Drag queen Pattie Gonia completes 100-mile trek raising $1m to make outdoors more ‘equitable’ | California
Transvestite and environmentalist Pattie Gonia arrived in San Francisco on Friday afternoon and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge with $1 million more money than when she started her trip last week.
The diversity and inclusion advocate completed the 100-mile trek from the Point Reyes national seashore to San Francisco in full drag, sporting a voluminous red wig and smoky eyes. The effort was part of a campaign he launched to raise $1 million for eight nonprofit organizations aimed at expanding access and making the outdoors a more “equitable place.”
“Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t make a difference,” he wrote on social media after completing the journey. “When I started being Pattie, everyone told me I was crazy. When I told people I wanted to do this fundraiser, [they] He laughed in my face.
“Seven years later, I hope I can be a little bit of proof that it pays to combine who you are and what you’re good at, fighting for the change you want to see in the world.”
Pattie Gonia has become one of the most visible drag queens in the United States in recent years. In 2024, Donald Trump’s campaign used images of him with Kamala Harris as part of an attack ad against the then-vice president. Earlier this year, she helped organize a demonstration in Yosemite where LGBTQ+ climbers hung a transgender flag on El Capitan.
“We flew the Trans pride flag in Yosemite to make a statement: Trans people are natural and Trans people are loved,” she said in a statement at the time. “We have stopped being polite about the existence of trans people. Whether you call it a protest or a celebration, either way it celebrates liberation.”
He recently playfully challenged U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth to a pull-up contest in a video that compared footage of him lifting with ease and video of Hegseth appearing to struggle while doing the exercise.
Last week, he set out on a solo hike along the California coast, drifting every day and camping every night, while making videos documenting the journey. He’s preparing to perform his final show of the year in San Francisco on Saturday, “That is, if I can make it in time,” he said. In the video posted on social media Friday evening, he can be seen strutting across the Golden Gate Bridge, ending his journey with a cake.
By Friday, a GoFundMe for the project had raised more than $1 million from nearly 35,000 individual donations.
