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4 days of QUEER BLACK & BROWN JOY in the magic of Santa Barbara. It was our first bold step toward creating what queer & trans BIPOC of the 805 deserve.
"We must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world."
-José Esteban Muñoz
Chief Esparza, Vivian Storm, René Garcia-Hernández, Carlos Mendez, and Terra Cobian formed the planning committee for SB Pride & Joy in 2022 . They were a team of educators, entertainers, community leaders, artists, performers, builders, storytellers, and visionaries. In a moment in time, they came together as worldbuilders, to conjure the possibility of joy. They made Pride & Joy and the 805’s first Popup Gayborhood a reality on October 5-8, 2023. And they did it all for love of community.
Thank you to everyone who dreamed that possibility with us.
What if we treated mental health, rest, and joy like they were community responsibilities? This was the center of our discussion featuring an all Black & Queer panel of Vivian Storm, Jordan Killebrew, and Jackie Chin, M.A. Vivian is a life & leadership coach and drag performer. Jordan is the cofounder of Juneteenth SB, an organizer, and nonprofit board member. Jackie is completing a doctorate at UC Santa Barbara, and is part of RISE-Up Lab, the Healing Space, and is an UC-HBCU Fellow. They led our audience through a deep conversation on Blackness and Queerness at the Marjorie Luke Theatre to open Pride & Joy Weekend. They were joined in discussion breaks by Ana Rosa Rizo-Centino of the Climate Justice Network, and René García-Hernández of the Arts Mentorship Program, AHA!, and Bienestar CCC.
The sun smiled on us in a beautiful Saturday morning at the Dart Coffee Garden in the Funk Zone for this all-ages gathering of coffee, Mexican breakfast from Sazon Latino, pan dulce from La Bella Rosa Bakery, drag performances, and community joy. Over 125 people came through to share space and find nourishment together in a break from life’s constant struggles. We were gifted an amazing all-Spanish drag performance by Miss Lady J Monroe, Vice President at the Latinx History Project in Washington DC, in a partnership with the MultiModal Lab at Santa Barbara City College. This event was designed to be a refuge, a multigenerational dialogue, a place to invest in our mental health and wellbeing, and a time to celebrate culture, and the very specific ways we create human connection to each other. Queerness and Mexican culture were on full display until well past noon.
Pride & Joy Saturday was celebrated as Pink Saturday to honor queer history and give people a unifying color to show their colors as a community. Good VBZ — one of the Bay Area’s finest queer Hip-Hop event production groups — came to the 805 with DJs Möscöné & Sweetest Threat, dancers Tré and Deon, drag performers Vivian Storm and Cooper the Queer of the 805, Hershii LicQour-Jete of Los Angeles, and Tila Pia of San Francisco, and a full soul food spread provided by Soul Bites Restaurant of Santa Barbara. Nearly 100 of us danced, sang, popped bottles, clapped fans, hugged friends, and laughed together like queer folk of color had never done in Santa Barbara. The staff of EOS Lounge treated us with respect and kindness on their back patio to let us fully embrace the good vibes of a Black & Brown kickback on our first Pink Saturday.
For queer people of color, our queerness is nothing without the essence of our racial and ethnic cultures. On the night of Pride & Joy Friday, we opened our nightlife program — with four Downtown locations helping create an unprecedented queer bar-hop in Santa Barbara — with one of the most fantastic drag performances in recent memory. 805 queens included Vivian Storm, Angel D’Mon, Cooper the Queen, and Melina Poinsettia. From Los Angeles, we welcomed one of the newest additions to Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Hershii LicQour-Jete. And from San Francisco, Tila Pia gave us an absolutely dynamic show. It was Black. It was Latine. It was Filipinx. The expression of identity through drag as performance art at Backstage was something the 805 has rarely seen on a single stage, and 100 people in the audience witnessed the show of a lifetime.
Glitter Brunch was cofounded by Vivian Storm and Angel D’Mon. This weekly drag brunch has carried some of the 805’s best moments for years. We were lucky to be able to bring one of the final Pride & Joy moments of the weekend to the back patio at the Wildcat, where over 120 attendees — many of them Pride & Joy VIP pass holders — came together to celebrate in community, togetherness, and joy. Queer community and allies alike understood the assignment — relax, enjoy, and honor each other. This exclamation point on the very first Pride & Joy Weekend — a bookend to the opening panel discussion, “Joy is a Community Responsibility,” was as memorable and loud as it was fun. And that’s all we asked for: to share time & space together in joy as Black & Brown queer people. We did that.
We chose a new, innovative approach to Pride celebrations. Instead of a single enclosed festival off to the side, we decided to create a popup gayborhood over Downtown Santa Barbara. More than a dozen businesses and public places offered to help create that possibility.
Queer people don’t live or thrive in enclosed spaces. We have to walk these streets every day. Why not give our allies a chance to share space with us, and celebrate in the center of town in our utmost Black, Brown, and queer joy?
See, the 805 is home to 1.5 million people yet we lack anything like a true, inclusive LGBTQ+ neighborhood. We wanted to imagine a thriving, multifaceted neighborhood where you can pick and choose what fills your soul, any time of day. Our popup gayborhood was an act of imagination, it was worldbuilding in practice, the first step toward a future we want to live in.
In a time of uncertainty and distress for queer communities across the country, we felt that it was necessary to step-up and unite the Central Coast’s LGBTQ+ organizations around a single statement to show our combined strength and support. After crafting the statement and sharing it with the 805’s queer nonprofits in June 2023, we had unanimous support with no edits to the theme, narrative, or overall content — in less than 10 days. We often speak of the 805 and the Central Coast as a single region, but rarely has the LGBTQ+ community been as united as we have in this single letter to the community.
Read the full statementThe initiative to release a joined statement was led by Chief Esparza of ColorBloq.org and the organizers of the first Santa Barbara Pride & Joy weekend in 2023.
View the full article
The organizers of the inaugural SB Pride & Joy Weekend. They named themselves “The Table” because they didn’t want a seat at someone else’s table — they wanted to build their own. All of them sit under the umbrella as queer & trans BIPOC, and all of them have deep roots in the 805. In a moment in time, they came together as worldbuilders, to conjure the possibility of joy. And they did it all for love of community.
Pictured, L to R: René García-Hernández, Terra Cobian, Vivian Storm, Chief Esparza, Carlos Mendez
.png)
“We must reclaim joy outside of the artificial “cheer” it is often reduced to. There is a joy that is defiant. A portal to survival for our ancestors. A way to say, we will not be captive to despair nor abandon our belief in beauty. Joy with teeth. Never complacent, always ready.”
-Cole Arthur Riley
“It is not possible to constantly hold onto crisis. You have to have the love and you have to have the magic. That’s also life.”
-Toni Morrison
“We are more than our trauma, we dare to joy.”
-Color Bloq’s slogan since our founding
4 days of QUEER BLACK & BROWN JOY in the magic of Santa Barbara. It was our first bold step toward creating what queer & trans BIPOC of the 805 deserve.
"We must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world."
-José Esteban Muñoz
Chief Esparza, Vivian Storm, René Garcia-Hernández, Carlos Mendez, and Terra Cobian formed the planning committee for SB Pride & Joy in 2022 . They were a team of educators, entertainers, community leaders, artists, performers, builders, storytellers, and visionaries. In a moment in time, they came together as worldbuilders, to conjure the possibility of joy. They made Pride & Joy and the 805’s first Popup Gayborhood a reality on October 5-8, 2023. And they did it all for love of community.
Thank you to everyone who dreamed that possibility with us.
What if we treated mental health, rest, and joy like they were community responsibilities? This was the center of our discussion featuring an all Black & Queer panel of Vivian Storm, Jordan Killebrew, and Jackie Chin, M.A. Vivian is a life & leadership coach and drag performer. Jordan is the cofounder of Juneteenth SB, an organizer, and nonprofit board member. Jackie is completing a doctorate at UC Santa Barbara, and is part of RISE-Up Lab, the Healing Space, and is an UC-HBCU Fellow. They led our audience through a deep conversation on Blackness and Queerness at the Marjorie Luke Theatre to open Pride & Joy Weekend. They were joined in discussion breaks by Ana Rosa Rizo-Centino of the Climate Justice Network, and René García-Hernández of the Arts Mentorship Program, AHA!, and Bienestar CCC.
The sun smiled on us in a beautiful Saturday morning at the Dart Coffee Garden in the Funk Zone for this all-ages gathering of coffee, Mexican breakfast from Sazon Latino, pan dulce from La Bella Rosa Bakery, drag performances, and community joy. Over 125 people came through to share space and find nourishment together in a break from life’s constant struggles. We were gifted an amazing all-Spanish drag performance by Miss Lady J Monroe, Vice President at the Latinx History Project in Washington DC, in a partnership with the MultiModal Lab at Santa Barbara City College. This event was designed to be a refuge, a multigenerational dialogue, a place to invest in our mental health and wellbeing, and a time to celebrate culture, and the very specific ways we create human connection to each other. Queerness and Mexican culture were on full display until well past noon.
Pride & Joy Saturday was celebrated as Pink Saturday to honor queer history and give people a unifying color to show their colors as a community. Good VBZ — one of the Bay Area’s finest queer Hip-Hop event production groups — came to the 805 with DJs Möscöné & Sweetest Threat, dancers Tré and Deon, drag performers Vivian Storm and Cooper the Queer of the 805, Hershii LicQour-Jete of Los Angeles, and Tila Pia of San Francisco, and a full soul food spread provided by Soul Bites Restaurant of Santa Barbara. Nearly 100 of us danced, sang, popped bottles, clapped fans, hugged friends, and laughed together like queer folk of color had never done in Santa Barbara. The staff of EOS Lounge treated us with respect and kindness on their back patio to let us fully embrace the good vibes of a Black & Brown kickback on our first Pink Saturday.
For queer people of color, our queerness is nothing without the essence of our racial and ethnic cultures. On the night of Pride & Joy Friday, we opened our nightlife program — with four Downtown locations helping create an unprecedented queer bar-hop in Santa Barbara — with one of the most fantastic drag performances in recent memory. 805 queens included Vivian Storm, Angel D’Mon, Cooper the Queen, and Melina Poinsettia. From Los Angeles, we welcomed one of the newest additions to Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Hershii LicQour-Jete. And from San Francisco, Tila Pia gave us an absolutely dynamic show. It was Black. It was Latine. It was Filipinx. The expression of identity through drag as performance art at Backstage was something the 805 has rarely seen on a single stage, and 100 people in the audience witnessed the show of a lifetime.
Glitter Brunch was cofounded by Vivian Storm and Angel D’Mon. This weekly drag brunch has carried some of the 805’s best moments for years. We were lucky to be able to bring one of the final Pride & Joy moments of the weekend to the back patio at the Wildcat, where over 120 attendees — many of them Pride & Joy VIP pass holders — came together to celebrate in community, togetherness, and joy. Queer community and allies alike understood the assignment — relax, enjoy, and honor each other. This exclamation point on the very first Pride & Joy Weekend — a bookend to the opening panel discussion, “Joy is a Community Responsibility,” was as memorable and loud as it was fun. And that’s all we asked for: to share time & space together in joy as Black & Brown queer people. We did that.
We chose a new, innovative approach to Pride celebrations. Instead of a single enclosed festival off to the side, we decided to create a popup gayborhood over Downtown Santa Barbara. More than a dozen businesses and public places offered to help create that possibility.
Queer people don’t live or thrive in enclosed spaces. We have to walk these streets every day. Why not give our allies a chance to share space with us, and celebrate in the center of town in our utmost Black, Brown, and queer joy?
See, the 805 is home to 1.5 million people yet we lack anything like a true, inclusive LGBTQ+ neighborhood. We wanted to imagine a thriving, multifaceted neighborhood where you can pick and choose what fills your soul, any time of day. Our popup gayborhood was an act of imagination, it was worldbuilding in practice, the first step toward a future we want to live in.
In a time of uncertainty and distress for queer communities across the country, we felt that it was necessary to step-up and unite the Central Coast’s LGBTQ+ organizations around a single statement to show our combined strength and support. After crafting the statement and sharing it with the 805’s queer nonprofits in June 2023, we had unanimous support with no edits to the theme, narrative, or overall content — in less than 10 days. We often speak of the 805 and the Central Coast as a single region, but rarely has the LGBTQ+ community been as united as we have in this single letter to the community.
Read the full statementThe initiative to release a joined statement was led by Chief Esparza of ColorBloq.org and the organizers of the first Santa Barbara Pride & Joy weekend in 2023.
View the full articleThe organizers of the inaugural SB Pride & Joy Weekend. They named themselves “The Table” because they didn’t want a seat at someone else’s table — they wanted to build their own. All of them sit under the umbrella as queer & trans BIPOC, and all of them have deep roots in the 805. In a moment in time, they came together as worldbuilders, to conjure the possibility of joy. And they did it all for love of community.
Pictured, L to R: René García-Hernández, Terra Cobian, Vivian Storm, Chief Esparza, Carlos Mendez
.png)
“We must reclaim joy outside of the artificial “cheer” it is often reduced to. There is a joy that is defiant. A portal to survival for our ancestors. A way to say, we will not be captive to despair nor abandon our belief in beauty. Joy with teeth. Never complacent, always ready.”
-Cole Arthur Riley
“It is not possible to constantly hold onto crisis. You have to have the love and you have to have the magic. That’s also life.”
-Toni Morrison
“We are more than our trauma, we dare to joy.”
-Color Bloq’s slogan since our founding