attacked in a hate crime incident<\/a> on Halloween weekend. Prasad was placed in a coma after the attack and later died.<\/p>\n\u201cBe aware of your surroundings. \u2026 Don\u2019t go walking home alone,\u201d said Terry Sidie, the longtime owner of Faces Nightclub. \u201cThere are people who will try to hurt you at times; take care of yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"People\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/DSC04138-2-1024x576.jpg\")
From left, Terry Sidie, owner of Faces Nightclub, and TJ Bruce, owner of Badlands and The Depot, attend a press conference in the Lavender Heights neighborhood in Sacramento on Sept. 21, 2026. (Martin Christian)<\/p>\n
Demographics changing in Lavender Heights?<\/p>\n
Sidie admitted that he has gay customers who joke that there are \u201ctoo many straight people\u201d at the nightclub.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s LGBTQ+ business owners have seen the demographics of Lavender Heights change dramatically over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my day when we were coming out, you didn\u2019t have anywhere to go,\u201d said Fred Palmer, executive director of the Sacramento Rainbow Chamber of Commerce.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had to go to the bars, or the community center, or go get HIV tested, and then you\u2019d have an outlet to meet some folks that were in your community,\u201d Palmer said.<\/p>\n
![\"Person\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/DSC04144-2-1024x576.jpg\")
Fred Palmer, the founder of Outword Magazine, an LGBTQ+ publication based in Sacramento, attends a press conference in the Lavender Heights neighborhood of Sacramento on Sept. 21, 2026. Martin Christian<\/p>\n
Lavender Heights sees more people from all walks of life, Palmer said, plus the local LGBTQ+ community has expanded for people with a larger variety of needs. He voiced optimism about the variety of people coming together to make the neighborhood safer, between the mayor\u2019s office and local business owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so many of us that are on edge,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cWe need to have some sort of security and ownership to make sure our community is safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The change in demographics has also been visible to Tonia Tong, who has provided security for Faces for the last five years. Tong owns local security company Securing Communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe percentage of straight people here, this whole time, is growing,\u201d Tong said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still get people asking here like, is this a straight club or is a gay club? And I go, it\u2019s a gay club, and you need to go inside because it\u2019s poppin,’\u201d Tong said.<\/p>\n
She said that dynamic requires her team to keep an extra eye out for sexual harassment and making sure that teams are keeping a close eye on people while they wait for their rideshares to arrive.<\/p>\n
Volunteers patrol the neighborhood<\/p>\n
Some corners of Lavender Heights have been quieter since the recent attacks have shaken the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
The karaoke night at Teneral Cellars saw its number of patrons drop from its usual 75 people down to about 25 people last week, said Zachary Basler, vice president of the Stonewall Democrats of Greater Sacramento.<\/p>\n
Seeing that fear was part of the reason that spurred his group to begin organizing the Lavender Heights Community Patrol.<\/p>\n
On recent weekends, the patrol has sent out sets of volunteers clad in purple safety vests to help people get home safely and to keep an eye out for violence in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cQueers have been policing their own communities for years for safety, so this isn\u2019t anything new,\u201d Basler said.<\/p>\n
The group has grown to 62 volunteers. Since the group began appearing on the streets a couple of weeks ago, there have been no reports of hate crimes, Basler said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version: The city of Sacramento is working with a private security company to add 24\/7 security…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-471553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Person\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/DSC04156-2-1024x576.jpg\")
A security guard watches over a press conference outside Faces Nightclub in the Lavender Heights neighborhood of Sacramento on Sept. 21, 2026. Martin Christian<\/p>\n