For Sal Flores and his Playa Larga events team, their quiet but clear push to uplift and outright alter the way the Gayborhood parties have been a mission of love and evolution. After all, for many in the organization, Long Beach’s LGBTQ+ community was never just something adjacent to the city. It was the city.
“The moment I got here, something about the city called me,” Sal said of moving to Long Beach in 2002 to attend CSULB. “I later realized that a big part of that feeling was the queer community that already existed here. Visible. Layered. And deeply rooted in the city.”
Now, through his Long Beach-based events company Playa Larga and years after founding the online platform Gay Long Beach, Flores is trying to help usher in a new chapter for the city’s Gayborhood: one less reliant on traditional nightlife formulas and more focused on public space, culture, creativity, and community connection.
Bringing Long Beach’s Broadway Corridor back to (a new) life
At the center of that conversation is the Broadway Corridor, the historic stretch home to much of Long Beach’s cluster of gay bars and queer-owned businesses. There is no question that the neighborhood carries immense cultural importance, but it also needs reinvention, adaptation, and evolution.
“The Broadway corridor has so much history and so much potential, but it has also felt stagnant for a long time,” Sal said. “There are empty storefronts, restaurants that are clearly trying to survive, and a nightlife scene that too often depends on the same bar format without enough new energy, programming, or imagination.”
Sal is careful not to dismiss the spaces that helped build Long Beach’s queer identity—”That is not meant as shade to any of the bars because they have held space for our community for years, and that history matters”—but he also believes queer audiences, particularly younger generations, are seeking something broader than nightlife centered solely around alcohol consumption.
“I do think the community is changing, and people are looking for more than just another night out drinking,” Flores said. “They want experiences. They want culture. And they want daytime events, outdoor events, music, dancing, connection, visibility, and spaces where they can show up fully as themselves.”
What’s the philosophy behing Playa Larga?
That philosophy has become the backbone of Playa Larga’s growing roster of events: the Big Gay Beach Takeover, Be Proud! Fest, Big Gay Happy Hour, the Big Gay Flotilla, and perhaps most notably, the rapidly expanding Big Gay Picnic held at Bluff Park.
“The Big Gay Picnic has become one of the clearest examples of that,” Sal said. “In just the last couple of months, it has grown into something people really look forward to, with hundreds of people showing up.”
More importantly, he says, the event intentionally stretches across the full spectrum of queer identity rather than catering to one singular demographic.
“It is free, it is at Bluff Park in the heart of the Gayborhood, and it brings together families, children, trans people, queer people from different cities, gay men, lesbians, and people across the LGBTQ+ spectrum,” he said. “It is about reclaiming public space and reminding people that it’s more than just having a safe space, it’s about belonging in that space.”
How Playa Larga has partnered with The Hare and Breakfast Bar to begin the process of evolution in the Gayborhood.
That mentality also shapes the nightlife events Playa Larga produces. Sal says he’s less interested in replicating traditional club nights and more focused on immersive experiences that feel intentional and reflective of Long Beach’s evolving queer culture. And much of that experimentation, he says, has been made possible through a partnership with The Breakfast Bar and The Hare owner Josh Beadel.
“A major part of why many of these new nightlife events are possible is because of Josh Beadel,” Sal said. “Josh believed in the vision early on, saw the need for something different, and gave me the freedom and trust to create these events under his roof.”
That trust has allowed Playa Larga to produce events that feel distinctly different from Long Beach’s traditional nightlife offerings.
“Josh has really allowed these spaces to become playgrounds for queer creativity,” Sal said, “whether it is a Latino night, an underground house and techno experience, a full-charged Sunday beer bust, or a Pride weekend party that feels completely different from what people expect a typical Pride party to be.”
So what are some of the queer events happening under the Playa Larga
- Tacos, Beer & Perreo: This is a Latino night on Broadway created specifically because Long Beach has such a large Latino population, yet there has not been enough programming in the Gayborhood that speaks directly to queer Latino culture. For those who got to attend the first event on May 8, The Hare was filled with partiers. “It brought together gay men, lesbians, queer people, straight allies, and people who wanted something that felt culturally familiar but still very much rooted in the LGBTQ+ community.”
- UNLABLD is a completely different, monthly immersive house-and-techno concept. “We transform The Hare into a full 360-degree jungle experience that feels more like a Tulum-inspired festival than a traditional bar night,” Sal said. The crew brought in crowd activators. LED poi dancers. Outside entertainment… It was, indeed, a full transformation of the bar. “It was important for people to walk into a space they thought they knew and experience it in a completely different way. Long Beach has not seen that kind of immersive queer nightlife experience in a long time.”
- Thirsty Sea Men: For those who remember the Sunday beer busts at Ripples or Falcon or—for a really deep dive—Floyd’s back in the day, there is a deep sense of nostalgia. brings back the feeling of an old-school beer bust, but with a fresh, sexy, outdoor Sunday energy. It is designed more for the gay community, with sailor gogos, house music, beer specials, color-coded cups, and a more “playful” Sunday Funday vibe. It happens at Breakfast Bar in Downtown Long Beach and gives people another reason to stay in Long Beach instead of leaving the city to find something different.
Yes, Playa Larga has events for Pride, and they have “probably one of the wildest concepts we’ve created for Broadway.”
- Party Monster will be Playa Larga’s Pride weekend kickoff party and “probably one of the wildest concepts we have created for Broadway so far,” Sal said. It is inspired by the 90s club kid scene, where fashion, chaos, music, and radical self-expression all collided. The idea is to create a space for the alternative, loud, creative, over-the-top side of queer Long Beach — the people who want something edgier, more underground, and more immersive than the usual Pride party. It is about giving people permission to show up as wildly and fabulously as they want, while enjoying fantastic music and connecting with people.
- Thirsty Sea Men & The Hungry Clams Tea Dance Party starts right after the parade, just one block away from the end of it at Ocean and Alamitos. “It is outdoors, with a giant water slide, multiple bars, beer bust energy, sexy sailor gogos, four DJs, food, and a full Pride Sunday Funday experience. The goal is to give Long Beach something big, fun, and memorable on the most important day of Pride weekend,” Sal said.
The ultimate goal? Queers don’t have to leave Long Beach to have queer fun.
In the end, the Playa Larga team has one centered goal: that people have more reasons to stay in Long Beach.
“We should not have to go to L.A., Palm Springs, or West Hollywood every time we want something new, exciting, or more produced,” Sal said. “Long Beach has the people, the culture, the history, and the creativity. It just needs more intention, more investment, and more imagination.”
With these events, the hope is to bring new life to the Gayborhood and inspire more venues, bars, and community spaces to think bigger. And that is a fair point that has been long discussed across the past several decades. Expectations are rightfully higher in a time when younger people are anxious about being recorded and, hence, are anxious about going out, and those who are willing to go out want to experience more than just a cocktail menu.
“They also want something that feels intentional,” Sal said. “They want to walk into a space and feel transformed. As in somebody actually thought about the experience they were about to have. At the end of the day, it is bigger than the party. It is about community, belonging, and creating spaces where LGBTQ+ people can come together safely and joyfully. The music, the gogos, the drinks, the production—that is all part of it. But the real goal is connection.”
