LGBTQ+ Pride celebration returns to Guerneville years after controversial move to Santa Rosa

Guerneville, long a popular destination for LGBTQ+ individuals, last hosted Sonoma County’s marquee Pride event in 2017.

To better accommodate the growing festival, organizers moved it to downtown Santa Rosa, where it has been held annually since 2018.

But now, volunteers are bringing the celebration back to Guerneville, beginning Oct. 14, as a space to celebrate the queer community and generate revenue before the town grows quiet in winter.

Local resident Jeniffer Wertz, 52, was disappointed when the event moved out of town. As workforce fund manager for the Russian River Alliance, a charitable organization that assists locals, Wertz knows events like Pride bring in much-needed revenue.

And the town has battled a lot since 2019 — fires, floods, the pandemic — and some small businesses — Betty Spaghetti and Chef Patrick’s, for example — didn’t make it, she said.

“The good news is this community has survived and is back,” she said.

And now, so is Pride, back to the rural town once described by Travel + Leisure as the “West Coast’s Fire Island,” a popular gay enclave in New York.

Cleve Jones, who is leading the organization of this year’s event, laughs at the comparison.

“I’m sure it was intended as a compliment,” Jones said, however, “Fire Island is a very wealthy little enclave and Guerneville most certainly is not.”

This year’s festivities kick off with a health and wellness fair and close out the next day with a parade along River Road and a family-friendly party at Johnson’s Beach, hosted by San Francisco drag legend Juanita More.

Instead of taking place during Pride Month in June, the Guerneville celebration is tied to National Coming Out Day, recognized Oct. 11.

Christopher Kren-Mora, president of nonprofit Sonoma County Pride, has helped with the event since it moved to Santa Rosa in 2018. But his connection to Pride began in 1993, when he attended his first event in San Francisco.

“Friggin’ overwhelming and amazing” is how he remembered it.

About 30 years ago, Kren-Mora, 48, was in the process of coming out. Finding community was harder in the ‘90s, he said, especially growing up in Rohnert Park.

He remembered hearing stories of people getting beaten up for being openly gay.

But when Kren-Mora walked down San Francisco’s Market Street in late June 1994 holding a huge Pride flag, he no longer felt alone in the world.

Tears came to his eyes Tuesday as he spoke with The Press Democrat by phone. He remembered the hundreds of thousands of people at that Pride event — and an “amazing amount of color and faces and energy.”

But as violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals rises across the nation, Jones, 68, a Guerneville resident and national LGBTQ+ leader, said the importance of this year’s event is mounting.

“This is not a time to allow Pride celebrations to go away,” he said. “In our opinion, this is a time to make sure these things happen.”

While community members were dismayed when Pride was moved in 2018, Kren-Mora said the event, which started as a picnic in Windsor’s Kaiser Park, had traveled around quite a bit.

“The event Sonoma County Pride has been hosted at multiple locations, including the Luther Burbank Center, Julliard Park in Santa Rosa (and) SRJC,” he said.

Sister Scarlet Billows with the Russian River Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence was part of the committee that brought Pride to Guerneville in 2009. They organized the annual event until 2014, when other organizers stepped in to lead the efforts. Sonoma County Pride then moved the marquee event in 2018.

Roger Jensen, former event coordinator at the R3 Hotel and a well-known Guerneville figure, rallied to hold an event in 2018, a year after it moved to Santa Rosa.

Unbeknownst to him, that year would be his last ahead of devastating fires, floods and a global pandemic. He held it just after Labor Day.

“And you know, I called it Russian River Pride because it just embraces a lot more than the LGBTQ+ community. It involves the whole community who was supportive of everybody's lifestyle there,” said Jensen, 60. “So, it just was grand.”

Organizers were successful at growing the event but, Kren-Mora said, “it was a little difficult for us to host that many people and all the logistics that went along with it.”

And so the Sonoma County Pride board voted to relocate the festival to Santa Rosa.

This year, quilt panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt, conceptualized by Jones, will be on display to honor west county residents who lost their lives to the disease.

The event will also include a clean and sober social space, a photo exhibit documenting the history of the Pride flag, LGBTQ-themed movie showings at Monte Rio Theater & Extravaganza and — of course — a parade at noon Oct. 15.

There will be a small fee for motorized vehicles and floats to participate in the parade, but non-motorized groups are free, Jones said.

Kren-Mora said it takes about 100 volunteers to put on the Pride event in Santa Rosa; Jones estimated they’ll need about 75 for the Guerneville event. Organizers also hope to raise $75,000 — half of which has been raised in committed pledges — and part of those funds will go to the Guerneville Library, Food for Thought, Russian River Alliance, Watch Duty and the Guerneville Youth Center.

Tory Walker, 26, said they will be volunteering at the event.

“To hear that Guerneville is finally getting, like a legit Pride parade, is going to be amazing,” they said. “I’m super excited for it.”

Walker is a member of the Russian River Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and performs as a drag king. They went to their first Pride event this year in San Francisco.

Celebrating Pride is important, Kren-Mora said, because “it validates who you are, it validates that you’re real.

And “it brings family together,” he added.

The event’s official website will be updated with information next week, organizers said.

Kathryn Styer Martínez is a reporting intern for the Press Democrat. She can be reached at kathryn.styermartinez@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5337.