Meet the Voices of the 2017 Long Beach Pride Parade

Every Pride parade needs people on the microphone who know the crowd by name. On May 1, 2017, Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride announced the voices of the 34th annual Long Beach Gay Pride Parade: Jewels, Isa and Josie Rached, Bella Farrow, Robbie Osa and Missy Vee.

All of them are familiar faces in our community, and each was placed at a different stretch of Ocean Boulevard so no part of the route on Sunday, May 21, 2017, went quiet. That year’s parade also welcomed Celebrity Grand Marshal Lisa Vanderpump and Parade Grand Marshal Senator Ricardo Lara.

Along the Route

Missy Vee welcomed the parade at step off, at Ocean Boulevard and Lindero Avenue. She was crowned Miss Gay Pride 2016 and is part of the Imperial Court of Long Beach.

Three hosts held down Parade Central, each a longtime supporter of LGBTQ+ Long Beach. Jewels produces and hosts dozens of shows, events and fundraisers across Southern California. Beside Jewels in the grandstand were siblings Isa and Josie Rached, who co-own The B Room Barber Shop in downtown Long Beach with their mom. Every December they host “It’s a Drag to Give,” a charity night where community members try drag for the first time to raise toys, jackets and money for local Long Beach nonprofits.

On the curve at Ocean Boulevard and Alamitos Avenue, Bella Farrow took the microphone. She hosts shows in Los Angeles and Orange County and is best known for Margarita Mary’s, her Monday night show at Hamburger Mary’s Long Beach, which in 2017 had run for three years as the only bilingual show in town.

Joining her was Robbie, who began performing drag in Long Beach in 2012 and has since performed across California. Robbie is a member of the Latin Divas of Long Beach, hosts Wepa Wednesdays at Faultline Bar in Silver Lake, graduated from CSULB in 2013 and is an alumnus of Delta Lambda Phi.

Parade Day Schedule

• 8 a.m.: Shoreline Front Runners Pride Run, starting on Junipero Avenue at Ocean Boulevard and following the beach path
• 9:30 a.m.: The Orlando 49, a pre-parade tribute at Parade Central (Ocean Boulevard between Junipero and Cherry avenues)
• 10:30 a.m.: The parade steps off

The morning tribute honored the 49 people killed at Pulse nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016, and the people who survived. Two Pulse survivors, Brian Reagan and Milan D’Marco, joined us for it, along with Men Alive, an all-male gay chorus.

Then the parade took over. More than 150 entries filled the route, from drag queens and kings to zombies, with prize giveaways at Parade Central that included festival tickets and T-shirts.

Street Closures

Ocean Boulevard closed in stages: from Redondo Avenue to Lindero Avenue at 5 a.m., from Lindero Avenue to Cherry Avenue at 7 a.m., and from Cherry Avenue to Alamitos Avenue and around the curve to Broadway at 8:30 a.m. Only registered parade vendors could sell food, drinks or merchandise along the route.

Jewels and Missy Vee were back on the microphone a year later for the 35th annual parade. Some voices just belong to Ocean Boulevard.