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What was the show like? It was a night of drag performances, contemporary dance and poetry. Read the story to get a better glimpse of who the performers were.
How much were tickets? Free-99! Well, technically it’s pay what you can between $0-15. If you have the means to support LAist, we'd deeply appreciate that. But if you can’t, don’t let that stop you from joining in.
Will there be more? Yes! Our next Queer LA LIVE event is on November 30, and it's all about wellness and joy.
How we experience joy was the big question on my mind recently. Why? Because Queer LA, our project exploring LGBTQ+ stories through joy, went LIVE with our first event.
On a recent Thursday evening, we explored the idea of queer joy through three performers' personal journeys to self-expression. There was drag, dance, poetry and a lot of fun — all at the Crawford, our events space in Pasadena.
Below, watch the recording from that night and learn more about the people behind these performances. Want more? Check out our next Queer LA LIVE event, Wellness for Joy, on November 30.
For Maya Salameh, who will be performing a slate of poems, her love for writing really started around the fourth grade.
She’d write short stories that kept getting shorter and shorter until Salameh felt like it was the right time to call them poems. They embarked on this journey without any formal training or inherited connections to the art world — that’s one of the reasons she fell in love with it.
Today, Salameh is a nationally recognized poet and the author of the book How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave. Their poems cover a breadth of topics with a mastery of illustrative techniques, but her main focus is on writing to “imagine queer Arab futurism in an age of mass extinction.”
Among her many accolades, Samaleh is the winner of the Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers, is a National Student Poet, and has even performed at the White House. But at the beginning, Salameh says she’d spent hours searching the internet just to find someone like her.
“I was a huge internet warrior. Whether that literally just meant opening up Google and typing, like, ‘Arab lady poet,’ and discovering writers like Hala Alyan [a Palestinian American poet]… who really took poetry and made it reflect them,” Salameh said.
She followed in their footsteps, playing with English in ways that de-center English’s hegemony over everyday life and the white gaze. Poetry has allowed Salameh to find new language for her experiences. She says as a queer Arab American woman, being able to follow in a lineage of other Arab women has helped her understand both pains and joys.
“It was really a self taught love for me,” Salameh said. “You don't need to be driven to theater practice. You don't need singing lessons. All I needed was a pen, myself and a notebook.”
For Joey Navarrete-Medina, who will be performing a contemporary dance, their story of queer joy comes from healing the relationship with their father.
It started with their thesis project, where Navarrete-Medina choreographed a dance that explored their gender expressions and identity as a first-generation Mexican American. The 50-minute solo performance was an avenue to collaborate with their father, who plays the accordion and favors norteño music. But their father had a request.
“It was very vague, like ‘mijo, write me something so I can pull information and start writing [the song] for you,” they recalled to me earlier this year.
This was during a time when family health issues and talks of loved ones passing away were happening, so the dancer got to thinking.
“It became a self-reflection. If my dad would pass, or if I were to pass tomorrow, what would I want him to know?” Navarrete-Medina said. “The thing that kept coming into light was the fact that I never came out to him. I never verbalized ‘Hey dad, I'm gay.’”
Navarrete-Medina gave their father a belated coming out letter, which was later translated into Spanish for ease of communication. It included an apology for not being the son their father expected and acknowledged that he may feel shame or confusion about them being queer. (Growing up, Navarrete-Medina says their experience was marked by conservative values and machismo culture.) But ultimately, the hope was that their father would feel joy seeing them live a full life.
How did Navarrete-Medina’s father respond? By composing and singing a song called “Niño de mi Alma” — meaning child of my soul. Navarette-Medina choreographed their dance around it, and the song played as they gradually moved across the stage in a hoop skirt dress.
“When I heard it for the first time, I was bawling,” Navarrete-Medina said. “I think for me it was that idea of queer joy — like wow, this person who I have loved for the 32 years that I've been on this world, they're able to see this new version of me.”
I think for me it was that idea of queer joy — like wow, this person who I have loved for the 32 years that I've been on this world, they're able to see this new version of me.
For Johnny Gentleman, who will be putting on a drag show, being a drag king and creating space for Black and brown kings to perform is what brings him joy.
Gentleman recalled a moment before his more than five-year performing career when he saw a drag king named Havoc Von Doom in Long Beach, performing as the green Power Ranger — his fantasy idol as a kid.
“The way they interpreted the character was just so captivating,” Gentleman said. “It just kind of hooked me in.”
He fell in love with drag — and challenging the assumptions of it — after that. Gentlemen runs Dapper Puss Entertainment, a producing company where he focuses on the inclusion of Black, Indigenous and trans performers of color in events.
Gentleman grew up in Chino without seeing any trans people around him, likening it to a “Latino misogyny” where the community stayed away from LGBTQ+ people. This backdrop, coupled with a white and cisgender-dominated drag field, informs his view.
“I made it my goal to just fight for visibility for BIPOC folks and for trans folks,” he said. “We have just as much talent.”
He pushes back on the notion that drag performers need to be ultra-pretty and put together, or do more dangerous moves like death drops (when someone throws their leg in the air and falls to the floor). Drag kings, he says, can be just as entertaining without all the wigs and dresses.
Gentleman says that drag came at a crucial time in his life, and it gave him an avenue to becoming a person that he liked being on stage. He says it helped him see his truth with his heritage and trans-masculine and nonbinary identities. It’s a way for him to release emotions and anxiety, and to learn more about himself.
“Drag saved my life,” he said. “The moment I saw myself in masculine makeup, I felt the most validated I've ever felt in my life. I was able to be this character that was the braver version of what I wanted to be or could be.”
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Of the 32 total local tax measures on the ballot this week in Los Angeles and Orange counties, all but six appear poised to pass, according to early results. (There are still several more days of vote counting to come.)
Why it matters: Eleven transient occupancy tax measures, which tax overnight stays in hotels or short-term rentals, passed in cities from Burbank to Los Alamitos. Business-related taxes, such as taxes on business licenses or on certain businesses, also mostly passed, as did most parcel taxes in cities including Pasadena and Culver City.
Read on ... for more tax hikes that might be coming your way.
Longer wait times for graffiti removal and streetlight repair. Fewer police officers per shift. Completely eliminating school crossing guards.
Those are just some of the service cuts the city of South Gate made earlier this year as it stared down a $9.4 million annual budget deficit and a looming fiscal emergency.
But none of that was enough to convince South Gate voters to approve an 8% utility user tax that would have been tacked onto a wide range of utility bills, including electricity, water, cable and phone service. Now, the city is gearing up for more cuts, including closing sports fields and the city pool for the winter months.
South Gate’s utility tax was just one of the many ways Southern California cities asked their residents to give them more money via local tax initiatives this November, with proposed taxes on everything from hotel stays to cannabis businesses.
And those early results suggest South Gate is an outlier: Of the 32 total local tax measures on the ballot in Los Angeles and Orange counties, all but six appear poised to pass, according to early results. (There are still several more days of vote counting to come.)
Eleven transient occupancy tax measures, which tax overnight stays in hotels or short-term rentals, passed in cities from Burbank to Los Alamitos. Most cities sought to increase their existing hotel taxes by anywhere from 1 to 5 percentage points, while Lynwood residents voted to establish a hotel tax for the first time.
Business-related taxes, such as taxes on business licenses or on certain businesses, also mostly passed, as did most parcel taxes in cities including Pasadena and Culver City.
But sales taxes saw more mixed results. Cudahy, San Gabriel, Orange, Santa Ana and Los Angeles all approved sales tax measures, while voters in Diamond Bar, Hermosa Beach and San Clemente all voted down their local sales tax proposals.
Most of those sales taxes focused on maintaining basic city services in communities facing big budget deficits, driven by the rising costs of insurance, maintenance and infrastructure projects, and employee pensions, among other factors. But in San Clemente, the proposed 1% sales tax would have specifically funded sand replenishment and other beach projects, along with wildfire prevention work. That measure appeared to be headed for failure, with just 36% of voters in support as of Wednesday afternoon.
Voters in San Marino approved an extension of their utility tax, and increased it from 5% to 6%. Last year, the tax provided almost $2.2 million in revenue.
City officials in South Gate had hoped for a similar boon, and projected the utility tax would bring in an estimated $10.4 million per year in general fund revenue, while raising total utility costs by about $39 per month for a typical household.
Leading up to the election, the city of South Gate pointed to other neighboring cities that have their own utility taxes, including Downey, Lakewood and Norwalk, where the tax mostly hovers around 5%. “South Gate is the exception, not the rule,” noted one city presentation that pointed to these other taxes in a bid to coax voters to go along.
Voters weren’t convinced. “I’m extremely frustrated that you now want to do electricity, water, sewer, cable, cell phone, gas. ... That hurts us. You’re passing that on to us and that is absolutely not acceptable,” said one resident at a City Council meeting on the measure earlier this year.
LAist has reached out to the city of South Gate about what’s next for the city.
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People in polyamorous relationships can soon register as domestic partners in the city of West Hollywood under a new ordinance passed this week.
What’s new: The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for polyamarous people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood, as well as some tenant protections. People outside the city can also register.
Why it matters: “It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Councilmember. She said polyamarous families “continue to be stigmatized and really even demonized in this country and so deeply misunderstood.”
Past history: The city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples in 1985.
The city of West Hollywood has approved an ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry for people in polyamorous relationships.
The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood and some tenant protections. The registry doesn’t replace the state’s marriage or the state’s domestic partnership laws.
“It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Council member. “I think that's a real joy that we can bring to people — that they can live in a greater sense of being seen and understood.”
To file, people in a multi-partner relationship will submit a form in person that will be provided by the City Clerk’s office — all members of the relationship will have to provide identification to the clerk.
The ordinance also offers an option by mail, if the signatures are notarized.
In 1985, the city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples. Similar to that registry, people outside the city can also register.
“This new law not only gives polyamorous unions legal recognition, it also gives people permission to imagine a future together and to plan their lives openly,” said Christina Fialho, president and founder of Rewrite the BiLine, an advocacy group for bisexual people and nonnuclear families, who advocated for the ordinance.
Several cities in Massachusetts have also passed multipartner domestic partnership laws.
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Among the sweeping victories by Democrats on Tuesday were wins in several congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn explicitly to boost their party ahead of the midterms.
The backstory: Republicans were bracing for some losses this election cycle, so last year President Donald Trump urged his party to take the extraordinary step of engaging in mid-decade redistricting efforts. As of Tuesday night, many of those efforts had failed.
What happened: Republicans redrew their maps with the expectation that the coalition of voters Trump won over in 2024 would support them this cycle. In Texas, Republicans were banking on gains made with Latino voters in new maps. But many of those voters shifted their support to Democrats this year.
Among the sweeping victories by Democrats on Tuesday were wins in several congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn explicitly to boost their party ahead of the midterms.
Republicans were bracing for some losses this election cycle, so last year President Donald Trump urged his party to take the extraordinary step of engaging in mid-decade redistricting efforts.
As of Tuesday night, many of those efforts had failed.
That included in Florida, where multiple Democrats — Kathy Castor, Pia Dandiya and Jared Moskowitz — won in redrawn districts, according to race calls by the Associated Press.
In North Carolina, Democratic Rep. Don Davis held on to his 1st District seat, even though Republicans in the state redrew it to be more competitive for the GOP. Trump would have won the redrawn 1st by nearly 12 percentage points, according to the Downballot.
Trump would have won by even more in Alabama's redrawn 2nd Congressional District, which Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures held on to, according to the AP race call.
Republicans in Alabama redid the state's congressional map after the U.S. Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act earlier this year.
And in Texas, which was the first state to redistrict at Trump's urging, a few of the redrawn districts had gone to Democrats.
Republicans redrew their maps with the expectation that the coalition of voters Trump won over in 2024 would support them this cycle. In Texas, Republicans were banking on gains made with Latino voters in new maps.
But many of those voters shifted their support to Democrats this year.
Copyright 2026 NPR
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Nationwide election results came at a relentless pace Tuesday night, each more of a Democratic upset than the next. But you may not have known if you were attending the California Republican Party's election night in Garden Grove.
The scene: In the dimly lit Hyatt ballroom where gubernatorial longshot Steve Hilton and his supporters gathered, the news channels were off, the music was turned up and “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted throughout.
What happened: Minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Associated Press called the governor’s race for Democratic favorite Xavier Becerra.
Read on...for more on the scene before Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton conceded Tuesday night.
Nationwide election results came at a relentless pace Tuesday night, each more of a Democratic upset than the last. But you may not have known if you were attending the California Republican Party's election night event in Garden Grove.
In the dimly lit Hyatt ballroom where gubernatorial longshot Steve Hilton and his supporters gathered, the news channels were off, the music was turned up and “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted throughout.
Minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Associated Press called the governor’s race for Democratic favorite Xavier Becerra.
Around the room, the occasional person glanced at their phone to sneak a peek at the growing GOP carnage. More of the crowd instead looked at each other or toward the empty stage, where a lectern stood in front of a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.
Not long after, Hilton took the stage to concede the race — which had always been heavily favored against him in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.
“Maybe this isn’t the best year to be running for office as a Republican,” Hilton told his supporters, alluding to the election results that would soon lead the Democratic Party to win so big in the House and the Senate that many dubbed it a blue tsunami. “We see what’s going on around the country.”
Hilton knew the odds were long. He’d tried a number of tactics to win over California, including a suggestive advertisement suggesting voters should “Just Try” voting for him. He’d done his best to separate himself from President Donald Trump, who backed his campaign. He also attacked Becerra for staying largely out of the limelight since making it out on top of a chaotic primary.
None of Hilton’s appeals made a significant mark on the result, which trailed at around 36% of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.
Standing outside the ballroom, Matt Shupe, a spokesperson for the California GOP, conceded it was challenging terrain for Republicans this year across the country — and always in California.
“It’s pretty typical that the party that's not in power gains some seats, so I think that was pretty expected for the most part,” he said. “We'll plan on bringing the fight more intensely than ever in 2028.”
By 9:30 p.m., people were headed to their cars to go home.
