The Black Rose Remembered

Tuesday August 25, 2026 6:30-7:30pm

At The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot venue | 835 Larkin St. SF, CA 94109

Free to attend | Donations Welcome

To mark San Francisco’s Transgender History Month, TLM takes a close look at one of the Tenderloin’s most storied and infamous dives, The Black Rose, with historian Susan Stryker and some of the bar’s regulars.

Throughout the 1980s and beyond it was home to a flourishing scene of transgender folks, predominately Black, and their admirers and paramours. The bar’s original owner, Francine Logandice, was a transgender Navy veteran and serial bar owner/operator who obsessively collected period transgender literature. Thanks to its reputation, mystery, and intrigue, The Black Rose has appeared in everything from William T. Vollmann’s Whores for Gloria to daytime TV like People Are Talking. Historian Susan Stryker–who performed an extensive oral history with Logandice in 1997s–joins us to conjure the story of The Black Rose, along with Tenderloin denizens who frequented and/or worked at this legendary club.