50th Annual Creating Change, LGBT+ Political, Leadership Conference Happens in SF Feb 17 – 21
San Francisco
Happening This Month at SF’s GLBT Historical Society Museum
Neon Comes Out: San Francisco’s Gay Bar SignsIllustrated Talk Thursday, June 96:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m.In-person programThe Tenderloin Museum398 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
LGBTQ+ Freedom Day Fest Is Postponed to 2022
Late summer and early fall are street-fair season in San Francisco, and SF Pride has been working on our inaugural LGBTQ Freedom Day Feston Valencia Street, to debut on Sunday, Oct. 10. It is to be an all-new, free event specifically for locals, part of our reimagining what Pride can be for our communities. And it is going to be in the Mission, a neighborhood with a rich LGBTQ+ history, particularly for lesbians and queer women. But as we work on our plans for this event, we’ve determined that to produce a street fair with the safety and health of our communities […]
HIV long-term survivors call for additional mental health care in San Francisco
Survivor’s guilt and trauma from surviving the early days of the AIDS epidemic are oftentimes cited as the reasons why HIV long-term survivors experience depression and other mental health symptoms. Now, the experience of living through a second devastating pandemic–COVID-19–is compounding the anxiety, sense of loss, and social isolation faced by some long-term survivors. “COVID-19 has really brought up a lot of memories of friends dying from AIDS,” said Vince Crisostomo, a long-term survivor and director of aging services at San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “The images of hospitals being overrun–they’re similar to the images we saw in the early years of […]
SF Mayor Unveils Long-Lost 1978 Rainbow Flag & Calls for New Museum
This photograph shows the priceless queer artifact that the GLBT Historical Society acquired in April: a segment of one of the two original rainbow flags first hoisted in San Francisco on June 25, 1978, for Gay Freedom Day. The flag was created by Gilbert Baker and hand-stitched and dyed with the help of volunteers and friends, including Lynn Segerblom (Faerie Argyle Rainbow), James McNamara, Glenne McElhinney, Joe Duran, Paul Langlotz and others. The society formally unveiled the flag to the public at a press event in San Francisco on June 4. Mayor London Breed; District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman; State Senator Scott Weiner; […]