA Pride in Hollywood, founded by the trailblazing Christopher Street West, to WeHo Pride’s city-led festivities, to the star-powered activism of Pride Live—LA’s Pride programming isn’t monolithic. It’s a movement, a mosaic, and at its core, a mirror of the city itself.
These events aren’t competitors; they’re collaborators in a living, breathing ecosystem of visibility, resistance, and celebration. From DTLA Proud to Trans Pride, Latinx Pride to Venice Beach’s sun-drenched weekend festivities, every gathering adds a vital note to LA’s ongoing chorus of queer identity. And it’s that spirit of multidimensionality—a unified chorus composed of voices as diverse as LA’s neighborhoods, histories, and identities—that gives LA Pride its unmistakable rhythm. But before we dig into the confetti-filled dance floors and pop-powered performances we all know and love today, we have to remember how it all started—with a radical act of defiance.
On June 28, 1970, one year after Stonewall, a small group of LGBTQ activists led by the group Christopher Street West organized the city’s inaugural Pride procession along Hollywood Boulevard. It wasn’t easy – the LAPD and city officials tried to derail it, at one point demanding organizers pay an exorbitant $1.5 million permit fee as a scare tactic. LAPD Chief Edward Davis even compared granting a permit to “giving it to a group of thieves and robbers,” reflecting the hostility (and, as it would appear, willful ignorance) of the era.
“As far as I’m concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down [the] Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers. ” - LAPD Chief Edward Davis
Undeterred, the activists fought back in court and won. The result was the world’s first officially permitted Pride parade, which stepped off down Hollywood Blvd past tens of thousands of curious onlookers. What began as a protest – guarded, defiant, and uncertain – would, over the years, blossom into an annual tradition of both celebration and
resistance.
As the Los Angeles Times later noted, that first march evolved “into a colorful, festive event” that joyously honored the LGBTQ community, even as it kept the spirit of activism alive.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, LA’s Pride celebrations grew in size and significance. By 1979, the parade and rally (then centered in West Hollywood and Hollywood) had become a beacon of queer freedom on the West Coast. The newly incorporated City of West Hollywood – founded in 1984 with an openly LGBTQ-majority city council – quickly emerged as a safe haven and cultural hub for queer life.
In 1985, West Hollywood made history as the first city in the nation to enact a domestic partnership ordinance, granting same-sex couples legal recognition at a time when marriage equality was still a distant dream. “The impulse that invented these domestic partnerships in 1985 has turned into the marriage equality movement,” West Hollywood’s Mayor reflected years later, marking how far things had come.
"Pride isn’t just a party. It’s a protest. A platform. A lifeline. And sometimes, when we’re lucky —a celebration."
With more than 40% of its residents identifying as LGBTQ+ , West Hollywood became synonymous with Pride itself – the kind of place where political activism and fabulous nightlife coexisted on the same block. Pride in LA was both protest and party: drag queens and disco floats sharing the streets with AIDS awareness banners and calls for equal rights.
Through the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, the community marched on with candlelight vigils and quilt displays, insisting on hope and solidarity. And as California gradually advanced LGBTQ+ protections through the ’90s and 2000s (from anti-discrimination laws to the eventual triumph of marriage equality), the tone of Pride in Los Angeles grew ever more celebratory. The parade and festival swelled with corporate sponsors and pop-star level performances, even as activists reminded everyone of the battles yet to be won.
Then, in 2017, that duality snapped into focus again with the #ResistMarch—a massive civil rights demonstration held in place of the usual parade, in response to mounting political threats against LGBTQ+ rights. Tens of thousands took to the streets from Hollywood to West Hollywood, reigniting the spirit of protest and reminding the world that Pride isn’t just a party. It’s a protest. A platform. A lifeline. And sometimes, when we’re lucky —a celebration. (Joy, after all, is one of the most definitive acts of defiance against oppression.)
In 2021, a major shift occurred. After decades of collaboration, the City of West Hollywood formally parted ways with Christopher Street West, the longtime organizers of LA Pride. Rather than continue the parade and festival under an outside nonprofit, the city launched its own municipal Pride programming—WeHo Pride—designed to reflect West Hollywood’s unique cultural DNA.
This separation marked the beginning of a new chapter: LA Pride returned to its roots in Hollywood, while WeHo Pride leaned into its civic identity and community-based ethos.It was out of this new landscape that OUTLOUD truly found its footing—not just as a concert, but as a cultural tentpole at the heart of West Hollywood’s reimagined Pride. Enter: OUTLOUD.
Founded by Consoletti in 2019, OUTLOUD started as a digital platform to spotlight LGBTQ+ artists often overlooked by the mainstream festival circuit. When the pandemic brought public gatherings to a halt in 2020, Consoletti didn’t cancel—he recalibrated. OUTLOUD: Raising Voices debuted as a digital concert series, beaming queer artists into living rooms around the world at a moment when community felt most out of reach.
The experiment worked. In 2021, OUTLOUD returned as one of the first live music festivals in LA after lockdown. By 2022, it had become the centerpiece of WeHo Pride, kicking off a new era of celebration with a genre-defying, star-studded lineup that fused performance with purpose. Today, OUTLOUD is not only one of the most anticipated events of Pride Month—it’s a cultural tentpole in its own right, bringing artists like Grace Jones, Carly Rae Jepsen, Kim Petras, Orville Peck, and this year’s headliners Lizzo and Honey Dijon to the heart of West Hollywood Park.
But what makes OUTLOUD so impactful isn’t just the scale. It’s the intentionality. It’s the way Consoletti has woven activism, artistry, and nightlife into one euphoric, unapologetic, and deeply meaningful experience. At a time when LGBTQIA+ rights remain under siege in many corners of the country, OUTLOUD is both celebration and counterstatement—a place where queer joy becomes its own form of protest.
SEE YOU THIS WEEKEND, WEST HOLLYWOOD!
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