Tenderloin, GLBT Museums Host Events For 50th Anniversary Of Compton's Cafeteria Riot
Photo: Henri Leleu, courtesy GLBT Historical Society.
One evening in August 1966, the Tenderloin's transgender
community had had enough. After years of being marginalized by society
and harassed by the police, a riot ensued at Gene Compton's Cafeteria, a favorite late-night hangout spot at 101 Taylor St.
The exact date of the Compton's Cafeteria Riot has been lost to time,
and it saw much less publicity than New York's Stonewall riots, three
years later. But San Francisco's queer and transgender community has not forgotten, and the Tenderloin Museum and the GLBT Historical Society will be honoring the riot's 50th anniversary with a series of special events running now through mid-September. One of many Gene Compton's Cafeterias locations in the Bay Area. Photo: Source unknownThe
two organizations have teamed with veterans of the riot, as well as
performers, historians, filmmakers and artists. Their events will honor
not just the riot itself, but how life has changed over the past few
decades for queer and transgender people.
To kick off the series, the Tenderloin Museum is hosting a queer
history walking tour and reception at their Eddy Street location this
Thursday, from 6-8:30pm. The $5 tour, led by drag performer and Castro
District tour guide Cruzin d'Loo, will
focus on both the riot and overall LGBTQ history in the Tenderloin. The
tour will end at 7pm, just in time to join a free public reception at
the Tenderloin Museum.
Other events in the series include a discussion with Felicia Elizondo,
who participated in the riot and was the Lifetime Achievement Grand
Marshal of the 2015 San Francisco Pride Parade, and a screening at the
Roxie Theater of Screaming Queens, an Emmy Award-winning documentary that helped elevate the forgotten riot into public consciousness.
July
Tenderloin Queer History Walking Tour & Kickoff ReceptionDate: 6-8:30pm Thursday, July 28thLocation: Tenderloin Museum, 398 Eddy St.Tour: $5Reception: Free and open to the public
Starting at the Tenderloin Museum at 6pm, Cruzin d'Loo (the drag
alter-ego of performer Kevin Wisney) will give an hour long walking tour
of the LGBTQ history of the Tenderloin, centering on the Compton's
Cafeteria Riot that took place at the now-famous intersection of Turk
and Taylor Streets. The tour will return to the museum at 7:00pm. for a
kickoff reception. Trans historian and award-winning documentary
filmmaker Susan Stryker and original "screaming queen" Felicia Elizondo
will speak briefly to mark the occasion.
August
Cruising the Tenderloin in the 1960s: A Talk by Felicia ElizondoDate: 7-9pm Thursday, August 4thLocation: GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St.Admission: $5; free for members
Felicia Elizondo, a self-described "Mexican spitfire, screaming queen, pioneer, legend, icon, diva, 29-year survivor of AIDS and Vietnam veteran" was one of the transgender participants in the 1966 Compton's Cafeteria Riot. In 2015, she was named Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade. In this special multimedia presentation, she explores San Francisco's Tenderloin District in the 1960s to explain how the Compton's Cafeteria Riot was a defining moment in the struggle by a diverse gay and trans community to claim public lives and become who they were meant to be, paving the way for future generations.
Compton's 50th Anniversary Art Launch & Artist TalkDate: 7-9pm Tuesday, August 16thAddress: GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St. Admission: $5; free for members Launch party and artist conversation for Compton's 50th anniversary works by ceramic artist Nicki Green and interdisciplinary artist Chris Vargas, commissioned by the GLBT Historical Society. Green is producing a limited-edition signature coffee mug referencing both Compton's Cafeteria and the riot itself, while Vargas is hand-screening a numbered set of commemorative T-shirts from his own design. In conversation, the artists will discuss their creative processes and the relationship between trans history and art. Both works will be available for a limited time exclusively at the GLBT History Museum and the Tenderloin Museum. Green is a trans-disciplinary artist whose work focuses on craft processes that document history and create legacy for marginalized communities. She has exhibited her work nationally, notably at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Vargas is an artist whose work deploys humor and performance in conjunction with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical and institutional memory and popular culture. Vargas also serves as executive director of MOTHA: The Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art.
Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's CafeteriaDate: 7-9pm Thursday, August 18thAddress: Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St.Tickets: $12 Cosponsored by the Tenderloin Museum and the GLBT History Museum, a special 10th anniversary showing of the Emmy Award-winning 2006 documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, followed by a Q&A with directors Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman. The film uncovered and popularized the then-forgotten 1966 riot at Compton's.
Susan Stryker is associate professor of gender and women's studies and former director of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona. A leader in the field of transgender studies, she is the author of many articles and several books on transgender and queer topics, most recently Transgender History (Seal Press 2008). She won a Lambda Literary Award for the anthology The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge 2006).
Victor Silverman is an award-winning filmmaker, historian and author. His current film, Getting High, is a provocative, feature-length documentary about his family's collision with drugs and alcohol set against a backdrop of American society's bitter conflicts around the "war on drugs." Silverman's latest book, coauthored with poet Laurie Glover, is California: On the Road Histories (Interlink, 2012).
September
Sex Work in the Tenderloin: Then and NowDate: 7-9pm Thursday, September 1stLocation: GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St. Admission: $5; free for members A panel discussion exploring how trans lives and sex work have changed in the last half-century in one of San Francisco's most dynamic neighborhoods. Speakers include Tamara Ching, a Compton's veteran and longtime advocate for trans and sex worker rights, and several advocates with St. James Infirmary, which since 1999 has provided free, confidential, nonjudgmental medical and social services for current and former sex workers of all genders.
Vanguard Revisited With Rev. Megan RohrerDate: 6-8:30pm Thursday, September 8th Location: Tenderloin Museum, 398 Eddy St. Admission: Free and open to the public In 2011, Megan Rohrer and historian Joey Plaster created a remarkable work of public history: Vanguard Revisited, which introduced the history of the 1960s radical queer-youth organization Vanguard to contemporary queer homeless youth, who created their own art and poetry zine in conversation with essays and themes from the original Vanguard newsletter. The new zine also featured archival materials, a historical narrative and writings from urban ministers and youth organizers. For the 50th anniversary of the Compton's riots, a second issue of the Vanguard Revisited zine will be released, with new materials by the original authors and editors. For the Tenderloin Museum program, Rohrer will describe the initial process leading up to Vanguard Revisited and will discuss its legacy. Rohrer is the pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in San Francisco and is a nationally recognized leader on issues of homelessness, gender, sexuality and faith.
Sister Dana sez, “Now that Pride is over, are we supposed to feel shame? Just kidding! Pride is every day!”
SisterDanasez, “Now that Pride is over, are we supposed to feel shame? Just kidding! Pride is everyday!”
Sister Dana thoroughly enjoyed being the rainbow nun in the San Francisco Bay Times contingent #099 of the Parade. Our contingent included board members and volunteers of the RAINBOW HONOR WALK organization,
highlighting legendary LGBT community leaders represented in the
sidewalk plaques installed in the Castro neighborhood, where Rainbow
Honor Walk founder David Perry rode as well. I was on the top of the double-decker bus with the OAKLAND INTERFAITH GOSPEL CHOIR. Joining our team were city officials, such as Oakland City Councilmember at-Large and San Francisco Bay Times columnist Rebecca Kaplan and her wife, Pamela Rosin.
Sister Dana loved blowing kisses to the crowd and flashing peace &
love signs—and receiving the same back from those loving people! I even
got four seconds of fame on the KOFY-TV broadcast!
Just before the City came to dismantle the Orlando victims’ memorial in the Castro, several of us SISTERSOF PERPETUAL INDULGENCE held a CLOSING RITUAL AT THE ORLANDO MEMORIAL
on the corner of 18th and Castro—known back in the day as Hibernia
Beach. “I hate to see it go, as we are still raw from this act of
violence, but the recent accidental fire has made it necessary for it to
be dismantled,” said Castro Business District executive director Andrea Aiello.
The memorial went up immediately after the shooting two weeks prior,
which claimed the lives of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando,
Florida.
SisterMerry Peter acted as host
for the ceremony, which drew close to a hundred people. Cleansing sage
and smudge were distributed by Sisters, ministers, and leaders. As the
majority of the Orlando people murdered were Latinx, it was appropriate
that Ruben Martinez of INSTITUTO DE LA RAZA open the circle in Spanish, with translation following in English. Rev. Megan Rohrer from Grace Lutheran (wearing a rainbow t-shirt with the punny phrase: “This is the gay
that the Lord has made” proudly emblazoned) invited the community to
share from their hearts (words, song, movement). Politicians, community
leaders, and ministers were all invited to join in.
The next day, several of us Sisters and our friends assembled in Pink Triangle Park in the Castro to be led by SisterKitty Catalyst in a First Friday Darshan Parade down Market Street—offering ritual blessing, love, and peace in the gayborhood....
