Saturday, June 6, 2026

Altadena Pride Turns Five Next Week, Will March Through a Community Still Rebuilding

Scene from the 2022 LGBTQ+ Altadena Pride Walkabout. [Courtesy altadenapride.org]

The free, daylong festival on June 13 moves to the Altadena Community Center and winds past fire-recovery landmarks

Four Junes ago, Nic Arnzen started walking through his neighborhood with a handful of pride flags. On June 13, hundreds will walk with him again — past empty lots, past rebuilding homes, past a fire-recovery hub where displaced residents are still learning how to come back.

Altadena Pride, the free annual festival Arnzen founded in 2021, returns for its fifth year with a daylong series of events that begins and ends at the Altadena Community Center, 730 East Altadena Drive. It is the first time the festival has been based at the community center, a shift from its previous home at the Altadena Library. The move places the celebration squarely in the civic heart of the unincorporated foothill community — and within blocks of neighborhoods still scarred by the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which destroyed more than 9,400 structures and killed 19 people.

Arnzen, now chair of the Altadena Town Council and a commissioner on the LA County LGBTQ+ Commission, lost his own home in that fire. He has continued organizing the festival each year since, according to the event’s organizers, who describe this year’s theme as a celebration of “resilience, resistance and joy” despite what they call “a challenging year of rebuilding and healing.”

The day begins at 10:00 a.m. with an opening ceremony outside the community center. At 10:45 a.m., a neighborhood walk heads toward the Grocery Outlet at 2270 Lake Avenue for the festival’s traditional group photo at the Grocery Outlet Welcome to Altadena mural. At 11:00 a.m., participants gather at the CORE hub — the Altadena outpost of Community Organized Relief Effort, the disaster-recovery organization that opened a resource center in the community in October 2025 — for a spiritual gathering described as welcoming to all faiths.

By 12:00 p.m., the route reaches Triangle Park, 800 East Altadena Drive, for a dance performance, free lunch, and art activities along Fontanet Way, which the festival calls Art Alley. The afternoon’s main event opens at 2:00 p.m. back at the community center, with entertainment, resource tables, refreshments, and art through 5:30 p.m. Throughout the day there will be appearances and speeches by surprise guests, the organizers said.

Side Street Projects, the Altadena-based nonprofit arts organization that has partnered with the festival since its founding, will host a Youth Sanctuary art workshop during the afternoon portion. The workshop, led by a queer teen, is designed as a safe space for queer youth to hang out, do art, and enjoy Pride, according to the organizers’ announcement.

Every event on the schedule operates as a standalone, the organizers said, so attendees can join for the full march or drop in at any single stop. All activities, food, and admission are free. The organizers are accepting donations through a GoFundMe campaign to cover refreshments, artist compensation, and a pride flag giveaway.

“The fact that we’re not just making ourselves visible, but we have allies like these elected officials can make all the difference to somebody,” Arnzen said in a 2023 interview about the walkabout’s purpose. “It’s also about the fact that transgender and LGBTQ+ youth have the highest rate of suicide in the nation. And that’s a consistent factor for decades. And the fact that we have people showing up for us, not just our parents and friends, that means a lot.”

The festival, which its website describes as a celebration that places the queer and transgender community at its center while recognizing “all the amazing diversity that fills our beautiful town,” has grown steadily since its first walkabout in June 2022. Last year’s fourth annual event proceeded despite the fire’s devastation, with Arnzen telling Pasadena Now at the time that “diversity is under attack nationally, but Diversity Equity and Inclusion will always be an Altadena priority.”

Altadena Pride schedule for June 13: 10:00 a.m. — Opening ceremony, Altadena Community Center, 730 East Altadena Drive 10:45 a.m. — Neighborhood walk to Grocery Outlet for group photo 11:00 a.m. — Spiritual gathering at CORE hub 12:00 p.m. — Dance performance, free lunch, Art Alley, Triangle Park, 800 East Altadena Drive 2:00 p.m. — Main festival, Altadena Community Center 5:30 p.m. — Wrap-up

For volunteer and sponsorship information: info@altadenapride.org. Details at altadenapride.org. Follow on Instagram @altadenapride or Facebook at facebook.com/AltadenaPride.

The walk begins at a community center. It ends there, too. What happens in between is the point — a town, still rebuilding, choosing to march.