Thursday March 19, 2026 | 6-8pm

At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

Free to attend with registration via Eventbrite

Join Mission Local for a community conversation on activating green spaces in the Tenderloin. Mission Local reporter Eleni Balakrishnan and a team of experts will dig into the mystery. Why does the Tenderloin have so few green spaces? Why do the neighborhood’s new public spaces keep disappearing? And what can we do about it? Featuring panelists Aseel Fara (SF Planning/TL-raised), Curtis Bradford (TNDC/TCAP), Cyntia Salazar (TLCBD/TL-resident).

The Tenderloin is one of SF’s most densely populated neighborhoods, and the least amount of public green space. Attempts to install new green spaces have frequently been abandoned altogether

In 2022, the city set aside $2 million to create a new, car-free, green corridor known as the Greenway. The project ultimately failed to materialize, becoming another unrealized promise to revitalize the neighborhood with safe, public green space. Since then, Sup. Mahmood has tried to obtain permits for a mural in the designated Greenway space, but that is also yet to materialize. 

In October, Mayor Lurie allocated funding to renovate the Tenderloin Children’s Playground, one of the few green and play spaces available to local families. Meanwhile, other local orgs have continued with their efforts to strengthen and sustain existing spaces like the TL National Forest. While these efforts are both deeply appreciated and recognized, many neighbors continue to ask for more green spaces and long-time community advocates have continued to mobilize to activate the Greenway belt. 

Opening reception for Finding Our Way Home: Mary TallMountain in the Tenderloin, an exhibition celebrating the life, work, and words of an essential Tenderloin voice.

Thursday April 2, 2026 | 5-8pm (talk/screening at 6pm)

At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

A new exhibit at TLM celebrates longtime Tenderloin resident and Native Alaskan (Koyukon Athabaskan) poet Mary TallMountain (1918-1994). Her extraordinary personal journey of recovery, writing, and cultural reclamation is told through key poems, rare photos, and video performances, with special emphasis on her community writing practice in the TL and how her legacy endures and inspires from SF to the Yukon. 

Organized in collaboration with TallMountain’s literary executor, friend, and fellow poet Kitty Costello, this exhibit tells her incredible life story, sharing her biography interpolated with select notable poems and performances, with a particular focus on how Mary made a home for herself in the Tenderloin, how the neighborhood affected her, and how she shaped it in return.

The exhibit reflects a broader renaissance around TallMountain’s life and poetry locally as well as in her homeland of the Alaskan Interior. Opening at the start of National Poetry Month, TLM’s TallMountain exhibit coincides with the launch of Denakkanaaga’s Mary TallMountain Project and seeks to manifest TallMountain’s life and work once again in the heart of the neighborhood that was so much a part of her life, sharing her legacy with old friends and a new generation of readers, writers, and community advocates. 

A fundraising gala benefiting the upcoming Indo-American Hotelier History Exhibition at the Tenderloin Museum

Saturday, April 4, 2026 | 6:00—9:30 PM

The Green Room, San Francisco War Memorial, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94102

Purchase tickets via Humanitix

Cocktail attire requested.