San Fernando Valley gears up for its sixth annual L.A./Valley LGBT Pride festival.

By Ramy Eletreby

Perhaps there’s something in the water. Or maybe it’s the perennial sunshine beating down on the City of Angels. For whatever reason, LGBT pride seems to flourish year-round in Southern California, as annual events in Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego and Palm Springs keep the out ‘n’ proud set rallying around the rainbow flag throughout the year. Now it’s the San Fernando Valley’s turn to celebrate community, love, and empowerment as L.A./Valley Pride makes its way to the CBS Studio Center for the third year in a row on Oct. 8.

The event began back in 2000 when long-time Valley resident Paul Waters founded the first L.A./Valley Pride with, what turned out to be, a small gathering in Woodley Park in Van Nuys. Just six years later, despite some growing pains (the festival was cancelled in 2003 due to a local political conflict), L.A./Valley Pride has grown dramatically, no doubt due to its glamorous setting within the gates of television history for the past few years. Having left its modest beginnings behind, the festival moved to the 47-acre CBS Studio Center backlot, where the exhibitors and entertainment venues are situated among sound stages and outdoor sets where such television classics as Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Gilligan’s Island, and Will & Grace were all filmed.

From its Tinseltown-style location to its being a one-day affair that is all party and no parade, L.A./Valley Pride is truly one of a kind. “It’s very rare to have multiple Pride events in the same metropolitan area,” says Waters, now the L.A. Valley Pride executive director. “Los Angeles has six of them and it’s great that they’re not all carbon copies of each other.”

Without a major theme each year, L.A./Valley Pride is able to focus its attention on community. “The message isn’t pride,” explains Waters. “The message is the community that Pride is exhibiting. It’s up to Pride to provide the platform for communities to express themselves and it’s up to the communities to figure out what their message is going to be.”

According to Waters, Pride is a matter of identity and every year’s festivals offer a forum for reassurance and recreation. However, he explains that its most vital task is to perpetuate a positive awareness of the LGBT community within the larger general population. Through its diversity and civic involvement, it should be made abundantly clear that the LGBT community is doing its part to ensure a better quality of life for everybody. It should be clear to the general population that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders are their neighbors, friends, relatives, and co-workers. It’s all about awareness.

Waters encourages any group that wants to expand its message and increase its membership to join the festivities as an exhibitor. “L.A./Valley Pride is an investment in the community. It is about building and strengthening the community,” says Waters. “Pride does a good job for a day, but we need it to last all year long and that’s up to the community. Increase the quality of your organization by what you contribute to the event.”

He explains further, “If the mission of LA/Valley Pride is to ‘improve the quality of lives of LGBT people,’ which it is, then the way to achieve this goal is to strengthen the community groups, so the community [becomes] richer, stronger and better able to serve and support its members.”

Last year, a strong presence from the L.A. Police Department resulted in 15 festival-goers signing up to take a preliminary test to see if they have what it takes to join the boys in blue. Taking LAPD’s lead, the L.A. Fire Department was the first group to sign up this year as an exhibitor. Also, for the first time, Toastmasters International will be present at this year’s festival with the goal of sparking enough interest to establish a Studio City chapter by 2007.

With upwards of 100 exhibiting groups present, L.A./Valley Pride represents the largest collection of community groups in one place and at one time, Valleywide. Waters guarantees all community groups a first-class booth in a first-class location at a low cost—starting at $50 for small groups. This year, exhibitors are coming in at double the rate as last year with more community groups than commercial groups signing up, including the Human Rights Campaign, Christ Chapel of the Valley, Equality California, Tinseltown Squares and Unitarian Universalists of Studio City, among others.

And just as with any Pride event, there will be a fair share of entertainment, food and refreshments. On the corner of My Three Sons Street and Mary Tyler Moore Avenue, the Main Stage will house such acts as Out Ballroom Dancing, Paul Bradley, Bravada, Gipsy, Jelsa and the Mystery Hangup. There will be the requisite country-western dance tent on St. Elsewhere Street sponsored by the popular Studio City hotspot Oil Can Harry’s with performers Tommy the U.K. Cowboy and The Wranglers. DJs Brett Coffey and Rick Dominquez are sure to give anybody with a flair for two-steppin’ an afternoon of pure country delight.

For those who enjoy the dance without the rustic ambience, there’s the main dance tent on Newhart Street with DJs Eddie, Gaye Anne and Paul E. each taking the reins to keep the festivities dynamic.

“If I had my way, L.A./Valley Pride would become an all-community event with the LGBT community as its host,” says Waters. “It would always be called Pride, but it would include everybody. Everybody is always welcome.”

The L.A./Valley Pride LGBT Awareness Festival takes place on Sunday, Oct. 8 at CBS Studio Center, 4024 Radford Ave., Studio City from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free parking. Admission is $7-10. For more information, see www.lavalleypride.org.