Sarah Lin at The Pride LA put hours on the 34th Models of Pride. Friday, October 10. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free. Los Angeles LGBT Center, Anita May Rosenstein Campus, 1118 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Ages 24 and under. MNEK for Artist of Pride. Zaya Wade for Model of Pride. Curly Velasquez for the first Storyteller of Pride Award. That is a Saturday-shaped day even when the calendar says Friday.
L.A. Times HS Insider, filed October 14, treats it as Saturday on the ground and says the event sees more than 1,500 youth. Winston Sanchez interviewed Freddie Chen between workshops. The Ramapo News on October 15 is the other scale: ninth annual Pridefest, Wednesday, October 7, tables in the grove, Women’s Center & LGBTQ+ Services, Queer and Trans History month.
We already wrote that Coming Out Day is a weekend and Monday still needs a door. A resource fair is a table. History Month as a gala is another night with a program. This week is a named conference with an address, plus a New Jersey grove that published its offices.
Five hours is a conference. It is not a center
Pride LA calls Models of Pride the world’s largest free conference for LGBTQ+ youth and allies 24 and under. Treat that superlative as their line. The operational facts are smaller and more useful. Eleven to four. One campus. A resource, college, and job fair next to workshops. A Parents and Professionals Institute running concurrently for educators, guardians, and adult allies. Registration pointed at modelsofpride.org.
Five hours with 1,500 people is a logistics problem someone actually solved: bathrooms, food, a host, a DJ. Ruba Wilson hosted, Pride LA says, an Emmy-winning digital creator back for the day. DJ SUCCUBUS is on the bill. That is a production. It is also a clock. At 4 p.m. the campus is a campus again.
If you are a student who went because a friend forwarded the flyer, the useful souvenir is not the selfie with the arch. It is whichever table handed you a card with hours that still exist in November. A job fair that only lives inside a conference is a fair. The counseling waitlist does not.
HS Insider’s 1,500 is the attendance figure to keep. Standing room at a campus show means programming worked. Here it means Hollywood can fill a youth conference on a fall Friday. Do not import that number onto a campus of 6,000 and call the grove a failure because it did not match Los Angeles.
The Parents and Professionals Institute is the unglamorous room. Pride LA says tailored discussions and resources for adults who support LGBTQ+ youth. If you are the RA who got asked a question you should not answer, that room is the one that might have a referral sheet. The main stage will not.
Wade, MNEK, and Velasquez are the poster. Chen is the workshop
Zaya Wade takes the Model of Pride Award in Pride LA’s preview. Model, advocate for trans and gender-expansive youth. MNEK takes Artist of Pride. Curly Velasquez, vice president of development at LatiNation Media and co-founder of Pero Like, takes the inaugural Storyteller of Pride Award, presented by Mishel Prada. Those names will get the social posts.
HS Insider’s on-the-ground piece is more use to a student who has to ride the bus home. Freddie Chen hosted “Get Ready with Freddie: Makeup 101.” She did a Q&A with Reid Nakamura, a staff writer at the Center. Chen’s quote is the one that is not a press kit: some people come from families that look down on this, and you cannot reach that group at home. She said she had not been so inspired to pursue helping people live as themselves.
Workshops HS Insider actually names: Vogueing 101. Speed-Friending. Parent-side: Breaking the Ice, talking to LGBTQ+ youth about relationships. Understanding access to gender affirming care for transgender and non-binary youth in California. What Happens Next, supporting the parent. Relating to Your Queer Child. Strengthening Connection.
That parent list is California-specific on the care workshop. If you are reading this from another state, do not copy the title onto a flyer and assume the law matches. The existence of a parent track is the portable fact. The content is local.
HS Insider notes past guests: Trixie Mattel, Bretman Rock, Dylan Mulvaney, Kevin Ninh. That is lineage, not this year’s schedule. Do not write as if they walked in on October 10.
A makeup workshop is easy to dunk on. Chen’s version is a reason to show up if the rest of your week is a deadname on a roster. It is still not a clinic. It is not a housing form. Keep the categories straight when you tell a first-year what the day was.
Ramapo’s grove is the version most campuses can actually copy
Maryellen Kane’s Ramapo News piece is dated October 15 and describes last Wednesday, October 7. Ninth annual Pridefest. The grove, rainbow, afternoon. Organized by the Women’s Center & LGBTQ+ Services as part of Queer and Trans History month. More than 30 campus and local tables.
The offices she can name matter more than the adjectives. Office of Access, Belonging and Community and the Multicultural Center. Fraternity and Sorority Life. Residence Life. Student Government Association. Center for Civic and Community Engagement. The tags on the page also include Office of Violence Prevention. Those are doors with hours on a normal Wednesday, or they are not. A table in the grove does not prove the door.
Student band Twiggy played under a rainbow arch. Mahwah Pride is in the extract as a visiting table. Local groups at a campus fair are how you find the off-campus clinic that still answers email in January. Ask who is there after 2 p.m. on a Thursday, not who brought stickers.
Thirty tables is a good crowd for a mid-sized public. It is not 1,500 youth in Hollywood. Comparing the two as a ranking is how you get a dean buying an arch and skipping Residence Life. Ramapo published the offices. That is the story you can steal.
History month on that campus is the calendar wrapper. Pridefest is one afternoon. If the Women’s Center & LGBTQ+ Services only appears in the grove, you have a fair. If they have a room and a phone, write the hours down from the door while you are there. Kane’s piece will not do that for you. Student papers rarely get the winter schedule into a festival recap.
The grove is also weather. October 7 was sunny in the write-up. Your copy-paste to April will be mud. Indoor rain plan is part of whether this is a program or a hope.
A college fair inside Pride is not your campus career center
Pride LA lists a resource, college, and job fair as part of Models of Pride. For high-school and community-college readers, that is the practical reason to go if awards leave you cold. Tables that talk about applications, housing, and work are the ones that can follow you home on a flyer.
They are also the ones that disappear at 4 p.m. If a school is recruiting LGBTQ+ youth at Models of Pride, ask whether the campus Pride center has hours, not whether the booth had a flag. We have spent the month saying the same sentence in different cities. The fair is the teaser. The office is the product.
Speed-friending is HS Insider’s social workshop. It is a structured way to meet people if you did not arrive with a group. It ends. The group chat you make in that room is the only continuation unless someone writes down the Center’s youth programs for the rest of the year.
DJ SUCCUBUS and a beauty session are not lesser. They are why people stay past the first hour. Credit the production. Then ask whether the job-fair table had a sign-up that actually emails. A conference that fills 1,500 seats and loses every contact at the door is a concert.
If you staff a campus version, you will not get MNEK. You might get Residence Life, if you ask them the way Ramapo did. That is the better steal.
Parent workshops are for the adults who came. Students still need a Monday
The parent track in Hollywood is a real design choice. Adults get their own rooms so the youth floor is not a family therapy session. HS Insider’s titles are about relationships, care access in California, and what parents do after the coming-out conversation.
If you are the student, you do not have to attend those. You also should not assume your parent went and now understands housing. The Institute is opt-in. Plenty of people in the 1,500 did not bring an adult. Chen’s quote assumes that.
For campus staff reading this: a parent program at a youth conference is not a substitute for a FERPA-literate counselor. It is a Saturday (or Friday) overlay. The student who cannot be out at home needs the campus door more, not less, after a high-visibility event.
Ramapo’s list of offices is the Monday version of that thought. Residence Life was in the grove. Fraternity and Sorority Life was in the grove. If those offices only talk Pride in October, the grove was seasonal dressing. Kane cannot audit them from a festival recap. You can walk over in November.
Violence Prevention in the tags is a reminder that a joyful afternoon and a safety office are not the same budget line. Do not make the band the proof that reporting works.
Take the address home. Leave the arch
Anita May Rosenstein Campus, 1118 N. McCadden Place. 11 to 4. That is a location you can put in a maps pin. Models of Pride has done this 34 times. The repetition is the point. An annual that still publishes hours is more trustworthy than a new brand with no clock.
Ramapo’s ninth Pridefest is the other annual. Wednesday in the grove. Thirty tables. A student band. Named offices. If your campus is closer to Ramapo than to Hollywood, copy the office list, not the celebrity awards.
History month will keep producing nights. A conference that ends at 4 p.m. still dumps everyone onto the same buses. Ask what is open at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday in November: the Center in Hollywood, the Women’s Center in Mahwah, your own underfunded room with a paper sign.
1,500 youth in one building is a compliment. It is also a planning number someone has to staff. If your Pride week cannot say where the bathroom is, do not promise a conference. Promise a table, then staff the door after the table comes down.
The awards will photograph. Chen’s workshop will photograph. Twiggy under an arch will photograph. The unphotographed thing is whether anyone wrote the winter hours on the back of the program. That is the only line this week that transfers.
