Riders made their way along a 5.5-mile route through the streets of Culver City last Saturday, eventually arriving at Culver Steps where the Festival took place.
Culver City’s celebration of Pride reached a crescendo at the Culver PRIDE Ride and Festival on Saturday, June 28. The two-part event welcomed over 600 participants who rode their bikes, scooters, and other modes of active transportation on a 5.5-mile route starting at Syd Kronenthal Park and running through residential streets surrounding Carlson Park before continuing up Culver Boulevard to Culver Steps where the festival took place.
As the festival kicked off at 6 p.m., members of the public joined a lively program featuring drag performances, DIY puppets, live music, and DJs. Booths stretched from the Culver Studio gates past the Lion Fountain offering food, Pride-themed merchandise, and books highlighting queer stories.
With more sponsors and local businesses involved than ever before, Culver PRIDE has grown dramatically in just five years. In 2021, Councilmember Yasmine-Imani McMorrin was approached by young members of the public asking what the city did to celebrate the LGBTQ community. Unable to give an answer, McMorrin called Vice Mayor Freddy Puza — who was a resident at that time — to organize an event for Pride month.
Councilmember Bubba Fish recounts receiving a phone call from Puza about arranging a Pride event, suggesting that Culver City include a bike ride in light of the recent MOVE Culver City project launched by city council; a project which created a 1.3 mile mobility lane connecting Downtown Culver City to the Metro E-Line Culver City Station. Yet, Fish’s call to action was one that came late — with only about three weeks remaining in the month.
“Freddy said, ‘Do you think we can make it happen?’” Fish recalls. “And I said, ‘You know what? Let’s try.’ I think maybe in 20 days, we planned the Culver City PRIDE Ride and Rally.”
Despite the quick turnaround, the first PRIDE Ride and Rally was a success, with a six-mile route running through residential areas all the way to City Hall where the rally took place.
“It was really wonderful to see kids come out of their houses and watch a Pride parade go by their house,” Fish reflected. “I couldn’t help but think ‘What if a Pride parade had rolled past my house when I was young?’
“How would that have changed how I felt about being gay?”
The PRIDE Ride still rolls through neighborhoods in Culver City towards Downtown with a route similar to the ride in 2021. However, in the fifth year of this event, the number of volunteers signing up to help has increased. Leveraging their connections to local biking groups like Skitchers with Pitchers and Westside for Everyone, Culver PRIDE recruited approximately 30 volunteers to act as ride marshals and ride check-ins, a significantly larger number than in previous years.
Moreover, the event has expanded their activities welcoming children, including face paintings and story reading put on through Village Well Books & Coffee. Children's books relating to queerness and acceptance were on display, including a book read live by drag performer Queen Angelina — Oddbird’s Chosen Family — that highlighted families that come in all forms and sizes.
Not only have the activities encouraging children’s attendance increased, but so has the support from local businesses, who stepped up when a number of larger corporations stated that they were unable to sponsor the event this year due to the state of the economy and Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.
These include Executive Order 14168 — titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” — which seeks to eliminate gender identity protections by declaring the federal government will only recognize the existence of male and female.
It also overturns the US Supreme Court’s decision in Bockston v. Clayton County (2020) that affirmed gender discrimination is prohibited under the Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964, and orders the Attorney General to “issue guidance to agencies to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court's decision…to sex-based distinctions in agency activities.”
As a result, major corporations have pulled their funding and support for LGBTQ communities across the nation, wary of being targeted by the current administration.
Preparation for the 2025 PRIDE Ride and Festival started as early as January, providing more time for the volunteer-run event to overcome the loss of funds. Phoebe Kiekhofer, a volunteer who co-led the sponsorship and fundraising for Culver PRIDE with Chris Michel, spoke to Culver Crescent about the support they were able to gather.
“Chris and I tried to start fundraising really early,” Kiekhofer noted. “It’s good that we did because we hit our fundraising goal in May which was amazing and we feel so blessed for the community support that we got, but it was certainly not without a lot of work.”
Top sponsors like Metro Los Angeles, Amazon, and Gym Tonic — a gym which offers a specialized, science-based approach to exercising — provided much needed funding. Metro Bike also supplied rental bikes and volunteers to help with the Ride. With about 28 sponsors and almost twice as many local businesses involved, this year’s fundraising reflected a growing engagement from smaller businesses.
Local restaurants and businesses including Pasta Sisters, Ripped Bodice, and CycleBar Culver City provided prizes and gift cards for the PRIDE Raffle, which helped raise ticket sales. The city also provided support by allocating $10,000 for the PRIDE Ride and Festival through the Special Events Grant Program.
In addition to their involvement with local businesses, Culver PRIDE boasts a strong connection to local issues. Booths set up at the Town Plaza informed attendees on topics like sexual and mental health, and environmental protection efforts. Moreover, Culver PRIDE continues to honor their roots in emphasizing mobility by including many organizations hoping to increase the number of people using sustainable modes of transportation.
Demonstrating their commitment to local causes, the event included the presentation of two Culver City Community Builder Awards — which recognizes LGBTQ community members’ contributions to the city — at this year’s festival: one to Edgar Varela and the other to Shifra Teitelbaum and her wife Melissa Minkin.
Varela, the city’s Special Events Director, was recognized for going above and beyond his duties and in uplifting fellow queer people. Teitelbaum and Minkin received recognition for organizing weekly rallies against the Trump administration as well as Culver City’s No Kings protest — the largest protest in Culver City and third largest protest in the nation in 2025.
Organizers of Culver PRIDE hope to keep the momentum of community support they have received this year going for the next PRIDE Ride and Festival.
The city granted $12,000 for the 2026 Ride and Festival in hopes of acquiring more resources to expand further. These funds will help encourage more non-profit involvement and welcome more attendees, providing another year of celebrating the LGBTQ community.
“I think people need [PRIDE events] right now, I think people need the joy,” Fish commented. “We wanted to give people an excuse to put the phone away and come out of the terrible news for just a few hours and find safety in one another.”
The next Culver PRIDE Ride and Festival is set for June 27, 2026. To learn more about Culver PRIDE visit their website here.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Culver PRIDE organizer Chris Michel was incorrectly identified in a previous version of this article. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
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