For Quilt Project Gold Coast, Pride Month began in May when our volunteers, at the San Luis Obispo Pride Festival on May 311 met Richard Tibben, who had commissioned a Quilt panel for his partner Ricky ‘Osito’ Valdez, who passed in 2000. He loved the panel, and posed with QPGC President Keith Coffman-Grey and Ricky’s Quilt for a photo.

On June 6th our volunteers displayed dozens of panels and staffed a booth at the very last AIDS LifeCycle, where administrative costs have made the annual ride too costly to continue. It is truly the end of an era, and we wish their staff and volunteers well.

The very next day after THAT, Quilt Project volunteers trundled up to Santa Maria Pride on June 8 at the Santa Maria Fairgrounds.
Santa Maria Pride is a small but well-attended annual festival that like Camarillo is very family-friendly. Santa Maria is an area with many Spanish-speaking residents, and Quilt Project passed out bilingual materials about HIV/AIDS and STls as well as condoms and AlDS awareness ribbons to those who attended. Thank you to Santa Barbara County Public Health for providing us with literature and more for these booths.

These are some of the festivals that fill the Pride Month calendar, and we’ll see you again in August for the two largest – in Ventura and Santa Barbara!