San Francisco

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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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Exhibition Highlights Radical History of Black Lesbian Scholar Angela Davis

Angela Davis (center, no glasses) enters Royce Hall at UCLA for her first philosophy lecture in October 1969. Kendra Alexander (right, with glasses) A new exhibition at the GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, drawing on rare posters and ephemera from a private collection will highlight the journey of black lesbian activist Angela Davis: from radical scholar, to political prisoner, to revolutionary icon, to public intellectual. Curated by collector Lisbet Tellefsen and historian Amy Sueyoshi, “Angela Davis: OUTspoken” considers some of the roles Davis has played in the American political imaginary and explores the complexity and impact of her […]

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Exhibition Features New Work Inspired by Groundbreaking Queer Journal OUT/LOOK

Front cover of OUT/LOOK, No. 1 (Spring 1988). Courtesy of GLBT Historical Society. Front cover of OUT/LOOK, no. 11 (Winter 1991). Courtesy of GLBT Historical Society. A new multimedia exhibition at the GLBT History Museum explores the story of OUT/LOOK, a groundbreaking national queer quarterly published in San Francisco from 1988 to 1992. Embracing gender and racial diversity and bridging academic and community perspectives, the magazine developed an avid readership. The show and its associated programs, publication and website are designed to spark intergenerational conversations about the legacy of OUT/LOOK and its era. Curated by E.G. Crichton, “OUT/LOOK and the Birth of the Queer” features new […]

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Preserving LGBT History Means Saving These Spaces

The Lexington Club: Nate Allbee stood in a room surrounded by crying women and he realized that something was terribly wrong. They were dykes and lesbians and queer women of all races, ages, and backgrounds, who had gathered to mourn the passing of the Lexington Club. A bar that had — for almost 20 years — been the beating heart of San Francisco’s lesbian community. A place where generations of queer women met, organized, and shared in the communion of the dance floor. It had been their home, their church. Now it was closing its doors for good. So they […]

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