Bend coffee shop celebrates 1st anniversary after repeated anti-LGTBQIA+ vandalism

Note: This story contains a description of suicide. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

The current iteration of Turtle Island Coffee Shop’s Pride flag hangs from a steel beam high above the entrance on Oregon Avenue in downtown Bend. Cafe co-owner Tēh Sanchez calls the flag “quasi-permanent.”

Sanchez and co-owner Beth Brady celebrate Turtle Island’s first anniversary this week. Ever since the queer and Indigenous-owned cafe opened, vandals have torn down their Pride flag every couple of months, Sanchez said.

Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler said after one of the at least seven times Turtle Island’s flag was torn down, the city council displayed a Pride flag in solidarity during its Feb. 21 meeting.

This month the city of Bend declared June to be 2SLGTBQIA+ month. The city painted a rainbow crosswalk near Drake Park, just in time for the Bend Pride celebration to begin June 1.

Within 24 hours, the crosswalk was defaced by a motorist who left tire marks across its freshly painted colors.

Ruth Vernotico, founder and editor-in-chief of the nonprofit SUS Magazine, said this rainbow crosswalk is “a personification and an embodiment of what it’s like to be queer.”

“It’s not there to be perfect. It’s there to represent us and then also what happens to us and then how people show up for us,” Vernotico said.

SUS Magazine, a publication that aims to increase visibility for 2SLGBTQIA+ and BIPOC, was a collaborator for the Bend Pride celebration earlier this month. Vernotico described how the SUS tent was near to where a group of people had gathered with signs to protest at the event.

“It was distracting for me, but I slowly began to tune them out because (of) the counter-protesters from our wonderful community.”

Vernotico said counter-protesters kept the noise of the protest from infiltrating the rest of the celebration. People stood and held various Pride flags high, obstructing the protesters from the view of Pride attendees.

“Our community [was] just completely surrounding them in all different kinds of Pride flags. That was a really beautiful sight to see,” said Jordan Isaacson, Bend Pride Coalition vice president.

Cafe co-owner Sanchez said they have security camera footage of their flag being torn down. The first time it was ripped out of a wall. One time, the perpetrators draped it around their shoulders and ran around, “So I’m not sure if they’re prideful or if they’re mocking — I don’t know what it is,” he said.

When they were reinstalling their flag yet again, Sanchez said one of their ideas was to transmute a potential act of hate into a jubilant gay disco party: “Where if you pull on it, disco lights come down and stuff.”

Instead, their current flag is made from scraps and remnants of other Pride flags collected from events around downtown Bend, a “community flag” made by a friend, Sanchez said.

One of the things that surprised him was the community support Turtle Island received in response to the anti-LGBTQIA+ vandalism.

“That was really cool because sometimes it can feel a little daunting in this area,” Sanchez said.

Isaacson, who is trans and uses they/them pronouns, said sometimes they feel safe sitting in a park in Bend, and sometimes they don’t.

For Sanchez, that’s part of the reason why Turtle Island exists — for trans people to feel safe, and for kids to be able to see that living a fully realized life as an adult and an openly trans person is possible. “Statistically, trans kids do not make it to adulthood, and that’s not OK with me,” he said.

According to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit with a mission to prevent suicide, “transgender and nonbinary youth were 2 to 2.5 times as likely to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide, and attempt suicide compared to their cisgender LGBQ peers.”

The Trevor Project’s website notes the importance of supportive adults and affirming spaces for young LGBTQ+ people.

But Turtle Island isn’t just a safe space for young people to feel affirmed and seen, it’s also for adults. Sanchez said, people who’ve lived in Bend for a long time “will come in and kind of cry like, ‘whoa, this exists? This is here?’ And that to me is successful.”