The Bay Area Reporter - Friday, April 23, 1999
Jim Provenzano

The brochure displays a picture-perfect array of diversity -- gay men, African-American grandmothers, straight Latinas, even a handicapped wheelchair rider.

It is, of course, the AIDS Ride, or to use the full trademark-filled moniker, TanquerayÖ California AIDS RideÖ 6.

Some who have lost family members to AIDS, like Liliana Pe±eranada, are prominently featured in the AIDS Ride's brochure. Her brother, Nestor, died in 1996. She has participated in AIDS Rides in his memory.

Many like her see the AIDS Ride as a physical way of proving their active participation in an event "to undergo a physical challenge."

The brochure claims 25,000 people have participated in the nationwide events, raising $55 million. On another page, though, 33,000 riders are credited with raising $90 million.

But the net profits are much lower, and in almost half a dozen events over the past year two years, while numbers are tossed around, one fact remains clear: most of the proceeds from these enormous bicycling events never go to AIDS charities.

Despite this, thousands of people regularly participate, and thousands more donate money and volunteer, some for years. These incredibly complex events have been produced in cities throughout America.

But not without a few snafus. On his website journal recounting his trek, Todd Davis, a Boston-New York rider, described how riders were treated in 1995 as they arrived in Manhattan.

"The first 200 riders in were supposed to cross the street, ride up the pier and wave," he wrote. "The person pointing us where to go got confused. She waved us out onto the wrong pier. It was lined with garbage trucks. She kept yelling 'Keep going, keep going.' The pier ended. It was a short pier. 'Oh, sorry, wrong pier.'"

Broken moral compass

This misguided herding tactic may be an apt analogy for the way riders, and AIDS charities, have been treated by Pallotta TeamWorks, Inc., aka Pallotta and Associates, Inc., the Los Angeles-based for-profit company that has been sued, fined, and maligned, yet defends its high fees and continues to secure contracts with charities around the country.

While criticism rises in newspaper articles, editorials, and among riders, the viewpoint of Chris Cole, national director at Pallotta TeamWorks, is strikingly different. Cole told the Dallas Morning News that 15 percent on $3 million is a good investment. As he put it, "They couldn't have done anywhere near that by putting their money in the bank or the stock market."

That comment struck Boston's Bay Windows editor Jeff Epperly. In a March editorial, Epperly slammed what he called Cole's "hubris."

Epperly pointed out, "Giving money to a charitable event is nothing like investing money in stocks. One is about individual investors making a private profit and accepting the risks associated with capitalism; the other is about taking the hard-earned money of well-meaning people who expect that most of their money will go to help the charities involved. For Cole to compare money-making to money-giving suggests that he and his company have their moral compass broken."

Vermont's Out in the Mountains called it "the WalMart of AIDS benefits."

And like WalMart, Pallotta TeamWorks allegedly reaps bigger profits each year. The amount of that profit is debatable, since the company keeps those records private.

Rides, whether east or west coast, midwest or south, have one consistent pattern: controversy.

Wisconsin, 1998: Agencies netted a mere 6.5 percent, or $52,000, from last July's 500-mile Twin Cities-Wisconsin-Chicago AIDS Ride. This April, editor-in-chief William Attewell's In Step News' scathing editorial said, "Pallotta has blamed the disturbingly low ratios of net proceeds vs. high production costs on everything from Mother Nature to low gay support to logistical problems."

Texas, 1998: The first Houston to Dallas AIDS Ride returned just 15 percent of its gross. "We trusted them, and we got screwed," Byron C. Trott, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in San Antonio, told the Dallas Morning News. His group is one of 10 in Texas to permanently shun Pallotta TeamWorks, who, Trott said, aim "to make money for themselves and not to provide help for people with AIDS."

Florida, 1997: The Ride took in less than $300,000, while costing $1.2 million; the late Steve Michael of ACT UP/Washington was so disgusted he called Pallotta TeamWorks "the worst AIDS profiteer since Burroughs-Wellcome." (This year AIDS service agencies banded together to create their own ride, shunning Pallotta.)

Pennsylvania, 1997: Pallotta TeamWorks was taken to a Philadelphia court for misrepresentation in a 1996 Ride. They settled a civil action for $110,000 after the state's attorney general found the firm guilty of misleading the public about net proceeds.

Pallotta spokespeople blame demographics and low turnout for the regional fiascoes in cities that have fewer affluent people and smaller gay populations. Yet Pallotta and Associates take a hefty fee of around $180,000 to $280,000, no matter the success, failure, or location of the event.

Devotees and hardy cyclists participating in the rides defend it for what it means to them, particularly some San Franciscans, to whom the AIDS Ride has created a subculture and social network in a community nearly wiped out by AIDS.

This summer will see the sixth AIDS Ride in the Bay Area. Almost 2,500 people will trek by bike to Los Angeles, departing from Fort Mason just after dawn on June 6 -- ominously termed Day Zero.

As that date approaches, the Bay Area Reporter has been talking with several participants -- past and present -- on what the AIDS Rides mean to them. Also interviewed in future articles are community activists, sponsors, and former employees of Pallotta and Associates.

Next week: part two.
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