San Francisco

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SF GAY MEN’S CHORUS American Sign Language to Keep Holiday Spirit Alive

The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus has gone virtual this holiday season and has added an inclusive twist to the Christmas classic “Silent Night.” During its annual holiday concert, which will be held on Christmas Eve, the 300-member chorus will perform “Silent Night” while using American Sign Language, so the deaf and hearing-impaired community can enjoy the performance. The chorus released a preview video of what’s to come during its 30th annual holiday celebration.https://www.youtube.com/embed/ycYIksZ5_nU The chorus’ annual holiday concert began in 1990 in an effort to bring cheer to those who had been impacted by the AIDS epidemic. As for the “Silent […]

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SF Drag Legend Bambi Lake Dies

Legendary transgender perfomrer and singer Bambi Lake tragically passed away after being diagnosed with cancer, the Bay Area Reporter reports. Lake was 70. Lake was a beloved performer in the Bay Area, and a mainstay in San Francisco’s queer underground scene. She was a sex worker, a porn actor, a cabaret artist, a songwriter, and a member of the legendary San Francisco theater group The Cockettes. Lake’s friend, Birdie Bob Watt, called Lake a trailblazer. “She’s been inspirational to a lot of people as far as her ability to navigate her own path,” Watt said. “…In telling her story she gave a […]

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San Francisco Drag Queens Delivering ‘Meals On Heels Amid COVID-19

Drag queens don their colorful wigs, elaborate makeup and knee-high stiletto boots, but instead of stepping on a stage, they’re putting on a face covering, grabbing a takeout bag and bringing their musical numbers to fans’ doorsteps in San Francisco. The Oasis nightclub is turning the boring dinner blues into “Meals on Heels,” dispatching drag queens like Amoura Teese and Kochina Rude to bring food, cocktails and socially distant lip-synching performances to people during the coronavirus pandemic. On a recent evening, Rude delivered dinner to Kelsie Costa and her family in the city’s Marina District and then lip-synched the drag […]

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Legendary San Francisco Trans Nightclub to Close

A legendary trans bar and nightclub in San Francisco will be closing up shop at the end of the month. Divas bar and nightclub in the city’s Polk Gulch neighborhood will be throwing a final goodbye party on March 30 before closing for good. Divas has billed itself as ‘the largest bar and nightclub in the United States devoted to the TS/TV community,’ and is one of the few trans-focused nightclubs in the US. The three-story venue has been a cornerstone for many in San Francisco’s trans community since 1998. Divas’ previous incarnation was as The Motherlode, which had been situated […]

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November Events at SF’s GLBT History Museum

Film, Performance & Discussion The Indian Is Still Alive: Two-Spirit History Thursday, November 1               7:00-9:00 PM  The GLBT History Museum  4127 18th St., San Francisco $5.00  |  Free for members       An evening of music and history with the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits  (BAAITS) drum group, including a screening of the documentary short The Indian is Still Alive and the Indian Knows the Songs directed by BAAITS drum member Susana Caceres, followed by songs by the BAAITS drum group and an audience discussion. The evening brings together arts, music, dance, culture and traditions to […]

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Reflecting on the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot: Why Transgender History Matters Today

Three years prior to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, San Francisco experienced one of the earliest known acts of queer resistance against police oppression. The riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, as the 1972 program for Pride in San Francisco noted, took place “in the streets of the Tenderloin, at Turk and Taylor on a hot August night in 1966.” With no news coverage at the time, the exact date is lost to history. Gaining significant attention after Susan Stryker’s documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (2005)was released, the story has been making its way into the mainstream LGBTQ narrative. […]

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Documenting a Queer Johnny Appleseed

Hank Wilson was a sort of Johnny Appleseed of queer San Francisco. Everywhere he went, new organizations sprouted. Many of these organizations form the institutional backbone of today’s LGBTQ community in the city and beyond. Hank was an extremely modest man who avoided the spotlight, so his story is largely unknown. That’s why I’m working with cinematographer Leo Herrera and the GLBT Historical Society to make a documentary about him, “Thanks to Hank.” Fortunately, the Historical Society’s archives hold not only Hank’s personal papers, but also organizational records, photos, ephemera, and audio and video recordings reflecting his work and the […]

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Archives & Museum: Two Places, One Mission ay San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society

Traditionally, archives collect personal papers and organizational records for use by researchers, while museums collect art and artifacts for preservation and display in exhibitions aimed at the general public. At the GLBT Historical Society, we’ve queered those boundaries ever since our founding more than three decades ago. Faced with a dominant culture that had long ignored the LGBTQ past or actively worked to erase it, the organizers of the Historical Society did not have the luxury of placing this document in an archives and that artifact in a museum. No mainstream institutions of either kind were interested in queer history. […]

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Fighting Back: Queers & the Class Divide at SFs GLBT HIstorical Society

The latest in the GLBT Historical Society’s monthly “Fighting Back” series exploring contemporary queer issues in a historical context, “Queers and the Class Divide” will offer a conversation about intersections between LGBTQ politics and growing class divisions locally and nationally. A panel of historians, veteran organizers and younger activists will discuss the history of economic inequality in the Bay Area and United States, the impact of wealth and poverty on LGBTQ community and politics, and how this history can help inform today’s resistance movements. Wed, April 25, 2018 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT LOCATION The GLBT History Museum 4127 […]

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Discriminating Sex: Making the American “Oriental at SFs GLBT Historical Museum

Thursday, April 12            7:00-9:00 PM  The GLBT History Museum  4127 18th St., San Francisco   $5.00 | Buy Tickets | Free for Members        Historian Amy Sueyoshi will discuss her new book, Discriminating Sex: White Leisure and the Making of the American “Oriental” (University of Illinois Press, 2018). While San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century perturbed religious conservatives who saw it as a “moral cesspool,” it also developed a reputation as a city that tolerated a wide range of gender and sexual expression and that cultivated easy race relations. Yet all was not love […]

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