ALL FOR ALL: Behind the scenes of 2026's newest Pride event
- Vasili Moschouris
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
One might not think from the everyday appearance of a place like downtown Wilmington, with its sleek-modern glossy bars and storefronts slotted between humble and historic brick, that the city is home to one of the most vibrant and, well, proud queer communities in the South. But as soon as that first weekend in June hits, that unassuming front explodes into a ceaseless cavalcade of rainbow flags and pulsing house beats.
Surely every Wilmingtonian has seen some part of the metamorphosis the city undergoes when Pride month begins: the balloons flying over the doors of bars and restaurants; the crowds of people dancing through the blockaded streets; the drag queens and musicians climbing up onto constructed stages. Wilmington’s queer community is large enough to take over one of the busiest parts of downtown every single year, but for all the events and open stages and drag brunches that bookend our schedules every June, how often do we really consider the labor behind those events? Whose hands string those balloons from the mantles? Whose directions build those stages and coordinate with the city to block off the streets? And, perhaps most importantly, whose pockets are lined at the end of it all, and where does that money go?
Most people probably don’t often consider those questions, but they are more important now than ever, especially as Wilmington’s queer community continues to grow, and its annual festivities grow larger and larger—and as conglomerates like, say, Target, pump all the money they make from selling rainbow-patterned Pride merch every year into ongoing efforts to disenfranchise the queer community nationwide. Who are the people who gain the most from our community’s increasing visibility? If we don’t ask those questions, we may find ourselves drifting into territory that might not be best for us—where Pride becomes just another annual buzzword like “Pumpkin Spice” or “Back to School,” a defanged and salinized venture.
This year, a new Pride party will break that mold. On June 12th, 13th, and June 14th, the Brooklyn Arts District, from Flytrap Brewing to Chow Town, will be taken over by the Cape Queer Pride Fest: a weekend-long party and festival, featuring live music, art, performances, food, vendors, and more, dedicated to directly uplifting and benefitting Wilmington’s LGBTQIA2S+ community. And to its organizers, nothing is more important than transparency, community, and collaboration.
When I sit down to meet Betsy Stipa, Cape Queer Pride Fest’s main organizer, in Luna Caffé, she’s just getting out of a meeting with another one of her partners for the event and squeezing in an interview with me before her next appointment.
In fact, every time I’ve spoken to Betsy, she’s getting done with doing something, or getting ready to do something else: conducting interviews while folding laundry or scheduling meetings on the way from one into another. She’s always on the go, juggling a million different people, but she bears that weight with an almost impossible grace. We’ve never met before, but when she enters, there can be no question that she’s who I’m waiting for—with her bright-pink denim overalls and effortless smile, she’s the kind of person that shifts the center of gravity in a room; one you can’t help but want to be around, to listen to—and listen we all should, because Betsy has a plan.
“I’m an organizer,” she says, as we step out onto the street. “I’m really good at finding the most sensible way to do things. Like, this person’s really good at X, but not so good at Y… that person’s good at Y, but not so good at X. How can we bring those people together and make something great happen?”
It is this collaborative and communal spirit that Betsy is bringing into her approach to organizing this one-of-a-kind festival. At every turn during our conversation, Betsy takes care to name each of the businesses she’s working with, from The Eagle’s Dare to The Brooklyn Cafe, and to highlight exactly where all the money that this event will funnel into the community will go. Each business participating in the Cape Queer Pride Fest festivities will offer an item for sale which will directly benefit the LGBTQ+ Center of the Cape Fear Coast. From cotton-candy drinks at Avenue B to products from LGBTQ+ art vendors as well as local vendors and performers, a portion of the proceeds from each of these participating businesses will go directly to the LGBTQ+ Center of the Cape Fear Coast.
Over the course of our conversation, it’s evident that clarity and inclusion are some of Betsy’s top priorities as an organizer, and the lack of those things is a major problem that she hopes to solve. Part of what inspired Cape Queer, she tells me, is what she knows of how some other Wilmington Pride events have been handled in recent years.
“I went to a Pride event last year,” Betsy says, “and I didn’t understand why the DJ was a drunk cis white guy who tried to hit on me and my friends. I didn’t like that. It didn’t feel like Pride. It didn’t feel like it was truly for this community.”
This “rainbow-washing”—i.e., the organization and staffing of these Pride events by and with people outside of the queer community—is the major problem that Betsy hopes to solve with Cape Queer: turning a disparate Pride party into a truly collaborative community event, one that will not only stimulate and uplift every local business and group tied to it, but benefit local LGBTQ+ organizations at every turn.
Working alongside Betsy to make Cape Queer a reality is Simeon Pauley, one of Stonewall Sports’ events directors–a match made in heaven, as far as I’m concerned. As a community organizer myself, Simeon and Stonewall have been nothing but eager to throw their weight behind whatever idea I or others have had for queer-focused community events–everything from open mic nights to vendor markets–even if they have nothing to do with sports. Stonewall shares Betsy’s passion for and understanding of community solidarity, and the impact that even a little bit of help can truly make.
“It’s challenging, in a small city, to make people aware of anything,” Simeon says. “Because we don't have as many modes or means or ways to get the message out. Being a part of something bigger, like Stonewall, makes the feeling of being included come across more easily than just sitting in the house would. If you don't involve yourself, opportunities and interesting things to do won't find you, and that's just the reality.”
Through this mindset, Stonewall has become a lightning rod for Wilmington’s queer community, one that can direct attention wherever it needs to go to make something happen.
Stonewall will have a presence at the event, of course, with a booth set up alongside a tent for the main beneficiary of Cape Queer’s Pride Fest initiative: The LGBTQ+ Center of the Cape Fear Coast, Wilmington’s local hub for innumerable queer support groups, organizations, and events. The Center offers such incredible programs as a LGBTQ+ Youth Group, Writer and Crafter Workshops, adult support groups and classes, and more, creating a vital space for the most vulnerable members of our community to not only find others like themselves, but receive the sort of support they might be lacking in other parts of their lives. But for as important and impactful as the Center’s services are, it’s still a relative unknown to many in the community—yet another inefficiency that Cape Queer’s organizers hope to change.
“The Center is the umbrella,” Betsy says. “We want to make sure it’s as visible and as front-and-center as possible, and that everything funnels back to it.”
Ultimately, the vision for the Cape Queer Pride Fest goes beyond just throwing a killer party, but creating an opportunity for the community to come together, pool its resources, and direct its collective strength into a worthwhile cause. Just because it’s a “Pride” event doesn’t mean its benefits have to start and stop with the gay community alone—and part of Betsy and Simeon’s mission is furthering that sense of solidarity by organizing the event to be as beneficial as possible, both to its partners and participants, and the Wilmington community at large.
“I really want to make sure that Pride isn’t just about one community,” Betsy says. “I think that’s a misunderstanding that’s gone a bit too far. Pride should be about bringing the whole community together—not just the gay community, but the businesses, the locals, and North Carolina by proxy.”
The organizers are also incredibly invested in the event’s accessibility and inclusion. Every year, a common refrain amongst Pride-partygoers is a longing for some kind of organized schedule of events—for as large as Wilmington’s queer community is, it’s rather decentralized, with certain events happening in relative isolation from each other, making it somewhat difficult to keep track of everything that’s going on throughout the month. Cape Queer will solve that through a partnership with ShuttleWorks, an interactive online map, created by Wilmington local Scott Thomas, that will be accessible through unique QR codes at each participating business along the ‘Rainbow Road’. Codes will show the businesses that have officially sponsored this event as well as the item of purchase which directly benefits The LGBTQ Center of the Cape Fear Coast.
This is just one of the innovative partnerships with existing community infrastructure, aka Wilmington locals, that the organizers of Cape Queer Pride Fest hope to make to help the whole community not only know the who’s and what’s of the month, but to feel as welcome and as accepted as possible.
With all this in mind, the question becomes, where are they at now? How much more do they have to do to pave the way for this event? As with anything, it’s all coming down to the finer details.
“We're finalizing the budget,” Betsy says. “Some people that we thought would be jumping at the chance to participate aren't, which is fine, but we have to bet on people giving us no support at all and still setting up a great event.”
From the outside in, there’s plenty of time left, but Betsy and Simeon know all too well how quickly the rainbow whirlwind that is June can creep up on you.
“It’ll be here before we know it,” Simeon says.
In the immaculate machine that Betsy and Simeon are working to construct, the ideal event is one where everyone has the accessibility to participate, have fun, while all in service of some of our Wilmington community’s most vital resources. An event by the community and for the community—one that centers and platforms and directly benefits the pillars of Wilmington’s queer community, but that does not exclude anyone from joining. To hear them describe it, this Pride sounds like a production, the sort of thing you’d slap some glitter and a -ganza suffix at the tail end of—by the girls and the gays, but for everyone.
In the end, Cape Queer Pride Fest will be the result of a bunch of local community members doing their own part, all adding up into something much bigger than any one person’s contributions. This is an opportunity for Wilmington to really come together—to become that thing that Betsy and so many others already see it as: a beautiful and interlocking web, a net that can support itself when one strand breaks, and catch whomever may be falling.
