Linda:
Hello and welcome to episode 33 of The Spectrum. This was recorded on December 20th, 2025 at the ARE’s R.I.S.E. Center in Winchester, Virginia. Today’s episode is with two of the organizing members of the Rainbow Ridge Social Club. Talking with Augie and Paul reveals just how important community is. I thought our conversation was going to be fairly light, talking about socializing and events, and part of it is. But Paul talks about how their house was vandalized in an act of pure hate, not just once, but twice, and how this made the need for community so critical for them. Augie had her own story to share about how important community is in her own life. Attacks against LGBTQ people, whether rhetorical, legislative, or physical, have spiked in 2025. The strength and courage of people to create community in actively hostile environments is inspirational. Now let’s turn it over to them. Let’s start by some introductions. Augie, do you want to introduce yourself?

Augie:
Sure. I’m Augie, she, her, my wife and I founded Rainbow Ridge about two and a half years ago, and we have been having fun and adding to the team since.

Linda:
And Paul.

Paul:
Yeah, hi, I’m Paul. My pronouns are they or really any. Augie and Chrisanne added my wife, Chelsea, and I, I want to say about like a couple months into the group, and then about a year in, we joined the admin team to help create events and facilitate all this craziness.

Linda:
So let’s start with some basic things. What is the Rainbow Ridge Social Club?

Augie:
Like the name kind of suggests, we are a social club made up of LGBTQ people, some allies, but generally, you know, queer people of all ages. We do anywhere from two to five or six events a month, almost all are free or low cost. In fact, I can think of one annually that costs money other than like the occasional going out to a restaurant.

Linda:
So you mentioned that the group is a couple of years old?

Augie:
Yeah, so we were founded June 28 of 2023. My wife and I were looking for community having just kind of found our own queer identities. And you know, out and about, we could see people, you know, you kind of have that gaydar kind of, and you can’t exactly go up to someone. You know, if I were to see Paul out, you know, which I’ll see, I couldn’t exactly go up to Paul and go, hey, are you one of us? Because I don’t know that Chelsea’s a safe person if I don’t know Chelsea, you know, or vice versa. And you never want to out somebody. Plus it’s a little weird to go up and go, hey, are you queer? So we went to a PFLAG event. They did a little potluck picnic thing. And PFLAG is more ally. So we didn’t really find our community there. That night we went home and we decided, okay, it’s time for us to actually take action. Let’s just see what happens. And we created a Facebook group. We asked Winchester Pride to post it. We posted it in PFLAG and we posted in LGBTQI Virginia. And we expected maybe we’d get 20, 30 people and we might meet two or three, you know. Overnight literally we started at 10 p.m. By the next morning we had more than 100 members.

Linda:
Wow, that’s pretty amazing. And what part of the area do you cover?

Augie:
Generally, northern Shenandoah Valley, but we have people from Rockingham County that come up down in like Dayton, not Dayton.

Paul:
Harrisonburg?

Augie:
Yeah, Harrisonburg, Stanuton, Broadway. That’s what I was thinking of. I’m sorry. So yeah, we have people coming all the way up from Broadway, Virginia. We have people that have come down from Frederick, Maryland. We have people that come from the Eastern Panhandle in West Virginia. But most of our members are Frederick County, Winchester, Some Front Royal, few Shenandoah.

Linda:
And so your motivation for doing this was to connect with community. And you found a lot more than you expected.

Augie:
So much more.

Linda:
So how has that influenced what you’ve done since then?

Augie:
It kind of snowballed pretty quickly. So as I said, we had 100 members overnight. It was really slow getting events going in the beginning because we didn’t have a space to do events. The center did not exist. I connected with PFLAG pretty quickly. We were meeting regularly trying to work together and see what we could do to reach out into the community. And then Matt Buracker, who used to work for R.I.S.E and ARE, we’d reached out to him to invite him to lunch to join our little collaboration. And he’s like, “We’re actually talking about opening an LGBTQ center.” So I very quickly kind of joined the committee there, just as part of being Rainbow Ridge and having that connection into the community. Because of my connection to the community, we also now have a voice in the Pride planning. We have created multiple pre-Pride events that did not exist before. Because of starting Rainbow Ridge, we’ve had a very big voice in what happens in Winchester for the queer community.

Linda:
So you mentioned that you overnight went from zero to around 100 members. How many do you have now?

Augie:
So two and a half years in, almost exactly two and a half years in, we have more than a thousand members.

Linda:
What kind of events does Rainbow Ridge do?

Augie:
I’m going to let Paul share about our events.

Paul:
Yeah, so we do a little bit of everything. Like all of you said in the beginning, there wasn’t a lot of space. So a lot of it revolved around what can we do with the park. So potlucks, cookouts. We eventually got the idea for a seasonal birthday party just to celebrate each season of birthdays. So tomorrow, for example, we’re going to have the fall birthday. So everybody that had a birthday between summer solstice and winter, excuse me, fall equinox and winter solstice, they’ll be celebrated tomorrow. And then we do that for each season. So it’s been good. We’ve even expanded into our fancy dress party that we did, where it was kind of an excuse for everybody to get dressed up and we could all dance and just have a good time. We’ve had some really amazing events. I know we did a kind of pulled from TikTok a little bit and did a crow party where everybody dresses in all black and brings their favorite shiny trinket to share or show off. I know that was really popular. And then of course, last year in the election season, we did a election watch party just so we could be together no matter what happened. That was definitely needed. And everybody was very anxious that night. But I think that was our most well attended event that we’ve ever had.

Augie:
More than 60 people for that one.

Paul:
Yeah. At that time, the center wasn’t open quite yet. So we were in ARE’s office, which could house maybe 40.

Augie:
if you have people in the hallway.

Paul:
So we had sixty. Yeah. So it’s been really fun. You know, this coming year, we’re looking at getting into a little more lavish events. So we have done a pool party. This last year just did not work out due to weather and scheduling, which is usually big where we’ll rent out a public pool and go and get everything materialized with that. And this year we’re even looking at hopefully getting together a queer prom for everyone. And you know, coming up in the next month, I know we’re going to, of course, have our we’re looking at doing like a Mario Kart tournament here in January.

Aguie:
The 80s movie party.

Paul:
The 80s movie party as well. Just get us started. And then in February, we’re going to get into one of our first staples, Vintage Valentine’s. So that is just kind of like when we were in school in the early 2000s or late 90s and everyone has those like little cheap dollar store valentines they can go around and give to their friends. So it’s that. But for all of us. Augie: I had like 15 people last year. It was really well attended. And I mean, they were before we even got to the end, they’re like, can we do this again?

Linda:
So you mentioned the election. How has that changed things in 2025 for you? Has it brought people out or has it scared people away?

Paul:
I would say brought people out. You know, people have been looking for community more than ever. I know I want to say about a year before Rainbow Ridge got started, my partner and I had a lot of hate directed at us for who we are. And that drove us to really look for community. And fortunately, this all got started. But I know kind of on a mass scale, I think the same thing is happening where people are feeling the heat, they’re feeling the pressure. And they’re looking for a place to feel safe. And I’m really thankful that Rainbow Ridge can be that for a lot of people.

Linda:
How do people find Rainbow Ridge?

Paul:
Word a mouth, honestly.

Augie:
Yeah. So if we see a post on pretty much any of the local groups where someone is saying, hey, you know, I need a LGBTQ friendly photographer or I want, you know, this is going to be queer friendly or whatever. I generally will comment and I’ll share links. We do have a website now, actually just went live this morning. It’s a Rainbow Ridge social club, all as one word dot org. And that will take you to a link tree at the moment that has our Facebook group, a Discord and an email text list because not everyone is on social media. And sometimes social media doesn’t like to show you what’s there anyway.

Linda:
When you do your events, what inspires you to create them? Are they suggested by people in the community or is it something that just comes to somebody and says, hey, let’s do this? It’s kind of a bit of both. So we have an event coming up in February called the Superb Owl Party. And that literally came from my partner and I. We love a show called What We Do in the Shadows. And this group of vampires is invited to a Super Bowl party. But because they’re from hundreds of years ago, they don’t understand what that is and misinterpret it as a superb owl party. So just coming up with ideas like that or like I mentioned earlier with pulling from like social media going, hey, that looks like a really cool idea. I know in the past we’ve done like PowerPoint nights and things that have just been kind of trendy at the moment. And then, of course, you know, some people do reach out. We’ve been hearing about a queer prom forever. But yeah, that does take a lot both financially and planning wise. So yeah, we’re very much excited to look forward into that and taking suggestions from the community. And I will also add with Rainbow Ridge, and this is how I started out making events, was anyone can make an event. We just kind of serve as that sound board. So I know the first couple that I wanted to do. I wasn’t interested in being an admin, honestly, at that point in time. I was just like, I want to meet people. I don’t have a good time. So I threw together a potluck and just said, you know, I love to cook. I love to feed people. Let’s come. Let’s do it. You know, through doing that a couple of times, Augie was like, hey, you actually seem interested in doing this. Let’s go for it. So – Augie: Yeah, they were kind of voluntold

Linda:
That happens to a lot of people.

Augie:
It’s like, hey, you’re actually helping. Like, do you want to like officially help? Linda: Paul as somebody — Augie, you founded the group and Paul, you kind of came into it later. What was your experience like coming to the events?

Paul:
Yeah, it was really nice. That first one was a potluck. Summer heat, especially after going through that period of having a lot of hate and being in the local news because of that, you know, my partner and I were kind of nervous to go out there. But it was really nice because the moment we got there, even though admittedly everyone was still a little shy, a little awkward because it was everybody’s first time meeting. Yeah, right away it was this sense of, okay, I’m welcome here. Like I can be myself. I don’t have to worry. And that’s one of the things I really value about the club is we’ve really gotten into this habit of radical acceptance. So, you know, if somebody shows up and somebody like me, for example, who is AMAB and most of the time presents like mostly masc, I really struggled with never feeling queer enough to be in a space despite being non-binary and pan. But through Rainbow Ridge and radical acceptance, I was believed and welcomed in. And I love being able to give that back to other people.

Linda:
You mentioned the hate that you’d experienced. And if this is getting too personal and you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. But what kind of experiences did you have, negative experiences did you have?

Linda:
You know, I grew up in the area, late 90s, early 2000s, going through school here. The F slur was common. Even our gym teacher would say, let’s smear the queer as a game that we could go do, which is great. So, you know, there’s that in the background. And then more specifically, in ’21, I was living in Strasburg at the time and I hung a Pride flag outside of my house. And this just was a lightning rod. So I was living in a historically black neighborhood. So we wake up one morning, the Pride flag is still there, but our house that had white siding covered in black spray paint with anti-LGBT and anti-black rhetoric all over it. Me being me, I was not about to be quiet about it. Now, fortunately, this was also super fun. Not really. My, my, my family did not know who I was. I was not out to them. I was out to my friends and obviously out to my partner. So we got outed like that. Thankfully, family was very accepting. Didn’t have to worry about that part of it. It was my name. It was great. My neighbors came out. They helped me clean out the graffiti. A local power washing company come by and literally wash it away. And then the night that Glenn Youngkin got elected, they came back for a second time. This time drawing depictions of people doing sexual things on the house. Slurs written on our cars. It just, it was really not a safe feeling. And then there was a group at the time called Front Royal Unites. They really got with me and they were like, Hey, we should let people know about this. See if we can get anything done legally. Unfortunately, they never caught the individual or individuals that did it. We did go to the Strasburg town council and we wanted to say, Hey, at the bare minimum, can we say we don’t stand for this in our community? And after almost two months of going back and forth, the answer was no, they could not do that.

Linda:
I’m so sorry. You had to experience that.

Paul:
Yeah. The, the mayor at the time was very supportive. Brandy Boies. She was a hundred percent behind us. It was the town council and to be fair to them, it was not all of them. It was a couple, one in particular, John Massoud. He actually later, about two years after the fact, campaigned for a local, I believe it’s a House of Delegate seat in the state of Virginia about how he defeated transgender radicals. He’s talking about me. It was not a fun experience. Understandably, I felt alone in the world because while my family was not exclusionary, they weren’t jumping out at for support either. And that’s around the time Rainbow Ridge really came out and I was like, okay, there’s a place I can go.

Linda:
It’s terrible that you had to experience something like that, but it’s amazing that you were able to take that experience and try to build something positive out of it. So that’s – thank you for your strength and your perseverance. Augie, are you from the area?

Augie:
For the most part, I’ve pretty much lived in the area since like third grade, I bounced around a bunch before that in different states, but I’ve bounced even in the Valley a lot. When I met my wife, we were living in, I was living in Fort Royal. We hit it off super fast. And as the typical sapphic relationship goes, we moved in together really fast. And I moved into Winchester. We bought our house before she ever proposed. The whole typical sapphic stereotype – us 100%.

Linda:
Right. The joke is what do two lesbians do on the second date and it’s rent a U-Haul.

Augie:
I mean, and not far off. A weekend she gave me a key.

Linda:
Yeah.

Augie:
Not far off.

Linda:
Were you out before then or was this a part of your coming out experience?

Augie:
I was not. We kind of found our sexuality and stuff together.

Linda:
What’s your experience been like in terms of interacting with the general public?

Augie:
Well because I came out pretty late in life. I was 36, 37 before I really realized my queer identity. So with that, like I didn’t necessarily get a lot of the hate early on. I was very, very, very closeted. I was so closeted, like even within myself, I could not look at a female and go, “She’s pretty.” Because in my brain, that was gay and you can’t do that. So it took a long time to break down those barriers. You know, when I finally did, we started kind of looking for that community and couldn’t find too much of it because it just really wasn’t anything. There’s drag shows that you can’t really meet people at because it’s a show and that was it. So we created Rainbow Ridge. For the most part, it’s been great. Occasionally, you know, we’ll share the Rainbow Ridge on a public page or someone posted about my car recently because it’s covered in queer stickers. You know, you get a little bit of hate that way, but that’s about what I’ve had is just some online hate. And it’s never like in my inbox, always just a comment on a post or a post made. So I’ve been really, really lucky in that respect.

Llinda:
Given the current environment, which has not been very LGBT friendly, have you had any concerns or issues at events in terms of people causing problems?

Augie:
Definitely had concerns. We have a safety plan in place for when our events happen here. And we worked with R.I.S.E. to come up with a safety plan. We had an event canceled right after the election because there were threats made about gun violence. When we did, well, when we attended, we didn’t actually create this one. Like Gay’s Eating Garlic Bread in the park a couple of years ago, we attended that. Someone else had thrown it together and someone had commented on the post because she was posting it everywhere. I don’t remember if it was like target practice or just something along those lines though. And we reached out and supposedly the Winchester police were supposed to kind of drive by a few times. They never did. Couldn’t be bothered to come by, but we did actually report that one because this was a public space and someone was threatening to come shoot all of us. But it’s generally been talk. There hasn’t been any actual violence. People have not shown up to things. We’ve had a few prominent-ish people get ahold of some things in our group that they weren’t supposed to. So we kind of locked down some things for a little while and had registration links and we weren’t telling you where things were and whatnot for a little bit in addition to creating safety plans and places where we could go hide or if needed. But luckily it hasn’t been. It’s all keyboard warriors.

Linda:
It’s awful that we live in a world where you need to think about things like that. But thank you. Thank you both for being part of creating a safe space for people and for helping to keep the community visible. I think personally that that’s really important is that the rest of the world needs to see that we’re just people.

Augie:
That’s been our goal from day one. We want, like Paul mentioned earlier, radical acceptance. You are who you say you are. I do not care if you come in looking like the most feminine person ever in a ball gown. If you tell me your pronouns are he-him, I’m going to use he-him. If you tell me that you go by the name of Mike, I’m going to use Mike. It doesn’t matter. If you are in a het-presenting relationship but you tell me I’m actually kind of queer, I just didn’t realize it but I didn’t want to get a divorce, that’s fine. You are queer. You are who you say you are. Identity-wise, you are safe to be who you want. You’ve had members come and say, “When I’m here, this is what I want to go by but if you see me out in public, please use this.” That’s okay too because you might not be out to your family. You might not be out to everyone. I’ve had a member I took into Northern Virginia to go clothes shopping because she wasn’t comfortable shopping locally yet as a trans individual. It’s a safe place for everyone. If you come and say, “Hey, I really want to go to this potluck at the park but I’m a wheelchair user and I don’t know if accessible or whatever, I’m going to do whatever I can to make it accessible.” We have members who are wheelchair users or who use canes or crutches or who are blind or hard of hearing. If you reach out to us and say, “Hey, these are my needs,” we’re going to do what we can to make it a safe and accessible space for you. If you want to say come to a dance party or something if we were doing one but you’re on the spectrum and that’s too much noise, we will find a spot that we can have that’s a quiet space if you need to decompress. Radical acceptance doesn’t just apply to queer identity. It applies to all aspects of your identity. We will do whatever we can to make it safe and accessible, safe from outsiders who might not be friendly, safe from just hazards if you use of cane. Paul mentioned that potluck earlier. When we do potlucks, there is no signage. There is nothing advertising that it is a queer potluck. We tell you where we’re at. We will post a map complete with arrows showing where we’re going to be so that you can find us. We will come out and meet you somewhere if you can’t find where we’re at, but we are not advertising that this is a queer group to make it safer. Maybe you’re not out or maybe someone else in the park is not so friendly.

Linda:
We’ve unfortunately spent way too much time talking about the negativity and the reactions to that we’ve had to do to deal with it. Let’s talk about some of the positivity. Paul, you mentioned that this group really helped you deal with the hate that was directed against you. Can you talk about how that’s helped you in terms of your own life the past couple years?

Paul:
I came out in my early 20s and then I met my partner and they were nothing but supportive. We were literally six months away from getting married and I was like, “Hey, so I’m non-binary. I agender.” Not even a moment’s hesitation. They were like, “Okay, cool. New set of pronouns? Great.” Up until that point, I just had them and my best friend and that was it. Through that, during that time when we were going through all the hate and everything, she was doing everything she could to support me and I was supporting her back because she was also going through it even though I was much more of the face of it. But when Rainbow Ridge came up, it helped both of us get out of that just survival mentality. From there, we started getting into a thrive mentality because we felt empowered. We had community. We knew that there were safe people in the area if we just needed to call somebody and vent. If we needed to show up and do something, we just had that community and that has helped both of our mental healths tremendously. I know for me, I have struggled with depression on and off. A lot of that did stem from that self-rejection that what Augie was talking about earlier with you can’t even look at somebody and think because you might be gay and that’s so bad. It’s helped with that radical acceptance but turned inward. That has been life-changing, truly life-changing.

Linda:
Augie, in terms of your experience over the last couple of years having done this, what’s the positive that it’s brought to your life?

Augie:
It’s been amazing. I went from feeling like I had a few friends that were friends that I’d had forever that were just kind of friends because we had known each other for so long kind of thing and not really like we did something like once a month and it was more of like, “Oh, we should probably do something,” to friends that it was like I could call anytime and say, “Hey, Paul, you want to go grab dinner?” Which we’ve done many times. It’s really expanded my social circle a lot. It has helped my mental health, my wife’s mental health so, so much. But it’s been great because it’s not just us. It’s seeing that we now have a group of families that don’t really come to events but then met through Rainbow Rage and go do regular playdates at a park. We have our Discord. We have several people that get together regularly and go down to Buc-ee’s in Harrisonburg or go to this random event and they don’t necessarily post, “Hey, we’re going to go do this,” but they’ll go afterwards. They go, “Hey, I hung out with this person today and it was a lot of fun,” and seeing those friendships and knowing that they didn’t know each other before Rainbow Rage. This was created because of us and it’s just amazing and I’m not saying they wouldn’t have met because I can’t say that they never would have come across each other but knowing that they met at events and seeing couples that have met at our events. I’m holding out for one day having a Rainbow Rage wedding for people that have met at our group but not yet.

Linda:
In wrapping things up, what kinds of stuff have we not talked about that you think is important?

Augie:
I would say we are – We don’t have any dues or anything like that. We do try to have all of our events free or low cost or as many of them as possible but unfortunately that does take some support. Paul alluded to helping to try to do a prom this year. The pool party, renting out pools. We almost always have food or snacks at events and those things do take money. We set up at Pride and we have things. We give out free flags and free stickers and the outreach costs money. We do always take donations. If you go to therainbowragesocialclub.org, there is a link on there to donate to a spot/b> fund. Usually we hope to switch that out to something different but at the moment that’s the way we’ve managed to take donations in and those donations go to help make it so that we’re not charging people to come because we’re providing pizza or because we’re renting the pool or whatever. That did remind me of mentioning the pizza, the first open mic we did. Pizza is not exactly a very friendly food. You have people who cannot have gluten or who are vegan and we have many vegan members or whatever. They can’t eat that. We go out of our way to make sure there is something for everybody to eat. For example, when we did that pizza meal, we actually had some gluten free and vegan pizzas on hand. That goes back to that, making sure that there’s something for everybody.

Linda:
Paul, did you have anything you wanted to add?

Paul:
Just in that same vein for what, maybe that whole first year and a half, everything came out of pocket from either you all or Chelsea and I. Neither household is particularly rich either way.

Linda:
There’s the whole sustainability thing.

Paul:
Yeah. Once, because we did have people approach us about donations and at first we weren’t really going to take it, but we saw that sustainability come up and we were like, “Hey, actually, we do need help. We need to embrace that part of the community as well.” That’s been extremely helpful. The pizza she was just mentioning, not to get into numbers or anything, but what we spent like $250 on that. That was with donated space, donated performers, donated audio equipment. It still was $250, which we didn’t have to maybe not pay a bill or something. We could just go, “Hey, we have spotfund. We could pay for that.” It’s been extremely helpful. As we get more members, we want to do larger, maybe more exciting events, but that does take some funding. We’re always appreciative of any donation. It’s not required by any means whatsoever. Every event is free or the cost is only associated with actually attending. We have a foodie group, for example, where we all go out to restaurants. Of course, you would be paying for your meal.

Augie:
Once a year, escape room. You pay your own escape room fee.

Paul:
We definitely love those donations because they help us with just about everything, but it’s not required and our doors are always open. Thanks to both Augie and Paul for sitting down with me and being willing to share so much of themselves. If you live in the northern Shenandoah Valley and are looking for a welcoming, accepting place to socialize, definitely check out the Rainbow Ridge events.

Linda:
Thanks to ARE for making the R.I.S.E. Center available for our talk. One of the primary motivations for this podcast is to humanize the subject of LGBTQ issues for the wider public. I think one of the best ways to do that is to put the faces and voices of people onto everyone’s phones and televisions. If they see that we are real people, it makes it that much harder for hate to survive. I know that not everyone can safely share their story, but if you can, please reach out to me at SpectrumPodcastHost at gmail.com. If you want to share your story but need to do it anonymously, we can do that. Storm clouds remain for our community, especially for our transgender and non-binary siblings. If you are in the northern Shenandoah Valley and you need community or support, organizations like Rainbow Ridge, PFLAG, and ARE are there. Organizations like Casa Brumark can help connect you to needed resources. Know that you aren’t alone and that there is a large community of people who accept you for who you are. As we bring 2025 to a close, know that there are many people like Augie and Paul who are there helping to make the world a better place for all of us. Take care and help build community wherever you are as we move into 2026.