A&PI WELLNESS CENTER HOSTS DEMONSTRATION STAGE; ADMINISTERS 40 HIV TESTS

A&PI Wellness Center's five booths were one of the most popular attractions of Folsom Street Fair this year, thanks to a demonstration booth coordinated by Danny Nguyen, Men's Program Specialist. It was the first demonstration booth hosted by A&PI Wellness Center in nearly a decade.

"The first year I went to the Folsom Street Fair, I remember A&PI Wellness Center having a stage hosted by Tita Aida and some leather boys," says Danny. "When I was a youth program volunteer here, we would actively raise funds at Folsom as well. Since then, there really hasn't been a presence of A&PI or trans BD/SM players at Folsom, and the larger community doesn't get to see A&&I sexuality differently from mainstream perceptions. That's why I wanted to bring the stage back."

The stage featured five full length demonstrations of "BD/SM Sessions", featuring several different techniques including single-tail whip/caning, spanking, paddling, dragontail whipping, flogging and Japanese-style rope bondage. Throughout the day, hundreds of fair goers stopped to watch the different demonstrations. "Putting on a show like this is a great way to do outreach because you have hundreds of people stopping and watching. This gives us an opportunity to talk about our prevention programs, our HIV testing services and Wellness Clinic."

The outreach for the HIV testing services that were available at Folsom were a hit as well. Having a demonstration stage also drew a record number of people who wanted to find out their HIV status. This year, we administered 40 HIV tests, so many in fact that we ran out of tests!