Florida-based drag queen Miss Bouvèé has raised over $25,000 from selling the bricks from a Miami Beach rainbow crosswalk that was demolished as part of Governor Ron DeSantis’s ongoing war against LGBTQ-affirming roads.
After the Miami Beach rainbow crosswalk was dismantled in October 2025 and replaced with black pavement, some bricks were used to build a pedestrian area in the same city, while others were later put up for auction, per CBS News. Miss Bouvèé, real name Eric Swanson, won the auction and decided to sell the bricks to raise funds for South Florida LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations in smaller cities, as The Advocate previously reported. Her chief beneficiaries were the Key West and Naples Pride celebrations, which often lack corporate sponsors.
In a social media post published on Thursday, Ms. Bouvèé announced that she had raised over $16,000 for Naples pride, outpacing her goal of $15,000, as well as over $10,000 for Naples Pride, surpassing her original $7,500 goal.
After winning the bricks at auction, Miss Bouvèé washed and repainted them, and then re-colored some of them. She also added a plaque to the bricks honoring where they had once been placed, per the Miami New Times.
Miss Bouvèé sold 50 bricks in four days.
“People got so excited about holding a piece of our history, because it’s not the first time we’ve used bricks for a protest,” she told the Miami New Times. “I just love that they’ll have this life all over the nation.”
The funds raised will go toward a live entertainment stage as well as security for each event, per the Miami New Times.
Miss Bouvèé told the local publication that she hopes her fundraiser inspires other people to think outside the box when it comes to helping LGBTQ+ pride celebrations flourish. “I hope it inspires other drag queens to be innovative, to think about how you can be just as creative as you are with your art form, look what you can do to save your Prides,” she said. “Because we’re all going to need the help coming up.”
In June 2025, DeSantis signed a bill that enabled the Florida Department of Transportation to remove “non-standard surface markings, signage, and signals that do not directly contribute to traffic safety or control.” The federal government followed Florida’s lead.
Shortly after DeSantis signed the statewide law, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy directed all 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, to ensure that roads featured “consistent” markings that were “free from distraction.” In a social media post last July, Duffy confirmed that rainbow crosswalks were part of the direction.
“Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets,” Duffy wrote, “not rainbow crosswalks.”
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