Featuring Live Performances, Parade and Bed Race, Champagne Brunch Bash, Free Community Outdoor Film Screening of The Birdcage, Comedy Show at Agua Caliente
Casino Cathedral City headlined by River Butcher, Bar Events and More

Cathedral City, CA February 14, 2024—As California’s first Pride event of the year, the 8^th annual Cathedral City LGBT Days presented by Agua Caliente Casinos again brings together numerous LGBTQ+ celebrities, artists, performers, media, community leaders, Coachella Valley residents and visitors for an unforgettable weekend of live entertainment, community engagement and fun activities from March 8^th-10^th, 2024.

Friday March 8^th features the official Pride flag raising and lighting of City Hall beginning at 5:55PM. Doors open at 6:00PM for a 6:30PM community film screening of Mike Nichols’ classic The Birdcage under the stars at the Cathedral City Community Amphitheater. In the film starring Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane, Dianne Wiest and Calista Flockhart, a gay cabaret owner and his drag queen companion agree to put up a false straight front so that their son can introduce them to his fiancée’s right-wing moralistic parents. The Birdcage screening is free to the public; register for film tickets here. Bars throughout Cathedral City will host LGBT Days specials following the screening and all weekend.

Saturday’s festivities include a headline comedy show starring River Butcher taking place at the Agave Caliente Terraza, the outdoor entertainment pavilion at Agua Caliente Casino Cathedral City. Los Angeles-based standup comic, actor, and writer Butcher’s first half-hour special “A Different Kind of Dude” debuted on Comedy Central’s YouTube channel and was called “a masterclass in culture war commentary” by Esquire.com. River recently wrote on the FX pilot “Belated,” previously wrote for “A League of Their Own,” and created/starred in/wrote the critically acclaimed and GLAAD award-nominated tv show “Take My Wife.” He’s also been on screen as non-binary standup comic Lindsay Brady on “Good Trouble,” Adam Conover’s sibling on “Adam Ruins Everything” or queer dinner guest Denim in the hit movie “Friendsgiving.”  Butcher’s done standup all over the globe and the screen and was named one of Vanity Fair’s “Ten Comics to Watch” at Montreal’s Just For Laughs/Juste Pour Rire in 2017, just 6 years after doing his first standup open mic. He’s just recorded his first one-hour special in Portland, set to be released on YouTube this year. Get tickets here.

The weekend concludes on Sunday March 10^th with the annual Bed Race and Parade of Beds in front of City Hall starting at 10:00AM, where thousands of well-wishers line up to cheer on teams running festively decorated beds down Avenue Lalo Guerrero, competing for prizes and local infamy; admission is free and open to the public. The Bed Race will be emceed by local talent and accompanied by live entertainment including the Madonna tribute act Blonde Ambition. After the Bed Race, Cathedral City LGBT Days will host a noon Champagne Sunday Brunch featuring top DJs, champagne, drink specials, exclusive vendors, and gourmet food trucks on hand for all attendees to close out the weekend in style.

“Cathedral City is always excited to celebrate our vibrant LGBTQ+ community with our annual weekend full of arts, culture, dynamic programming, and our popular Sunday Bed Race,” said Ryan Hunt, Communications & Events Manager for the City of Cathedral City. “Our community is valued and respected as a place that welcomes and embraces diversity, and LGBT Days is a shining example of this continued mission by our Communications & Events Department and city leadership.”

“Agua Caliente Casinos is proud to be the presenting sponsor of Cathedral City LGBT Days, a three-day event filled with entertainment, laughs, mingling, and of course, the infamous bed race,” shared Todd Berendji, Sr. Vice President and General Manager. “We’re excited to host the official Cathedral City LGBT Days comedy show on Saturday, featuring headline comedian River Butcher. We’ll also have a great Happy Hour in the Tequila Bar, leading up to the comedy show.”

Additional activities will be announced weekly, with information posted on official social media channels (@CathedralCityLGBTDays) and the official website. The event welcomes community participation and is currently accepting applications for the Bed Race and Parade, sponsors, vendors, volunteers and performing talent. Please apply here.

For the third year in a row, Cathedral City LGBT Days is produced by Soundskilz Productions, a national entertainment production agency headquartered in Temecula, CA.

About Agua Caliente Casinos

Agua Caliente Casinos are located in Rancho Mirage, Palm Springs, and Cathedral City, CA. Agua Caliente Casinos has earned the Forbes Travel Guide Awards for its fifth consecutive year in 2024 for three of its property venues. Agua Caliente Resort Casino Spa Rancho Mirage has been awarded two Forbes Four-Star ratings for The Steakhouse and The Hotel, with Sunstone Spa earning the Forbes Five-Star Award in 2024. Agua Caliente Rancho Mirage is also a AAA Four Diamond property and was ranked top 5 for “Best Casino Outside of Las Vegas” in Newsweek in 2023. The Sunstone Spa also ranked in the top spas in the U.S. and number three in California by Spas of America’s Top 100 Spas 2022; The Steakhouse is a consecutive winner of the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence since 2007; and Agua Caliente is the only hotel in Greater Palm Springs to have achieved Forbes Four-Star status. The Spa at Séc-he in downtown Palm Springs opened in 2023 and won the Sustainable Spa Award by the Green Spa Network and the Best of the Best by Palm Springs Life along with being named the No. 1 Spa in America by Spas of America in 2023. Agua Caliente Casinos took the lead in two categories of Best Desert Sun Community’s Choice Awards, ranked Best Casino in Palm Springs and Best Hotel in Rancho Mirage.

Collectively, the three properties offer a 16-story, 340-room hotel with resort-style pools and cabanas, three entertainment venues, Pívat Cigar Lounge, a premier cigar lounge offering live table games and slot machines, 13 diverse dining options, a multi-award-winning, full-service luxury spa and salon, meeting and event venues, and Agua Caliente Fuel, an expansive fuel station with 750 square feet of gaming machines, a drive-through coffee shop Java Caliente, and competitive gas prices. Agua Caliente is also home to two nearby championship golf courses: Indian Canyons North and South.

For more information on Agua Caliente Casinos, visit www.aguacalientecasinos.com or join the conversation on Instagram @aguacalientecasinos.

Who We Are: Cathedral City

Cathedral City takes its name from Col. Henry Washington of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who in 1850 noted the area’s canyons resembled the interior of a grand cathedral. The name stuck; in 1925, developers named the area’s first subdivision Cathedral City, California. After living in the area for millennia, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians established their reservation in the Coachella Valley 1876, which comprises approximately 28% of Cathedral City.

Incorporated in 1981—later than its neighbors—Cathedral City is dedicated to providing a quality lifestyle and welcoming business climate. Cathedral City represents about ten percent of The Coachella Valley’s population and is a destination of friendly neighborhoods, lush country clubs, diverse shopping, and unlimited business potential.

Cathedral city is the fastest-growing among the desert cities, boasting higher growth in “snowbird” and full-time resident populations and economic indices than its neighbors—yet remains a great value. Many people across the nation know about Palm Springs, but more and more people are discovering that Cathedral City has become a great destination for the LGBT community to live, dine, stay and play!

Attacks Based on Gender Identity Up 32.9% from Prior Year, Those Based on Sexual Orientation Up 13.8%; Race & Ethnicity-Based Hate Crimes Remain Largest Category

WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization — sounded the alarm today as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its annual crime report for 2022 showing that anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes were up sharply from the prior year, with a 13.8% increase in reports based on sexual orientation and a shocking 32.9% jump in reported hate crimes based on gender identity

In response to the FBI’s 2022 report, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson released the following statement:

“The rise in hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community is both shocking and heartbreaking, yet sadly, not unexpected. The constant stream of hostile rhetoric from fringe anti-equality figures, alongside the relentless passage of discriminatory bills, particularly those targeting transgender individuals, in state legislatures, created an environment where it was sadly foreseeable that individuals with violent tendencies might respond to this rhetoric. The FBI’s data serves as another alarming indicator of the state of emergency our community finds itself in.

“We also know that this data is incomplete, that too many cities and states are reporting incomplete data, or even no data at all, on hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community. If we’re going to bring a stop to that violence, we need a full accounting of just how many hate crimes are taking place – and that requires every jurisdiction stepping up.”

The FBI’s report noted that there were 1,947 recorded incidents relating to an alleged victim’s sexual orientation in 2022, up from 1,711 the year before, and 469 relating to an alleged victim’s gender identity, vs. 353 the year before. The gender identity category included 338 instances that were specifically anti-transgender and 131 that targeted someone who was gender noncomforming.

Race/ethnicity motivated hate crimes remained the largest category with 56% of all hate crimes. Hate crimes based on religion moved into second, just ahead of sexual orientation.

More than 1 in 5 of any type of hate crime is now motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ bias, and the last two years have been the deadliest for transgender people, especially Black transgender women, that we have seen since HRC began tracking fatal violence against the community.

Even with these horrifying stats, the problem of incomplete data reporting for hate crimes is a longstanding one. In the “Blueprint for Positive Change,” a document released in November 2020 that offered a roadmap toward equality for the then-incoming Biden-Harris administration, HRC called for the Department of Justice to intensify efforts to encourage local law enforcement to report hate crimes statistics annually. While positive steps have been taken by the administration to improve reporting compliance, more is necessary in order to ensure more accurate and complete hate crimes reporting, including making the reporting mandatory.

The FBI’s report comes amid an unprecedented spike in anti-LGBTQ+ state legislation, with more than 550 bills introduced in 43 states, and more than 80 signed into law — more than doubling last year, which was previously the worst year on record. The wave of harmful and discriminatory legislation — some of which was engineered and championed by extremist GOP candidates running for president and their allies — and the concurrent spike in anti-transgender rhetoric and violence prompted HRC in June to declare a national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people for the first time in the organization’s more than 40-year history.

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.

Aloha…I’m Paul Jesus one of the managers at Betty’s Beach Cafe. As some of you may know…Betty’s did not survive! Lahaina Town has lost homes and businesses due to Hurricane Dora. This fundraiser is to help my staff that lost everything to relocate and get them back on their feet after this tragedy. Anything helps. Please keep Maui in your prayers as we figure out the next steps in rebuilding this beautiful town. We love and thank you all so much for all of your support throughout the years.

The LGBTQ+ community has been “exploding” back onto the travel scene in the past year as the COVID-19
pandemic wanes, according to David Paisley, senior research director with LGBTQ-focused Community Marketing
& Insights (CMI).

CMI recently completed its 17th Annual LGBTQ Community Survey, a broad look at the LGBTQ+ community, including its travel habits. Paisley spoke about the survey results this week during a webinar.

Paisley theorized that the LGBTQ+ community was slower to come back to travel than the general population because COVID became such a political issue in the United States.

The survey and other CMI research suggests travel is largely happening at a greater level than before the pandemic among the LGBTQ+ community, Paisley said. That is particularly true of people ages 18 to 54. There is still some reluctance to travel among older survey takers.

In other research Paisley conducts for specific destinations, he often asks where survey takers have traveled in the past 12 months. Statistics for every destination in 2023 are exceeding 2019 across the board, he said.

“I think the LGBTQ community went through a pattern [where] we were actually underperforming for a couple of years, and we’re sort of exploding out of it right now,” he said.

CMI’s Community Survey found that more than half of respondents planned to book a hotel room (57%) or take a flight primarily for vacation (52%) in the second half of the year. Just under half, 49%, plan to take a vacation by car from home. Only 12% said they did not expect to travel for vacation for the rest of the year.

Big cities or metro areas were the most popular destinations for those planning travel for the remainder of the year (55%), followed by a beach destination (40%) and a road trip (37%).

Of those planning to travel during the remainder of the year, 77% will travel within the mainland United States, 19% will go to Europe and 11% to Mexico. Rounding out the top five destinations are the Caribbean and Canada (tied at
9%) and Hawaii (7%).

This year, 14,432 self-identified LGBTQ+ community members completed the survey from April to June.

For more information on the survey go to Community Marketing Insights https://cmi.info/