Yep, that’s right, the Tenderloin Museum! And things are starting off with a bang this Thursday!
The Tenderloin Museum kicks off its evening programming on Opening Night, July 16th at 6:30pm with transgender activists Tamara Ching, Veronika Fimbres, and filmmakers Susan Stryker & Victor Silverman. Moderated by Randy Shaw, the panel takes us back to the days of the Tenderloin’s 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot when transgender women and queers were harassed by police and businesses alike.
In those days, the Tenderloin was the geographic center of the city’s emerging gay and lesbian civil rights movement. It was in the Tenderloin where the movement’s more confrontational spirit was demonstrated, and brought success. Stryker, Ching and Fimbres will describe the decades of struggle following the Compton’s riot, as that legendary act of resistance—three years before Stonewall–was only the beginning.
Check it all out here.
And that’s not all! Stop by the following week for the first showing in 50 years of Drugs in the Tenderloin!
A stark and often harrowing look into the life of the street denizens of the notorious San Francisco district which was a haven for junkies, prostitutes, and pushers during the Sixties… it takes a real gutter-level look at its subject, the grainy night photography capturing beehive-haired hookers and turtle-necked dope dealers plying their trade against a smoky backdrop of seedy neon, while meth users pontificate about their high, and a youth worker takes a couple of shocked city officials on a walking tour of the area, pointing out such lurid landmarks as Market Street, known in the area as the “Meat Rack” thanks to the male hustlers who ply their trade there.”Join us for some incredible footage of the Tenderloin’s past.
I’m a fan.