The GLBT History Museum
Cruising the Tenderloin in the 1960s: A Talk by Felicia Elizondo
Thursday, August 4
7:00–9:00 pm
Admission: $5.00; free for members
Felicia Elizondo, a self-described “Mexican spitfire, screaming queen, pioneer, legend, icon, diva, 29-year survivor of AIDS and Vietnam veteran” was one of the transgender participants in the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. In 2015 she was named Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade. In this special multimedia presentation, she explores San Francisco’s Tenderloin District in the 1960s to explain how the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot was a defining moment in the struggle by a diverse gay and trans community to claim public lives and become who they were meant to be, paving the way for future generations.
The GLBT History Museum
Compton’s 50th Anniversary Art Launch & Artist Talk
Tuesday, August 16
7:00–9:00 pm
Admission: $5.00; free for members
The event will be a launch party and artist conversation for Compton’s 50th anniversary works by ceramic artist Nicki Green and interdisciplinary artist Chris Vargas, commissioned by the GLBT Historical Society. Green is producing a limited-edition signature coffee mug referencing both Compton’s Cafeteria and the riot itself, while Vargas is hand-screening a numbered set of commemorative t-shirts from his own design. In conversation, the artists will discuss their creative processes and the relationship between trans history and art. Both works will be available for a limited time exclusively at the GLBT History Museum and the Tenderloin Museum.
Green is a trans-disciplinary artist whose work focuses on craft processes that document history and create legacy for marginalized communities. She has exhibited her work nationally, notably at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Vargas is an artist whose work deploys humor and performance in conjunction with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical and institutional memory and popular culture. Vargas also serves as executive director of MOTHA: The Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art.
Roxie Theater
Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria
Thursday, August 18
7:00–9:00 pm
Tickets: $12
Cosponsored by the Tenderloin Museum and the GLBT History Museum, the event will feature a special 10th-anniversary showing of the Emmy Award-winning 2006 documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, followed by a Q&A with directors Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman. The film uncovered and popularized the then-forgotten 1966 riot at Compton’s.
Susan Stryker is associate professor of gender and women’s studies and former director of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona. A leader in the field of transgender studies, she is the author of many articles and several books on transgender and queer topics, most recently Transgender History (Seal Press 2008). She won a Lambda Literary Award for the anthology The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge 2006).
Victor Silverman is an award-winning filmmaker, historian and author. His current film, Getting High, is a provocative, feature-length documentary about his family’s collision with drugs and alcohol set against a backdrop of American society’s bitter conflicts around the “war on drugs.” Silverman’s latest book, coauthored with poet Laurie Glover, is California: On the Road Histories (Interlink, 2012).
The GLBT History Museum
Sex Work in the Tenderloin Then and Now
Thursday, September 1
7:00–9:00 pm
Admission: $5.00; free for members
This panel discussion will explore how trans lives and sex work have changed in the last half-century in one of San Francisco’s most dynamic neighborhoods. Speakers include Tamara Ching, a Compton’s veteran and longtime advocate for trans and sex worker rights, and several advocates with St. James Infirmary, which since 1999 has provided free, confidential, nonjudgmental medical and social services for current and former sex workers of all genders.
The Tenderloin Museum
Vanguard Revisited with Rev. Megan Rohrer
Thursday, September 8
6:30 – 8:30 pm
Admission: Free and open to the public
In 2011, Megan Rohrer and historian Joey Plaster created a remarkable work of public history: Vanguard Revisited, which introduced the history of the 1960s radical queer-youth organization Vanguard to contemporary queer homeless youth, who created their own art and poetry zine in conversation with essays and themes from the original Vanguard newsletter. The new zine also featured archival materials, a historical narrative and writings from urban ministers and youth organizers.
For the 50th Anniversary Compton’s Commemoration, a second issue of the Vanguard Revisited zine will be released with new materials by the original authors and editors. For the Tenderloin Museum program, Rohrer will describe the initial process leading up to Vanguard Revisited and will discuss its legacy. Rohrer is the pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in San Francisco and is a nationally recognized leader on issues of homelessness, gender, sexuality and faith.
Event Locations
The GLBT History Museum:
4127 18th St. in the Castro District
The Tenderloin Museum:
398 Eddy St. in the Tenderloin District
The Roxie Theater:
3117 16th St. in the Mission District
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