Blue Ridge Pride
Marshall Alvarado | September 30, 2025
Over the weekend, the Queer Resource Center (QRC) of Warren Wilson College (WWC) provided transport to the 16 annual Blue Ridge Pride (BRP), which took place in Pack Square Park in downtown Asheville. This year's BRP commemorated the anniversary of Hurricane Helene and the resistance and resilience of the community. BRP was filled with local vendors selling arts, crafts and food, as well as live performances by local musicians and drag queens.
This was the second year that the QRC provided transport to the BRP. The QRC is a resource center located in the basement of Sunderland Hall. It provides many wellness and health items, ranging from drug test strips, condoms and other safe sex necessities. This semester and the next, the QRC will be attempting to bring in a new stock of items, including binders, tape and shapewear. Apart from being a resource hub, many QRC members mention that the revamped QRC space is always open and provides a comfortable study area for students.
Despite some challenges, the crew’s perseverance won out. Amity Warren, a freshman and crew lead for WWC’s Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (WIDE) crew, expressed their gratitude for the people’s willingness to help.
“I'm very grateful for the people who have volunteered to share their cars,” Warren said. “Everyone who signed up is still going to be able to get there. They will have the transportation.”
Addy Riley, a freshman and crew lead of the QRC who had only attended pride events back home, explained how he was excited to talk with people from WWC who were going to attend.
“I’m excited to hang out, because there are a lot of people here that I haven't talked to, and obviously, if you're going to Blue Ridge, we have something in common,” Riley said.” I'm excited to just talk to people, see new people that I've seen around campus.”
Emmet Clements, a junior who was selling his handmade jewelry under the name Eclectic Emagination at BRP, mentioned before the event that they admired this year's theme of resilience and resistance, finding it clever to tie the celebration of pride and the community as a whole.
“I really love that BRP is tying that together in making it a way of both celebrating something good, but also taking the time to look back on both the hardships but also all that we've been through as Asheville, as a community,” Clements said “It's important, at least for me, not to have it just be a day marked with that stain of such a horrible thing. I think it'll be helpful to not be by myself that day.”
Photo of Clements in their booth at BRP in Asheville, NC. (Marshall Alvarado/Echo).
Clements also said that he found the event necessary as a way to show how the community stands together against prejudice and make their presence unapologetically known.
“The community needs to be able to come together for this and say, 'We're not just a group you can throw your violence on,’” Clements said. “There are so many different voices. It feels more powerful when you can hold that message as a community, to say that we're here. Even in Asheville, a place where I feel safer than a lot of other different cities right now, it's still important just to have that reminder and to just have that small bit of celebration.”
As for the BRP Festival, a drizzling late afternoon did not deter the sizable crowd that stayed and enjoyed the cooling mist, splashing around and dancing as the bands played and cheering whenever the clouds cleared up enough for the drag performances to continue. The crowds were all the more lively when guest environmentalist and drag queen, Pattie Gonia, showed up to emcee the lineup of drag performances for the evening.
The QRC will announce most of their events on their Instagram, @wwc_qrc, and advise students to keep an eye out for upcoming events. As for events that have already been planned, Stitch and Bitch, an event where students can bring their fiber art or any craft to work on while sipping some tea in company, will be taking place weekly on Thursday from 3:00-4:30 p.m. in the QRC space.
