Alternative rock band Third Eye Blind will headline the 35th annual Greater Palm Springs Pride Festival, it was announced Friday.
The band will play a 60-minute set Saturday, November 6. The Festival will be free (with a suggested donation) and include 70 pop, drag, rock, country, and Broadway-style performances during the weekend spanning November 5 through 7.
The Festival will occur in outdoor venues and includes dancing in the streets on Arenas Road between Indian Canyon and Calle Encilia. On Palm Canyon Drive, the Festival will be between Amado and Tahquitz and the surrounding area of the new City Park (Museum Way and Belardo Road). There will be open-air beverage lounges, food vendors, a festival marketplace, T-Mobile Youth Zone, and a Children’s Garden for the kids.
Festival highlights include the Art of Pride with LGBTQ artists, free health resources, including COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, and HIV testing sites. Visitors will also be able to photos with Diva, the 20-foot-tall pink poodle, or Arty, the 20-foot-tall cuddly leather bear. Weekend hosts include Bella da Ball, Jason Stuart, Shann Carr, and Scott Nevins.
“After the stress, uncertainty, and isolation of the pandemic, this is a significant time for our community to come together,” said Ron deHarte, president and CEO of Greater Palm Springs Pride. “Pride will be a coming-out celebration of our beautiful community, an opportunity to honor those we have lost, and give a voice to the power of self-expression, inclusiveness, and love.”
In addition to the entertainment lineup, the Festival will boast an art installation. American artist Yvette Mattern’s Global Rainbow, a laser light sculpture, will be a featured attraction during the Pride weekend festivities. The large-scale public art light installation aims to celebrate our diverse communities and symbolize hope and peace, beams seven rays of laser light representing the spectrum of the seven colors of a rainbow. The same colors are found in the Gilbert Baker rainbow flag — orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The exhibition’s West Coast premiere will run two consecutive nights, beginning November 5.
The artwork will utilize specially-designed lasers to project a large-scale abstraction of a natural rainbow. Originating from high above Palm Canyon Drive at Amado Rd, the seven parallel beams of laser light will hover above Palm Canyon Drive as far as the eye can see until they finally diminish to a colorful glow over South Palm Canyon.
Dozens of other performers, including many Grammy winners, popular DJs, choruses and more, will come together on four stages, including the Effen Vodka Main Stage on Palm Canyon Drive at Amado, Park Stage presented by DAP Health in the new City Park, the Alaska Airlines Altitude Lounge on Belardo between Museum Way and Tahquitz, and the Arenas Stage hosted by Channel Q on Arenas Rd at Calle Encilia.
More information: Greater Palm Springs Pride (www.pspride.org) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit community enhancement organization founded to promote the public education and awareness of individual rights and civil liberties of the LGBTQ community and to promote its history, diversity, and future prosperity. Palm Springs Pride has been a tireless advocate for equality and diversity since the first Coachella Valley Pride event in 1986.
