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Continuing the Dream: Reflections on 38 years of collecting SF LGBTQ history
On March 16, the GLBT Historical Society marks 38 years since our founding. To celebrate the occasion, we are thrilled to provide an interview with Greg Pennington, a founding member of the Society. To learn more about our history, visit glbthistory.org/timeline.
Was there a specific event that spurred you and the other founders to organize in 1985?
I moved to San Francisco in March 1977 as part of the wave of gay men that came here in the late 70’s. I heard about the election of Harvey Milk and George Moscone and wanted to live somewhere where I could truly be myself.
Just two months after I arrived, Anita Bryant helped overturn the gay rights ordinance in Miami and the San Francisco LGBTQ community reacted very strongly. The headline in the SF Chronicle was “5,000 angry gays march through San Francisco.” The marches went on for 5 nights and although I did not go to the first one, on the second night I heard the marchers going through my neighborhood on lower Nob Hill and I joined them for the next four nights.
This event was a catalyst for me, and I began collecting gay periodicals from all over the country. I was collecting as much information as I could about everything that was going on in the gay community. I wanted to preserve our history.
I met with Harvey Milk in his City Hall Office in July 1978, about creating an archive for our community. He was very supportive of young people like me fulfilling their dreams. He told me that he would help me make it happen. He issued a press release for a community meeting that would be held on August 28, 1978. Unfortunately, Jack Lira, Harvey’s lover at the time, hanged himself near the time of the meeting and it never happened.
In 1983 I met Bill Camilo, through a mutual friend and Bill invited me to a party at Scott Smith’s house (Harvey Milk’s lover at the time of his assassination) for a gathering with the people that wanted to form a gay library. At that meeting I met Willie Walker. Walker, Camilo, and I later met and formed the S.F. Gay and Lesbian Periodical Archives. Walker and I merged our substantial collections and kept them at his house. Camilo would later drop out of our project. We included the word lesbian in our title because Walker was beginning to amass numerous lesbian publications, such as The Ladder.
Walker and I met in my living room in the summer of 1984 and discussed his plan to create a historical society. I went with him to a meeting of the SF Lesbian & Gay History Project on September 5, 1984, to propose the idea and get their support and help to create the organization. They unanimously agreed to join us.
Walker, Eric Garber, and I were among about 10 people that met several times in the fall of 1984 to form the organization. We made some initial decisions about things until we realized we would have to start over because we needed to have future members of the organization involved in the decisions. Then we changed our focus to preparing what decisions would need to be made at a public meeting to create a Historical Society. We organized the public meeting that was held on March 16th, 1985, at the S.F. Public Library.
What was the atmosphere like at the first meeting?
There was excitement in the air as a very broad spectrum of community members answered the call to create an organization. The meeting was very well attended by over 50 people. Many of us were meeting each other for the first time. Walker’s letter to invite members of more than 160 community organizations and more than 100 individuals was wildly successful.
I think we did a good job of organizing the meeting presentations, topics of discussion and decision points. The issue that took the longest to resolve was the name. After at least a half hour on that subject we chose the San Francisco Bay Area Gay and Lesbian Historical Society. Fortunately, years later we made improvements to the name as it was just too long. We did fit that name on our early banner, buttons, and t-shirts though.
Tell us about the other founders: what were their specific interests?
Willie Walker was a labor archivist in Butte, Montana before he moved to San Francisco in 1981. He was a nurse and served on the AIDS ward at San Francisco General Hospital. Walker, like me was a collector of periodicals and ephemera. He would go through community businesses collecting every free piece of paper he could get his hands on. His apartment, like mine was full of ephemera and printed matter. His apartment served as the first archives for the organization after we were founded.
Walker was always focused on doing things the right way to create a professional organization. He was our first archivist, and he got his master’s degree in library science in 1988 from U.C. Berkeley. Walker passed away from liver cancer in 2004 at age 55. It is very sad to me that he never got to see what the organization has become.
Eric Garber was one of our founding members, first Board members and served as our first newsletter editor. Eric was involved, like Walker, in the S.F. Lesbian and Gay History Project. Eric was interested in gay sci-fi and co-authored Uranian Worlds. Eric did research on all the gay bars, names, and locations in San Francisco. His research is in the collection of the archives. Unfortunately, AIDS took Eric before he could publish his bar research. Eric was once a roommate of Cleve Jones and a friend of Harvey Milk.
Were there any specific initiatives or areas of focus that the founders felt that the organization should prioritize in its infancy?
Walker and I both wanted to create an archive, but we realized that we would need a broadly focused organization to create interest and bring in the people and support we would need. The Society would create an archive but would also do historical programming, publish a newsletter, create a museum, and other activities to promote LGBTQ history. We had monthly programs in our first few years on a broad variety of topics of interest to the diverse elements of our community. We published the first issue of our newsletter very quickly after our formation.
The organization formed at the height of the AIDS holocaust in San Francisco when more than 20,000 LGBTQ people died. Walker and I were very concerned when families came to San Francisco for their gay sons that had passed away and threw away all of their stuff. We felt an urgent need to get as much of it as possible. We were losing a great number of people and a lot of our history.
We were also very keenly aware of what had happened under the Nazis in Berlin to the Magnus Hirschfield collection. At the time it was one of the finest collections of gay manuscripts and materials in the world. The Nazis destroyed all of it. Because of that we decided our collections must be under community control and not controlled by any government agency. We did not ever want to lose our collections because of a shift of political winds. We also did not want the government to censor, suppress, ban, or destroy our sexually explicit materials. Our sexuality is an important part of our history.
As the society approaches its 40th anniversary and we reflect on its impact, what are one or two things you are particularly proud of from this legacy?
I am very proud to have been part of the creation of this successful organization for the protection, preservation, and promotion of LGBTQ history. Any creator wants to be able to step out of the way and allow his idea and creation to flourish. I greatly appreciate the incredible volunteers, Board Members and staff that have continued our dream.
I am proud that we achieved our original goal of creating an archive that is a major research center for movie makers, authors, researchers, and community members. It is so important for younger generations to be able to learn about the history of our communities.
I am most proud of the diversity we have achieved in the organization. We still have further to go as there is always room for improvement. In the beginning we were mostly white cis men and we later had good parity of men and women but our consistent long-term focus on the importance of diversity paid off in the long run. Over time we reflected more of the racial and ethnic diversity and fortunately, we also expanded to include the transgender community. The LGBTQ community is the most diverse community on Earth, and we must reflect that.
What are your hopes for the society in the future?
I want to see a vibrant internationally acclaimed LGBTQ history museum in San Francisco that is a model for the world, and a tourist attraction that keeps LGBTQ people visiting San Francisco. It needs to be big enough to have space for us to reflect the vast diversity of the LGBTQ communities. I hope that our world-renowned archive collections can be co-located with the museum. I hope that younger generations will be excited to learn about our history and about all of the diverse elements of our communities.
Greg Pennington was a founder of the GLBT Historical Society. Originally from Wichita, KS, Greg moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles in 1977 at age 20. Greg retired after a 30 year career with the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2014. Greg served as the first LGBT Program Manager in the nation in the EPA San Francisco regional office starting in 1998. Greg spent 20% of his work time on issues of concern to the LGBT employees. LGBTQ history has always been one of Greg’s most important hobbies.
On safe consumption sites in San Francisco. Can we “re-wild” our hearts?
Elected officials, nonprofits, activists, and community leaders are pushing forward the idea of safe consumption sites in San Francisco, in order to prevent overdose deaths, improve the health of people who use drugs, and reduce outdoor and public substance use. Safe consumption sites and services are a well-accepted and effective public health intervention that exist in hundreds of cities around the world, but are slow to gain acceptance and be implemented in the U.S.
To gain traction and momentum for safe consumption services in San Francisco, in January Supervisor Hillary Ronen, from San Francisco District 9, organized a panel discussion with a group of experts to share their thoughts on the issue. The event was moderated by Heather Knight from the San Francisco Chronicle, and included Tyler TerMeer, PhD, CEO of San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Alex Kral, PhD, epidemiologist from RTI, Supervisor Matt Dorsey, Dr. Leslie Suen from UCSF, and Sam Rivera, the executive director of OnPoint NYC.
From what I’ve seen, the idea of supervised consumption services can provoke ire from people who don’t know much about the services, how they work, and how they improve the communities in which they exist. People may incorrectly assume they operate as free-for-all, legally-sanctioned, disorganized places that encourage and entice people to use drugs, or maybe enable people in their drug use. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
These are, of course, fears that are based on centuries-old stigma around illicit substance use and addiction, rather than the ample data we now have available from hundreds of sites around the world. The benefits of safe consumption sites are clear: The National Institute of Health shares that safe consumption sites “are associated with lower overdose mortality, 67% fewer ambulance calls for treating overdoses, and a decrease in HIV infections.” We know that safe consumption services increase use of social services–including addiction treatment–and reduce things like public drug use, improper syringe disposal and litter, and public costs spent on HIV/hepatitis C infections, emergency room visits, and overdose.
It was fascinating to hear from Sam Rivera, who is the executive director of OnPoint NYC–the nation’s first supervised consumption centers.
He shared how prior to OnPoint NYC’s opening, the business across from one site had been collecting around 13,000 syringes per month on their own from the surrounding streets. A month after OnPoint opened, that needle waste plummeted to only 1,000 syringes picked up off nearby streets. The site prevented public drug use in the area, which meant far fewer improperly discarded syringes.
NYC’s two sites have also successfully reversed hundreds of overdoses. Rivera talked about how sometimes the percentage of fentanyl in their attendees’ drug-of-choice was so high, people turned blue and started overdosing before they could even complete their injection. Having professionally trained staff on deck to jump in in this crisis situation was essential to saving their lives.
However, if I had to pinpoint the thing that was most notable to me from this panel discussion, it would be something a little less definable, something that doesn’t fit neatly onto a chart or graph to convince funders and politicians of its worthiness. That “X factor” was the unconditional love that was apparent in the way Rivera spoke about people visiting these sites.
As the panel discussion began, Rivera shared a story of a large, six-foot-four man who had come in for injection support. Rivera addressed him by name, and suddenly the man started crying. Rivera, assuming he had used the wrong name or somehow triggered this man’s trauma, apologized profusely. The man explained that Rivera did nothing wrong, he had just not been addressed by his name in such a long time. It was as if hearing his name had, in some inexplicable way, restored a part of his humanity that the streets–and those who so ruthlessly police them–had taken away.
“Just love people,” Rivera explained.
We could feel the authenticity of what Rivera was asserting. “Just love people,” he repeated. Rivera went on to discuss how these sites had unintentionally become a site of bonding–of remembering. “It’s hard to be in those rooms and not get emotional,” he shared. He described how many of the folks working these sites have their own lived experience around substance use, and how their success stories (which include continued use in addition to recovery) serve as a beacon of hope. “We are you,” Rivera said, recalling speaking to a client.
Rivera explained that for some people, safe consumption sites become a place where people explore reducing or ending their substance use. Staff at the site don’t need to constantly ask people about recovery, reducing use, or medication-assisted treatment, Rivera said. Most often, it’s the participants themselves who talk about drug treatment and changing their substance use. As staff get to know the clients who come in, they get to talking. They talk about their interests and their lives. “What we see happen,” Rivera shared, describing these contextual and peripheral conversations while the person is using, “is an [overall] reduction in drug use.”
At the end of the panel discussion, the moderator opened the conversation to audience questions. There were some community members who had shown up in opposition, or at least with extreme doubt in their hearts. They expressed fears that opening a site in San Francisco would attract people who use drugs across the Bay Area, like a lighthouse, cutting through Karl the Fog.
Rivera disputed this idea, sharing that in the year or so they’ve been open, they have not found this to be the case. “Drug users use where they purchase,” Rivera responded, reminding the audience that oftentimes people have an urgency to use, both chemically and also for fear of legal retribution. In NYC, there has been no influx from other areas. He went on to describe how these sites had actually improved relations with local police forces: officers who once indiscriminately arrested people using drugs publicly were now coming to OnPoint NYC in droves to observe and, ultimately, it became evident, to learn.
The question remaining in some audience members’ minds was along the lines of, “What’s your proof that this will work here, in San Francisco, like it has in New York City?” Of course, we won’t actually have definitive proof that it will until we’re able to open a site and measure its impact. But Rivera shared his hope and optimism that San Francisco will be able to implement these life-changing services. “Just be San Francisco,” he said. There was a beat of silence in the room. “Be San Francisco,” he reasserted. “San Francisco always had the gall to step up and do things really radical, really righteous.”
Can we move forward, San Francisco?
Nonprofits across the city are ready to step up and implement these services with City and San Francisco Department of Public health support, something San Francisco AIDS Foundation CEO Dr. Tyler TerMeer emphasized during the panel discussion.
Rivera’s plea to San Franciscans, to remember who we are (or at least once were), reminds me of a segment of the environmental protection movement known as “rewilding.” This form of ecological preservation aims to restore an area’s natural–wild–state. San Francisco has led the nation in many radical movements towards justice–towards love–most notably the gay liberation movement. Perhaps it is time that San Franciscans “rewild” ourselves, restoring our natural, radical roots to effectively address crushing social inequities.
We live in an age in which there is an observable, systemic, systematic callousness towards people who use drugs who may not have housing. The way our society treats folks who use drugs is causing nothing but pain and suffering. Public drug use is at an all-time-high, fatal overdose death rates are through the roof, and incarceration as a response has not worked to solve the issue in any meaningful way. It is time we abandon “tough love” approaches and shift towards something warm. Something radical. Something wild, unimaginable, and powerful. Something loving. We can choose to meet people where they are at–with openness, without judgment, and with unconditional love. Or we can continue down the grim path we’ve been on for decades. We do have a choice.
Gay Man Robbed, Beaten Beyond Recognition in San Francisco
In an assault outside a popular San Francisco leather bar early Sunday morning, a gay man sustained severe internal and external injuries and suffered a heart attack.
As Barry Miles left the popular Folsom Street venue, Powerhouse, on the night of February 4, two men attacked him and stole his wallet.
On Instagram, he shared stunning photos showing his bloodied, bruised, battered, and swollen face, making it hard for him to be recognized.
“My face hit the sidewalk,” he wrote on Instagram. “[A]lso a front tooth was knocked out, and [I have] a small fracture in my neck.”
He added, “I’m pretty banged up.”
He also said that he also had a heart attack due to high cholesterol, for which he had to have two coronary stents placed.
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A well-being check was conducted on nearby Langton Street just minutes after midnight on Sunday, February 5, according to the San Francisco Police Department, the San Francisco Standardreports.
“The victim was unable to provide details regarding what led up to his injuries,” police officials told the outlet. “Officers responded to a business on the 1300 block of Folsom Street, where the male stated he had come from, and during their initial investigation, officers were unable to determine that a crime had occurred at that location.”
A leader in the San Francisco Bay Area’s LGBTQ+ community set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for Miles. Gary Virginia wrote in the fundraiser’s description that Miles is self-employed and asked for any size donation to help Miles recover.
Barry’s Recovery Fund after an assault & robbery, organized by Gary Virginia
At the hospital, he is receiving treatment for injuries that are not life-threatening but will require extensive medical care. Miles’ return to work has not been determined since he runs a housekeeping business. The fund states it will be used to pay Miles’ living expenses and to cover the cost of an expensive front tooth implant.
“Barry is a community leader, titleholder, volunteer, and fundraiser for many organizations that have benefited numerous charities near and far,” the fundraiser says. He is involved in the Krewe de Kinque Mardi Gras club and appeared in a charity Bare Chest Calendar, among other activities.
As of publication, the fundraiser earned more than its original $10,000 goal.
Happening This Month at SF’s GLBT Historical Society Museum
| Neon Comes Out: San Francisco’s Gay Bar Signs Illustrated Talk Thursday, June 9 6:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m. In-person program The Tenderloin Museum 398 Eddy Street, San Francisco $10 | $5 for members |
| Gay bars were often hidden, unmarked enclaves for only those in the know. Often veiled behind tinted glass, with narrow entrances to allow doormen to screen patrons, they needed to hide the goings-on within from the general public, and the police, as a matter of survival. In the late 1960s, bars started coming out of the dark, announcing themselves with neon signs. In this talk co-presented by the GLBT Historical Society, historian Jim Van Buskirk will be joined by Al Barna and Randall Ann Homan of San Francisco Neon Historic Sign Preservation to discuss vintage photographs of San Francisco bars. Most of the photos were taken by Henri Leleu and are in the GLBT Historical Society’s archives. They capture the dawn of San Francisco’s gay bars and clubs in the 1960s and 1970s. Come prepared to share your personal histories of these long-gone (as well as a few surviving) sites. GLBT Historical Society members are entitled to $5 off the general admission price, available when ordering tickets online. Tickets are available online here. |
| Queer History Conference 2022 Community Event Sunday, June 12 – Wednesday, June 15 In-person program Hosted by San Francisco State University 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco $30–$100 |
| The GLBT Historical Society is delighted to be cohosting a groundbreaking conference in June gathering researchers, educators, community organizers and history enthusiasts from across the United States and beyond to showcase new directions in the histories of same-sex sexuality, transgender identities and gender nonconformity. The conference will take place on the campus of San Francisco State University from June 12 to 15. The conference—the second national conference of the Committee on LGBT History of the American Historical Association—will survey the LGBTQ past across more than 500 years. The majority of panels will take place in person, though some will be remote and hosted on Zoom. Tickets are available online here. |
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| Quick updates from the GLBT Historical Society: |
 To celebrate the Pride season, the GLBT Historical Society has four free museum days scheduled for June! These free days are made possible by the generosity of the following sponsors: the Bob Ross Foundation, Castro LGBTQ Cultural District and Big Run Studios, Inc., as part of Doors Open California. Online tickets are not available; just come to the museum during normal business hours and you will be welcome.Wednesday, June 1Saturday, June 4Saturday, June 11Sunday, June 12 |
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| Flag in the Map LGBTQ people from around the world, including repressive societies, share anecdotes about what the rainbow flag means to them Out in the World A curated selection of 12 stories organized around six themes explore the experience of LGBTQ members of the vast Irish diaspora. |
| Queeriosities Our own “cabinet of curiosities” highlights a selection of unusual, rare objects from the Art and Artifacts Collection. Stories of Our MovementHistoric headlines, cover images, articles and ads from the LGBTQ newspaper the Bay Area Reporter in honor of its 50th anniversary. |
San Francisco’s mayor to boycott Pride parade over uniformed police ban
San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Monday that she would not march in the city’s annual Pride parade in June unless its organizers reverse a ban on uniformed police officers from marching.
The group that hosts the city’s march, San Francisco Pride, initially enacted restrictions on uniformed police officers in 2020, following the nationwide protests for racial justice sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Last year’s parade was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For this year’s event, Pride organizers reinstated the uniform ban citing safety concerns for marginalized groups within the LGBTQ community. Officers are encouraged to participate, but wearing department T-shirts instead of uniforms.
Breed, a Democrat, condemned the move.
“One of the central planks of the movement for better policing is a demand that the people who serve in uniform better represent the communities they are policing,” Breed said. “We can’t say, ‘We want more Black officers,’ or ‘We want more LGBTQ officers,’ and then treat those officers with disrespect when they actually step up and serve.”
Conflicts between U.S. law enforcement and the LGBTQ communityare nothing new. In fact, the country’s first LGBTQ Pride marches — held in June 1970 — were organized to commemorate the one-year anniversary of a police raid at New York City gay bar Stonewall Inn, or what became known as the 1969 Stonewall Uprising.
But in recent years, tensions between police and the queer community have grown in the wake of a global racial reckoning.
In 2017, Toronto Pride banned uniformed officers from participating in its annual march due to concerns of racial injustice raised by the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter. Vancouver’s Pride parade followed suit in 2020.
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And in addition to San Francisco Pride, organizers of Pride events in New York City and Denver also recently banned uniformed police officers from marching in their parades, citing concerns over racial injustice. New York City’s ban extends until at least 2025. Organizers in Denver have decided to invite individual LGBTQ officers to this year’s parade, but not the city’s entire department.
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On Monday, the San Francisco Police Officer’s Pride Alliance also denounced San Francisco Pride’s uniform ban, pleading with the group’s board of advisers to reverse its decision.
“The board decided to punish LGBTQ+ peace officers for the failings of others,” the group said in a statement. “This is its own form of prejudice and further erodes the tenuous relationship between peace officers and the communities we keep safe.”
“For LGBTQ+ officers, this brings us back to a time when we had to hide at work that we were LGBTQ+,” the group added. “Now they ask us to hide the fact of where we work.”
San Francisco Pride’s interim president, Suzanne Ford, and its board of directors said in a statement on Monday that while they have been working with the city’s law enforcement to come to an agreement on uniforms at the parade, they have “not come to a solution that is mutually beneficial.”
“SF Pride remains committed to practicing radical inclusion, practicing harm reduction in our space, and supporting those who are marginalized within our community,” the group said. “We acknowledge and appreciate the steps that have been taken to heal decades of distrust between law enforcement agencies and the LGBTQ+ communities.”
The group added, “We look forward to working with Pride organizations and law enforcement agencies from around the world in finding a solution that is satisfactory to all.”
San Francisco’s annual Pride parade will take place on Sunday, June 26.
SF Rainbow Railroad Film Screening & Concert Benefits LGBT+ Asylum Seekers
Rainbow Railroad is coming to San Francisco! We are co-presenting the San Francisco Bay Area premiere of “Being Bebe: The BeBe Zahara Benet Documentary” at the Roxie on March 31st, 2022, including an exclusive meet & greet with Bebe herself! We also have VIP tickets to an exclusive concert with Bebe on April 1st – AND you’re invited to BOTH!
Marshall Ngwa (a.k.a. renowned drag performer BeBe Zahara Benet) came to the United States from a homophobic Cameroon with dreams of a better life and became the first winner of the now-iconic reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2009.
With 15 years of intimate access to Marshall’s story, the film presents his unique love affair with a performance alongside his unstoppable sense of persistence and purpose, offering an unprecedented portrait of an artist who chooses to live a creative life against all odds.
| We invite you to join us for the premiere of the documentary co-presented by Executive Director Kimahli Powell, and the concert the following evening. As a key supporter of Rainbow Railroad, we are happy to provide you with a complimentary ticket to both the meet and greet with Bebe Zahara Benet as well as the screening of the documentary, and the concert the next day. Can only make one of these events? Don’t worry! Just let us know. |
| Thursday, March 31st Meet and Greet with Bebe Limited Quantity 5:30pm – 6:45pm 518 Valencia Street Gallery “Being Bebe: The Bebe Zahara Benet Documentary” Q&A with the Director and Bebe 7:00pm – 9:00pm OR 9:30pm – 11:00pm (No Q&A) The Roxie, 3117 16th St Friday, April 1st Bebe Zahara Benet: Live in Concert 7:00pm OASIS 298 11th Street |
To secure your tickets, please respond to this email and we will follow up with more information. Please let us know which events you’d like to attend (note: there are two documentary screenings times) as well as how many tickets you’ll need (max of 2), and we’d be delighted to RSVP to them on your behalf! |
Over $400,000 Awarded to Grassroots LGBTQ Nonprofits in SF Bay Area
Horizons Foundation, the world’s first LGBTQ community foundation, today announced 31 grantee partners receiving a total of $402,000 through its flagship Community Issues Funding Program, which provides funding to grassroots LGBTQ organizations in the SF Bay Area.
“Grassroots LGBTQ nonprofits continue to develop innovative ways to serve the community, especially groups that are traditionally underfunded and underserved,” said Francisco O. Buchting, Horizons’ Vice President of Grants, Programs, and Communications.
These 31 grants will support organizations working across broad funding areas: advocacy and civil rights, arts and culture, community building and leadership, and health and human services. These grantee partners will focus on a variety of projects, such as:
- Funding gender-affirming surgery for transmen of color. Dem Bois Inc. is aiding female-to-male, transmasculine people of color in obtaining gender-affirming surgery, which is often prohibitively expensive yet critical to their ability to live fulfilled, authentic lives.
- Providing housing to LGBTQ asylum seekers. In response to the ongoing need to support LGBTQ people seeking refuge from persecution abroad, Rainbow Beginnings is housing LGBTQ asylum seekers and providing them with legal resources, employment mentoring, mental health counseling, and medical services.
- Developing theatre rooted in the Latino/a/x queer experience. In the South Bay, Colectivo Acción Latina de Ambiente is producing Spanish-language plays through its Teatro Alebrijes.
- Empowering LGBTQ youth. Health Initiatives for Youth is providing support, community, and leadership development opportunities to LGBTQ youth, many of whom are underserved youth of color, at middle and high schools in West Oakland.
- Reducing isolation among LGBTQ seniors in the North Bay. Sebastopol Area Senior Center is supporting older LGBTQ adults in West Sonoma County by hosting in-person and online dances, discussions, and educational workshops.
These grants represent the first in Horizons’ updated grantmaking strategy, which prioritizes continued investment in grassroots LGBTQ organizations serving the transgender community, LGBTQ people of color, and bisexuals. The strategy also prioritizes specific segments of the LGBTQ community, namely youth, elders, and refugees and asylees. At the same time, Horizons maintains its longstanding “Open Door” policy that provides support across the diverse ecosystem of grassroots LGBTQ nonprofits and programs, including those that fall outside the stated priorities.
Guided by principles of trust-based philanthropy, the grantmaking process continues to include Horizons’ hallmark community review panel, and grants awarded are primarily for unrestricted operating support. Grants are funded in large part by Horizons’ LGBTQ Community Endowment Fund, a permanent source of resources for the community.
About Horizons Foundation
Horizons Foundation (www.horizonsfoundation.org) envisions a world where all LGBTQ people live freely and fully. The world’s first community foundation of, by, and for LGBTQ people, Horizons invests in LGBTQ organizations, strengthens a culture of LGBTQ giving, and builds a permanent endowment to secure our community’s future for generations to come. Learn more at horizonsfoundation.org.
A Rosetta Stone of My San Francisco Life
Back in May, we ran a story about a digitized collection we made available this spring: the Daniel A. Smith and Queer Blue Light Videotape Collection. This remarkable collection consists of nearly 100 half-inch videotapes recorded by the Queer Blue Light (QBL) Collective, a grassroots guerilla project that documented the politics and culture of the local LGBTQ community in the 1970s. The footage was all shot on a Sony Portapak, one of the first self-contained videotape recorders from the late 1960s.
While the majority of the tapes document the activities of the QBL Collective, they also include footage by QBL members of friends relaxing together and living everyday life. In her article in May, our project archivist Megan Needels was especially taken with a tape that depicted an informal dinner party that recorded what she described as “pure queer joy.” We’re delighted to bring you a follow up to this story: an interview with John Carr. Carr held the party at his apartment on Castro and Market Streets on February 29, 1980—it was a “Leap Day” party. Thirty-five years later, while attending the Frameline Festival, Carr recognized himself in footage licensed from the society by documentary filmmaker Stu Maddox for his 2015 documentary Reel in the Closet. Carr connected with Maddox and went on to donate three of his own Portapak videotapes to the GLBT Historical Society as the John Carr Videotapes.
How did you find out that the QBL tapes existed and that some of your own Portapak tapes might be readable?
JC: I knew the tapes existed because Dan Smith was a friend. His partner in QBL was Earl Galvin, who was my boyfriend at the time. Somehow, some of the tapes he made of parties at my flat ended up in the QBL collection. He had given three others to me. I did not know that the GLBT Historical Society now had the QBL tapes until I saw myself in Reel in the Closet in 2015. Stu Maddux told me about John Raines, a digital media whiz, who then digitized the other three tapes I had. Seeing those tapes again opened up a huge lost world, because it was 35 years since the tapes had been made and there was no equipment to play them on anymore. It was like finding the Rosetta Stone in terms of my life at that time. 1980 was a year before AIDS started. I lost count of how many friends I lost to AIDS, and several of the people in the tapes had died, but some that were possibly still alive, so I searched for them, found some on Facebook and brought them back into my life.
What do you remember about this 1980 Leap Day Party?
JC: That party really showcased my friends, I think. Most of them were single and cruising others at the party, even sort of flirting with the camera. Haha! And the novelty of home video—people being on camera like that—was brand new at that time. [The Sony Portapak] was a cumbersome piece of equipment. The battery only lasted 20 minutes and the tape 30 minutes, so you knew you had to change either the tape or battery or both if you had a long program that you wanted to record! (Laughs). We were just having fun, Earl brought it over for the parties, and we got high and had a good time. I had just escaped from a toxic relationship and took that apartment, so I was a single person again, and February 29 was a Leap Day so it was a good time to have a first party, and I was finally ready to have some people over.
What feelings do you experience, seeing yourself in the footage?
JC: Seeing the people in the tapes alive again reminded me that you forget a lot in 35+ years. It reminded me of the wonderful times we had, which I held in a kind of generic way in my head but this was a specific moment, and it was delightful to see. Going through HIV a lot of people went home, and you may not have known where they went, they just disappeared. They may have died.
San Francisco was such a focal point, a meeting place, back in those days, I arrived here in 1975. It was quite a magic time to be here and everyone was coming from somewhere else, but all of them had a coming-out story. That’s what I remember most about that time: we were dealing with a very diverse group of people who had some very similar things in common, they were running from or running to something. And boy, when they got here it all just exploded in so many ways, the exploring of their intellectual, their sexual and personal lives just happened. It was so repressed up to that point.
One thing that comes up for me strongly is, “Wow, there are people who are interested in this!” Now, as people make ephemeral recordings of their daily lives, they tend to think that future generations aren’t going to be interested in this, so it surprised me that there are people who are interested. And so, I say, please folks: If you have any of this stuff and you’re getting up there in years or whatever, consider donating it to the GLBT Historical Society, don’t toss it out. Give them a chance because you won’t know what’s important to future generations. Your life is important whether you’re here or gone, so let other people see into your life.
John Carr grew up in Colorado and has lived in San Francisco for the past 47 years, where he had a landscaping company until his retirement in 2004. Michael Lownie, his life partner of 19 years, is a fine artist.