TLM hosts a block party in Myrtle Alley–the outdoor space adjacent to The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot’s new venue at 835 Larkin–to gather our community, give friends & neighbors a chance to learn about play’s upcoming production, and request free/sliding community tickets, DJs, live music, and drag performances.
May 11, 2024 | 1-4pm
Myrtle Alley at Larkin St.
Perhaps you’ve heard that a new production of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play is in the works? Not only is the Tenderloin Museum bringing this immersive theater piece back to life, and we’ve been working to create a permanent home for the play in a long vacant commercial to create a dedicated venue and truly immersive environment for this powerful story. The space is located in the neighborhood where the eponymous riot went down, on a block of Larkin St. that’s having a resurgence of queer community and queer-owned business like Rosebud Gallery, Moth Belly Gallery, Dark Entries Records, and the Bob Mizer Foundation/The Magazine.
The Compton’s creative team has nearly completed the transformation of 835 Larkin St. into the Compton’s Cafeteria, and we’re ready to give people a sneak peek! Powered by a TLCBD Mini-Grant through the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Tenderloin Museum hosts an Open House & Block Party on the afternoon of May 11th, featuring live music and DJs, drag performances, info and artwork from our neighbors, as well as an opportunity to request free/sliding scale community tickets for when the play officially opens this fall.
ft. drag performances by Donna Personna, Shane Zalidvar, Collette LeGrande, Coco Buttah, & Mary Vice + live music by Kippy Marks, Myles Cooper, & Steve Fabus
Free! All welcome!
TLM hosts the book release for a new biography about Marilyn Chambers, whose X-rated breakthrough Behind the Green Door was made in the TL and completely reconfigured the pornography industry as well as public sentiment for smut. In Pure, Jared Stearns chronicles the pioneering entertainer’s untold life story. This program features the author in-person and in-conversation with Chambers’ daughter, McKenna Taylor.
Thursday May 9, 2024 | Doors/Pre-Show at 6:30pm | Program 7-8:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Marilyn Chambers is a legend here in the Tenderloin. Her breakthrough to fame–the starring role in the groundbreaking X-rated film Behind the Green Door–was filmed in part and premiered at the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater. That flick’s followup, Resurrection of Eve, featured an orgy scene shot next door at the historic Great American Music Hall (itself a boundary pushing site during its time as burlesque pioneer Sally Rand’s Music Box). Chambers’ name practically lived on the marquee of the Mitchell Brothers’ infamous TL establishment (and others across the country) during the 1970s era of “porno-chic.” In 1985, she was booked by an SF vice-squad for committing a lewd act in a public place and soliciting prostitution, part of Mayor Feinstein’s anti-porn crusades.
With Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers (Headpress, 2024), Jared Stearns has assembled the important and long-overdue account of Chambers’ life story, depicting a complex and hard working entertainer who navigated a new type of celebrity all while striving to find her true self. She was the embodiment of the free-spirited Seventies, the world’s most famous X-rated star, and an unappreciated talent whose work in adult films hindered her dreams of becoming a serious actress. Nevertheless, Marilyn was the first woman known primarily for her work in adult films to cross over to mainstream entertainment. She sustained a versatile three-decade career in entertainment, including roles in dramatic plays, a Broadway musical revue, her own television show, and the lead role in David Cronenberg’s film Rabid. But her success in adult films also proved to be her undoing. Marred by a violent relationship with her abusive husband-manager, Chuck Traynor, she developed the persona of a twenty-four-hour-a-day sex star. In the process, she lost her sense of self and spent much of her life searching for her true identity. With recollections from family and friends, many of whom have never spoken publicly, along with Marilyn’s own words, and never-before-published photos, Jared Stearns vividly captures the revolutionary career of one of the twentieth century’s most misunderstood icons.
Free, Suggested Donation ($10), or with a signed copy ($25) | Register via Eventbrite
In celebration of the recent publication of Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s new book, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco, Tenderloin Museum hosts the author for a double-header book talk with Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, fellow activist-artists and scholars of human sexuality, who will discuss their latest latest, Assuming the Ecosexual Position:The Earth as Lover. Program moderated by Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield
Saturday April 27, 2024 | 3-5pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA94102
A celebration of the erotic performance cultures that have shaped San Francisco, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco (UC Press, 2024) explores a milieu that is indelibly intertwined with the Tenderloin’s history: the city's bohemian past and its essential role in the development of American adult entertainment by highlighting the contributions of women of color, queer women, and trans women who were instrumental in the city's labor history, as well as its LGBT and sex workers' rights movements. Otálvaro-Hormillosa utilizes visual and performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic research (including participant observation as both performer and spectator), and interviews with legendary burlesquers and strippers to share a remarkable history and to frame an intersection of art, activism, performance, and human sexuality. Otálvaro-Hormillosa explores how, in the 1960s, topless entertainment became legal in San Francisco for the first time in the US, even while cross-dressing continued to be criminalized, and how, in the 1990s, stripper-artist activists led the first successful class action lawsuits and efforts to unionize! She writes, says Annie Sprinkle, “courageously and eloquently from her perspective as a performance artist and scholar inspired by the tradition of sex-positive feminists since the 1960s who have resisted patriarchy by reclaiming and celebrating their sexuality.”
On Saturday April 27th, Otálvaro-Hormillosa will present her work and new book at a TLM public program in conjunction with her friends and fellow artist-activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, who also work in the space where scholarship, sexuality, activism, and the arts intersect and have in fact helped shape the field and discipline of human sexuality studies. In 2008, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens married the Earth, which set them on the path to explore the realms of ecosexuality as they became lovers with the Earth and made their mutual pleasure an embodied expression of passion for the environment. Ever since, they have been not just pushing but obliterating the boundaries circumscribing biology and ecology, creating ecosexual art in their performance of an environmentalism that is feminist, queer, sensual, sexual, posthuman, materialist, exuberant, and steeped in humor. Their latest publication, Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover ((U. of Minnesota Press, 2021), describes how the two came together as lovers and collaborators, how they took a stand against homophobia and xenophobia, and how this union led to the miraculous conception of the Love Art Laboratory.
Join us for these complementary book talks in a program moderated by professor at Rhodes College, media-maker, and Sprinkle/Stephens collaborator Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield. This program is one of many happenings for “I Love Tenderloin Week,” a celebration of the neighborhood and its people, businesses, and culture by a coalition of local individuals and organizations.
Free or Suggested Donation ($10) | Register via Eventbrite
Pianist James Washington performs a set of jazz standards and improvisations for a special Concert at the Cadillac, presented in collaboration with the Tenderloin Museum as a Sounds of the Tenderloin live music program.
Friday April 26, 2024 | 1:00 - 2:00pm
At the Cadillac Hotel | 380 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Sounds of the Tenderloin & the Concerts at the Cadillac series come together again to produce a performance by James Washington, a talented pianist influenced by classical music and jazz who wields a quiet virtuosity with both standards and improvisations. A lifelong musician, Washington started working at a young age as a ballet accompanist in New Jersey, Boston, New York, and eventually San Francisco. All the while, he was adjacent to the world of jazz, which increasingly informed his musical practice. He developed a playing style with a rich harmonic vocabulary and complex structure that is clear and soulful. His phrasings and touch are limber, as if learned from a dancer. Over the years, Washington has been heard by thousands in San Francisco in clubs, cafes, churches, and hospitals both as a solo performer and in combos. A longtime Tenderloin resident, Washington will share a set of solo music on the grand piano in the heart of the neighborhood–the lobby of the historic Cadillac Hotel on Friday, April 26th in concert with this year’s “I Love Tenderloin Week.”
Free! All welcome! No registration required!
Trans Temporal Resistances is the closing public program for Transition Times: Re-Membering Anticarceral Resistance in the Tenderloin, an archival exhibit contextualizing the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria. Program curators Emji Saint Spero and Leila Weefur invite writers and artists to engage with trans archives and architectures through performance.
Thursday April 25, 2024 | 7-8:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
This performance series, in collaboration with the TurkxTaylor Initiative, mirrors an open assemblage model. Emji Saint Spero and Leila Weefur invite writers and artists to deconstruct trans archives and architectures through textual and movement-based approaches. Situated within a district in which desire has historically been boundaried and confined, these performances engage Queer Time as an embodied strategy of resistance.
The first event invites three local writers, Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta, Mason J, and Rowan Powell, to take space at the Tenderloin Museum.
Click here to read bios of this program’s writers and co-curators; for more information on the exhibit Transition Times: Re-Membering Anticarceral Resistance in the Tenderloin, click here.
All Welcome! | Free! | Register via Eventbrite
The SF Urban Film Festival returns to TLM for a program called “Trans World-Building” that asks, “how do gender-expansive people shape the worlds they occupy, even as they are restricted within them?” Screening & panel discussion, curated by Kaiya Gordon & LB Byrd.
Thursday April 18, 2024 | 6-8pm (Doors 5:30pm)
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Ten years after the “Transgender Tipping Point,” it’s clear that the only thing that has “tipped” forward is the proliferation of laws and discourses which aim to limit trans life-building. Predominant conservative arguments from writers published in mainstream outlets who identify as “gender critical” (neé “TERF”) abound, “transvestigations” of celebrities and athletes multiply online, and more and more legislation targeting trans people seems to be introduced each day. In the mainstream imagination, trans adults are groomers, pedophiles, and deviants who should be limited in how and when they take up public space; and trans youth are confused, damaged, and should be restricted from making decisions about how to be and build a new world.
Within this trans-antagonistic atmosphere, this program asks: how do gender-expansive people shape the spaces they occupy, even as they are restricted within them?
Featured films include: The Neighbour (Turkey, 2021, 20 min, Directed by Cedoy) | KILL YOUR LANDLORD (USA, 2023, 10 min, Directed by Jill Hill) | A Bird Called Memory (Brazil/UK, 2023, 15 min, Directed by Leonardo Martinelli) | Passing: Profiling the Lives of Young Transmen of Color (USA, 2015, 22 min, Directed by J. Mitchel Reed & Lucah Rosenberg-Lee). Click through to learn more about each work!
Panelists include: Jill Hill, Writer/Editor/Director/Producer, Kill Your Landlord | Lalu Ozban, Producer, The Neighbour | Wriply Bennet, Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project Visual Communications Specialist | Kazani Finao, Founder of – Shine Wit Purpose & Student at CCSF major in Critical Pacific Islands & Oceania Studies | & moderator Kaiya Gordon, Trans Studies Doctoral Student, Department of Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Free or Sliding Scale Admission | Register via the SFUFF website
Tenderloin Museum has teamed up with our neighbors to offer an evening-length experience of our block at its best! The “Leavenworth Passport” starts at TLM for a historical mini-tour of the 300 block of Leavenworth St., stops at Azalina’s for a tasting menu of Mamak Malaysian cuisine, and lands at the Black Cat for an evening of live jazz by the Joel Wenhardt Quintet Feat. Vocalist Georgia Heers!
Wednesday April 10, 2024 | 5pm & 6:30pm start times
Meet at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
The “Leavenworth Passport” is a collaboration between the Tenderloin Museum, Azalina’s, and the Black Cat to offer a hyper-local experience of the Tenderloin and our shared block of Leavenworth St. between Eddy & Ellis. Join us for an evening of arts, history, and innovative cuisine.
Each “Leavenworth Passport” will begin at the Tenderloin Museum, where staff will do something we’ve never done before–share the history of the Tenderloin through a tightly focused walking tour of our immediate block! Topics will include the history of residential hotels like the Cadillac, Verona, and Aarti; the block’s extensive neon signage; the storied Newman’s Boxing Gym; the Eichler-designed Mosser Towers; The Tenderloin National Forest and the epic, Luggage Store organized Tauba Auerbach mural; and more!
The tour will take attendees up the block to Azalina’s, where they will enjoy a tasting menu of Malaysian Cuisine. Winner of the Eater Chef of the Year award and a James Beard semi-finalist, Azalina’s Eusope takes diners on a trip through the night markets and home kitchens of her native Malaysia, with a focus on the cuisine of the Mamak ethnic group. Eusope has been cheffing in the TL and around SF–locals may remember her pop-ups at the Heart of the City Farmer’s Market–for the better part of a decade, and her new restaurant manifests these specific, complex Mamak flavors with virtuosity, innovation, and mastery of traditions that for her stretch back five generations.
The Leavenworth Passport concludes at the Black Cat Supper Club, where guests will enjoy a set of live jazz music and a drink to conclude the night on the block. Since 2016, the Black Cat has consistently programmed some of the most exciting jazz in the city in a setting that harkens back to the Tenderloin in its heyday as the city’s entertainment district. The talent on Wednesday April 10th is the Joel Wenhardt Quintet Feat. Vocalist Georgia Heers!
A TLCBD Mini-Grant via SF’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development will support SF residents in need of financial assistance to enjoy the Leavenworth Passport! Fill out this Google form to request a completely free passport experience! Requests open 2 weeks in advance at 12 noon & are also available in-person at TLM.
General Admission tickets are available for purchase via Azalina’s Resy!
$10 tickets to TLM tour of the 300 Leavenworth only | Register via Eventbrite
Survey the design and activist history of United Nations Plaza, the high-concept public space at the foot of the TL, with presentations by Dr. Linda Day (emeritus professor of city planning), LisaRuth Elliott (co-director, Shaping San Francisco) and Emily Smith Beitiks (Interim Director, SFSU’s Longmore Institute).
Thursday March 7, 2024 | 5:30 - 7:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Dedicated in 1975 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, United Nations Plaza was designed as a gateway to the city’s grand Beaux-Arts Civic Center, a Modernist-inspired promenade connecting Market Street to City Hall. Its design stirred controversy since before it was ever built, and its actual use often conflicted with its lofty vision; however, nearly 50 years into its existence, UN Plaza has accumulated a rich but complicated history. For being dedicated to an institutionalized global purview, this prominent public space has hosted remarkable home-grown, grassroots activism that has shaped life in San Francisco (and beyond!) in both revolutionary and everyday ways. Join us for a public program that surveys some of these significant moments in the history of UN Plaza, along with its design, pre-plaza history, and more!
UN Plaza literally and figuratively represents how a well-intentioned built environment can function as a strange attractor for human activity that defies its social engineering. Yet, UN Plaza endures as the site of many significant happenings that testify to the resilience of the people and the importance of having their voices heard in the proverbial town square. It was home to the 1977 occupation of the Federal Building by disability rights advocates and a decade-long AIDS/ARC Vigil amongst other popular demonstrations. Join us as we consider the design of UN Plaza’s built environment, explore its activist history, witness its specific legacy, and reflect on what it teaches us about life in the city!
Free or Suggested Donation ($10) | Register via Eventbrite
Tenderloin Museum is honored to participate in the 2024 Night of Ideas at the SF Public Library, presenting a survey of museum highlights and an excerpt of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play in Koret Auditorium, as well as a drag show featuring Tenderloin queens in the main atrium.
At the SFPL Main Library!
100 Larkin St. SF, CA 94102 | full event runs from 4-11:45pm
TLM & the Living Legacy of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot | 10:30-11:30pm
TLM organized “Tenderloin Queens Drag Show” | 9-9:30pm
Night of Ideas is a global event organized by Villa Albertine across 20 US cities that invites thought leaders, activists, performers, authors, and academics to engage the public in late-night discussions addressing major global issues. This year’s unifying theme, “Fault Lines,” centers urban life and development, raising questions about the impact of climate change, new technologies, gentrification, and social activism, by way of diversity and inclusion, access to education and nature, the future of cultural institutions, and the shapes of artistic communities in built environments.
Locally, this means an evening (and family friendly afternoon) of programming organized by Villa Albertine and local partners SFPL, KQED, and Circuit Network. TLM is one of many local contributors to the marathon programming that comprises Night of Ideas. Responding to the theme of “Fault Lines,” Tenderloin Museum will focus on the living legacy of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot–the seminal uprising for transgender rights that occurred mere blocks from SFPL’s Main Branch that also represents a seismic rupture of both the social order and public memory.
From 10:30-11:30pm in Koret Auditorium, we’ll be presenting an introduction to the Tenderloin Museum and its programming, an overview of overview of the Compton’s riot and the ongoing historicization of the event, concluding with a performance excerpt of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, an immersive, interactive play co-written by Collette LeGrande, Mark Nassar, and Donna Personna. The play–which premiered in 2018, sold-out an extended run, and earned rave reviews from critics and audiences clamoring for more–returns this summer as an on-going production, directed and co-produced by Ezra Reaves, in the Tenderloin Museum’s new venue on Larkin St. This preview at Night of Ideas features a full cast, many of whom originated their respective parts:
Donna Personna - Older Vicki
Lavale Davis - Nicki
Shane Zaldivar - Rusty
Maurice André San-Chez - Dixie
Mandela Msanii - Adrian
Jaylyn Abergas - Suki
Jupiter Peraza - Vicki
Barbara Pond - Shirley/action notes
Steven Menasche - Gus
Mary Vice - Collette
Adam Simpson - Frankie
Adam KuveNiemann - Officer Johnson
Earlier in the evening (9-9:30pm) in the library’s main atrium, catch a Tenderloin Queens Drag Show curated by the Tenderloin Museum! Featuring performances by Donna Personna, Shane Zaldivar, Mary Vice, and PerSia, this show celebrates the deep legacy of drag performance in the neighborhood, as well as the vibrant present-day scene centered around Aunt Charlie’s Lounge.
Free! See the full schedule and register to attend here
The volunteer-led tenant advocacy organization SF Tenants Union brings its monthly tenants’ rights workshop to TLM.
Thursday February 22, 2024 | 6:00 - 7:30pm
at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
A volunteer-led tenant advocacy organization, SF Tenants Union hosts monthly bootcamps all over the city. This iteration at the Tenderloin Museum will include an educational "know-your-rights" presentation by D5 Supervisor Dean Preston, a history of tenant organizing in the TL by TLM staff, followed by opportunities to ask trained tenant counselors for advice for those facing eviction, unfair rent increases, and landlord negligence. Email bootcamps@sftu.org with any questions!
FREE | No registration required
A Sociological Report Concerning Black on Black Anger in Poetic Form is a play written by Charles Blackwell and realized at the Tenderloin Museum as a collaborative production with the Tenderloin artist Sylvester Guard, Jr.
Two performances at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA94102
Thursday February 15, 2024 | 5:30 - 7:30pm
Saturday February 17, 2024 | 3:00 - 5:00pm
Cast features: Chassity Gantt, Sylvester Guard, Jr. , Katherine Campbell, James Willis, Charles Curtis Blackwell, & Kenneth Charles (Sat)
Artist, poet, and playwright Charles Blackwell returns to the Tenderloin Museum for a performance of his play A Sociological Report Concerning Black on Black Anger in Poetic Form. Known for blurring the lines between mediums, Blackwell contends with this particular facet of systemic racism–Black on Black anger–through his unique vision of hybrid theater and an open-hearted, poetic spiritualism. While the script was written years ago, this current production is a collaboration with the artist Sylvester Guard Jr.--Blackwell’s impassioned, sensual, jazz-and-blues inflected verse is performed against a set of both artists’ large-scale paintings.
About the play, Blackwell says “The material reflects today, what’s out there, how the African American community has to deal with it, and the destructive nature of anger. At the same time, it’s trying to point the way toward a different approach: being courteous, polite, and kind hearted.”
Both Blackwell and Guard share a deep connection to the Hospitality House Community Arts Program, where they both have forged dynamic studio practices and community; plus, Guard performed in Blackwell’s When Struggle Gave Improvisation the Blues at the Tenderloin Museum in 2023. Don't miss this new collaboration between two longtime pillars of the Tenderloin's art scene.
Attendance is free or by suggested donation! | No Registration Required
Get into the Valentine’s spirit over a round of drag queen bingo with the incomparable Grand Duchess Olivia Hart presiding as Mistress of Ceremonies. Play for a chance to win fabulous prizes, and you’ll be supporting free/sliding-scale community tickets to TLM’s upcoming production of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play.
Thursday February 8, 2024 | 6-9pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
The Tenderloin Museum is opening a new production of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play in June of 2024! Planned as an ongoing production, the play will take place at TLM’s new space on Larkin St., which is currently being transformed into an immersive set reminiscent of a 60s diner, and will feature a cast and crew of 15. The CCR creative team is hard at work actualizing this expansive vision for the play and building on the magic of the show’s much-feted and completely sold out 2018 premiere run. In short, this upcoming production of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot is an exciting and substantial undertaking!
TLM is committed to making The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot affordable for all through the provision of sliding scale and needs-based ticket options, as well as free tickets to Tenderloin and trans-centric organizations. To muster resources for a “no one turned away for lack of funds” option to experience the play, the museum is hosting an evening of drag queen bingo to raise funds for these community tickets.
Combining two time-honored Tenderloin traditions–drag and games of chance–drag queen bingo is a fun and convivial way to support a good cause and have a chance to win fabulous prizes from local businesses and organizations in TLM’s community. Legendary Tenderloin queen, Aunt Charlie’s Angel, and your favorite redhead Olivia Hart will preside over the bingo balls and play mistress of ceremonies; whether you win or lose, your numbers will be called with wit, grit, and a saucy sense of humor. Join us!
image by Harry James Hanson/Devin Antheus; "Olivia Hart," 2018-2022; Archival pigment print; Courtesy of the artists and CLAMP, New York
Free to Attend | Pay to Play: $10 per 3-game bingo card | Register via Eventbrite
Join us for the opening of Transition Times: Re-Membering Anticarceral Resistance in the Tenderloin, an exhibit that contextualizes the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot presenting a curated selection from historian Susan Stryker’s archival collection. The opening reception will be followed by a public meeting of the coalition advocating for the decarceration of the site of the historic, queer, grassroots uprising against police brutality.
February 1, 2024 at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Opening Reception 5:30 pm | Coalition Informational Meeting 6-7:30pm
Transition Times: Re-Membering Anticarceral Resistance in the Tenderloin contextualizes the story of the Compton’s Cafeteria riot, a queer grassroots uprising against police brutality in August 1966, as recovered by historian Susan Stryker. This exhibition presents selected material from the archival collection that Stryker has painstakingly compiled since the 1990s, a physical model identifying historical queer sites in the Tenderloin’s urban landscape, and a selection of art pieces that demonstrate the riot’s ripple effect in the present. The exhibition highlights the historical significance of the site that today GEO Group, a private prison company, operates as a “halfway house.” It serves as a call to action to join a coalition aiming to liberate the building where the riot took place, designated a local historical landmark.
Join us for the opening reception at 5:30pm on February 1, 2024, followed by an informational coalition meeting from 6-7:30pm. The TurkxTaylor Initiative has been working towards the site’s decarceration by building a coalition to push toward different ways to make this happen. In this first Coalition Informational Meeting, we invited key panelists to share information on the past, present, and future of the building at Turk and Taylor. The goal is for those interested in the project to understand the layers of complexity regarding Tenderloin politics so that together we can strategize about any possible steps forward.
Panelists:
Dr. Susan Stryker, historian and filmmaker who recovered the history of Compton’s riot
Ms. Janetta Johnson, co-founder of the Transgender District and CEO of TGI Justice Project
Toshio Meronek, host of the Sad Francisco podcast and co-author of Miss Major Speaks
Moses Corrette, city planner and historian
Dean Preston, Supervisor of District 5, San Francisco Board of Supervisors
Moderated by Chandra Laborde and Stathis G. Yeros, of the TurkxTaylor Initiative
COVID 19 Protocols:
*All audience members are strongly advised to wear a mask at this program. TLM will provide a mask for free to all attendees. Panelists may be unmasked while speaking.*
All Welcome! | Free! | Register via Eventbrite
Two artist-made documentaries, Chuck Hudina’s “Tenderloin Blues” and Jeffrey Skoller’s “Moving In,” explore the Tenderloin of the 1980s while raising ever-important questions of representation. Join us for a screening followed by a panel discussion with filmmakers Hudina & Skoller, moderated by Craig Baldwin.
Thursday January 18, 2024 | Doors 6pm / Program 6:30-8:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Chuck Hudina’s soulful 1987 documentary “Tenderloin Blues” looks at San Francisco’s Tenderloin during a transformative moment by lyrically assembled video portraits of the neighborhood, its denizens, and their multitudes. The film’s street-level, vérité aesthetic “breathes life and lets these people from the streets express themselves fully.” Their stories weave into a moving and nuanced historical snapshot of the Tenderloin and how the neighborhood was perceived and experienced by its residents.
“Tenderloin Blues” is screened alongside filmmaker and writer Jeffrey Skoller’s early work “Moving In,” presented in its original 16mm format. Set in the TL-adjacent SOMA neighborhood in 1982, the short “begins as a documentary on the growing problem of homelessness in San Francisco in the wake of Reagan-era budget cuts and ends as a meditation on the filmmaker's own relationship to the situation.”
Both films serve as powerful records of a place in its time, communicate life on the margins of the system, and invoke important reflection about representation and belonging in one of our city’s most liminal spaces. Join us for a special screening of these rare films–followed by a panel discussion that features both filmmakers in-person and moderated by Craig Baldwin!
Free or Suggested Donation ($10) | Registration via Eventbrite
Writers Carolyn Terry & Todd Pickering share a fully cast, staged reading of a television pilot based on longtime resident Terry’s diaristic observations of life in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.
January 11, 2024 | 7:00-8:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Set in the 1990s, The Tenderloin Diaries explores the people and relationships of the TL that straddle both respectable society and its underworld, the everyday and the extraordinary. Conceived to be a serialized television show, The Tenderloin Diaries features an ensemble cast whose archetypal characters–the hustler, the pusher, the cabbie, the clerk etc.--outline the distinctive social fabric indicative of the Tenderloin’s dense, cacophonous, urban environment of SRO hotels, dive bars, and back alleys.The source material for this TV series is drawn from writer Carolyn Terry’s 30+ years of living in the Tenderloin and keeping journals of all the fantastically kooky denizens of this vibrant, albeit sometimes tragic neighborhood. The cast includes Brian Conway, Trixxie Carr, Jake Eastman, Barbara Godinez, Smelley Kelley, Raya Light, Sue Lyon, Mary Samson and Audra Wolfmann!
Free or Suggested Donation ($10) | Register via Eventbrite