Tenderloin Museum is thrilled to partner with Unspeakable Vice, “a volunteer history initiative making queer belonging accessible to everyone,” to offer a new walking tour focused on the LGBTQIA+ history in the Tenderloin and Polk Street neighborhoods.

Saturday, December 21, 2024 | 2-4 PM

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

Register to attend via Humanitix | Admission to the Tenderloin Museum included with ticket

Created by downtown San Francisco resident and professor at California College of the Arts Shawn Sprockett, Unspeakable Vice began as a close look at the queer origins of San Francisco, traversing the city’s North Beach and Barbary Coast areas to trace the history through from 1770-1960. This new tour extends Sprockett’s richly detailed and craftily delivered approach to the TL and Polk Street to offer a deep dive into the emergence of LGBTQIA+ icons and movements that shaped the area from the 1960s to the 1990s. 

Explore the neighborhood's rich tradition of public art on the Murals of the Tenderloin Walking Tour, and get to know some of the artists and community groups behind the TL's diverse and dynamic visual culture.

Presented as part of “I Love Tenderloin Day”

December 13th, 2024 | 2:30pm - 4pm

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

To mark the December 2024 “I Love Tenderloin Day,” Tenderloin Museum offers a walking tour of the neighborhood that highlights some of the neighborhood’s iconic murals as well as less obvious public artworks hidden in plain sight. Led by TLM Program Director Alex Spoto, this celebratory survey explores how the neighborhood’s built environment serves as a canvas for resident artists and neighborhood advocates to tell the story of the Tenderloin, its community, and its culture. For this tour, two artists based in the TL join the group to share about their works on the street: Tan Sirinumas and Rik Lee Leipold both depict the Tenderloin’s history in their innovative public art practices. They are also the featured artists inside the Tenderloin Museum–their show of new, collaborative artworks–Tenderloin Texture: Carved Histories in Urban Form–is on view in the TLM Gallery from 12/5/24 to 2/1/25!

The mural featured in the event image is “Tenderloin Together” by Sylvester “Slick” Guard Jr. organized by Paint the Void.

Free! Register to attend via Humanitix!

TLM Staff host a year-end celebration for active museum members and program partners with an after-hours fete. Small bites and drinks will be served.

Thursday December 12, 2024 | 5-7pm

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

Want to join the fun? Become a member or renew your membership today

TLM Members are welcome to attend for free!  

Experience an intimate live performance inside the historic Hyde Street Studios with violinist Anthony Blea & percussionist John Santos, two of the Bay Area’s preeminent practitioners of Afro-Cuban traditions. 

At Hyde Street Studios | 245 Hyde St, San Francisco, CA 94102

Thursday December 5, 2024 | performances at 6:30pm & 8:30pm

As part of its Sounds of the Tenderloin live music series, the Tenderloin Museum presents another installment “Hyde Street Studio Sessions,” an intimate live music experience that gives music lovers and history buffs alike the opportunity to experience a local legend perform inside the iconic recording studio (formerly known as Wally Heider Studios) that is responsible for the “San Francisco Sound.” On December 5, 2024, violinist Anthony Blea and percussionist John Santos lead a Latin jazz quintet for two hour-long sets of music and storytelling, recounting their experiences recording at the TL’s historic studio. 

As two of the Bay Area’s preeminent practitioners of Afro-Cuban traditions and masters of Latin jazz, Blea and Santos have been musical collaborators for decades both on and off the record. Their collective recording credits at Hyde St. Studios are vast and stylistically diverse; however, for this installment of “Hyde Street Studios Sessions” the duo will undoubtedly focus on two records cut at Hyde St. by Orquesta Batachanga. La Nueva Tradicion (1982)and Mañana para los Niños (1985) mixed traditional rhythms with contemporary sounds and significantly influenced the Bay Area’s Afro-Latin music scene. 

The Orquesta Batachanga / Hyde St. Studios connection came to TLM’s attention thanks to Josealberto “Beto” Salazar, longtime Tenderloin resident and co-host (with his father Alberto) of the superlative Discomovil Salazar, a weekly radio show on Psyched! Radio SF that features “tropical music from all over the world.” So, we’ve asked Beto to lead a conversation with Blea & Santos during each set to get the history of Orquesta Batachanga recording at Hyde St. in the 1980s and to trace their influence into the present. 

Not only will audiences be up close and personal with these Bay Area musical luminaries, they will also get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at an active recording studio and the dedicated crew of engineers and musicians that create and sustain musical community in the heart of the Tenderloin. Nestled in what was historically San Francisco’s entertainment district, Hyde Street Studios has been an active recording studio for over 50 years, and throughout that time has stood as a bastion for working musicians, creative collaboration, and independent artistry. Blea, Santos, & their band will play two (separately-ticketed) sets on the floor ofStudio A, Hyde Street’s main live room that drips with vintage vibe and resonates with over 50 years of musical history. The venue is unique, site-specific, and, given the nature of the space, close quarters–there are only 20 seats available for each set!

Click here to learn more about John Santos and here for more on Anthony Blea.

This program is made possible by support from the Specified General Fund for the Museum Grant Program under the California Cultural and Historical Endowment. 

Seating is limited | Tickets $40 via Humanitix

Join us for an opening reception to celebrate new, collaborative works by Tenderloin-based artists Tan Sirinumas and Rik Lee Leipold that depict some of the neighborhood’s most iconic locales. 

Thursday December 5, 2024 | 5-7pm

At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. San Francisco

Tenderloin Texture: Carved Histories in Urban Form is a visual homage to the neighborhood’s architectural past and present, as well as a tactile experience that invites you to explore the TL’s built environment through touch. The show features new, collaborative works by Tan Sirinumas and Rik Lee Leipold, two Tenderloin-based artists with deep experience making innovative public art in the neighborhood, and longstanding ties to the Hospitality House Community Arts Program (CAP). Both artists are passionate about uplifting the Tenderloin and are masters at evoking beauty in unlikely, overlooked spaces. 

Tan Sirinumas is originally from Thailand, but his artistic journey began in San Francisco making architecture-inspired paper collage designs at CAP, evolving into a practice that spans painting, ceramics, and printmaking. Several Sirinumas’ richly detailed, realist yet soulful illustrations of famous Tenderloin buildings were featured on SFMTA traffic control signal boxes and city trash cans as part of the 2017 Art Wraps for the Heart of the Tenderloin project. Sirinumas currently works as an educator at the Hospitality House Community Arts Program, using his art as a tool for empowerment and helping to instill strength and self-expression in low-income artists.

Rik Lee Leipold is a designer and fabricator with a specialty in facilitating public art. Leipold’s personal practice draws on his experience using plastics and resin, and includes a multi-year project of commemorating queer spaces in the TL by filling potholes with resin and found objects in small but evocative acts of reverse urban archaeology: “fixing” holes in the sidewalks and streets through bearing witness to the past. TLM was proud to present Leipold’s solo show Trolls & Potholes in 2021.

For this show at the Tenderloin Museum, Sirinumas and Leipold developed a collaborative practice to create new work that celebrates some of the TL’s most iconic locales. They describe their process as similar to a conversation: Leipold would use a CNC machine to create a 3D rendering of TL street scenes–the textured “canvas”--and Sirinumas would detail and paint the pieces in his unique style. In addition to the collaborative wood panel & acrylic pieces, Sirinumas and Leipold share behind the scenes documentation of their process.

Free! All welcome! Presented as part of SF First Thursday Art Walk!

Tenderloin Museum and the San Francisco Public Library present a screening of Rainbow in the Clouds, a documentary exploring Dr. Angelou’s deep and meaningful history with Glide Memorial Church, in a public program hosted by Marvin K. White, the current Minister of Celebration at the TL’s church of radical love. 

Thursday November 14, 2024 | 5:30-7:30pm

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

In 1992, the Detroit Educational Television Foundation produced a documentary about the GLIDE Memorial Church from the perspective of poet, writer, Civil Rights activist, and longtime GLIDE congregation member Dr. Maya Angelou called Rainbow in the Clouds. Originally broadcast on PBS, this extraordinary hour of TV gives a snapshot of GLIDE in the early ‘90s: its robust Sunday Celebrations, expansive programs serving the Tenderloin, collective activism, along with profiles of the remarkable individuals who comprise the GLIDE community. Dr. Angelou conducts interviews with her friends Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani as well as with many folks who have found community, transformation, and love at GLIDE.

The Tenderloin Museum is partnering with the San Francisco Public Library to screen Rainbow in the Clouds in conjunction with a multifaceted celebration of Dr. Angelou’s legacy in San Francisco. She is the subject of the recently unveiled “Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman” monument by artist Lava Thomas–the first commemorating a Black woman in San Francisco’s Civic Art Collection–that is located outside the SFPL Main Branch. The new monument inspired SFPL to choose Angelou’s classic I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as the 19th “One City One Book” selection. And with its recent acquisition of GLIDE’s historical archive, the San Francisco History Center has organized Dear Sister Maya Angelou, an exhibit on the sixth floor of the SFPL Main Branch that explores her longtime membership in the congregation at GLIDE and her with Reverend Cecil Williams and poet Janice Mirikitani.

On November 14, come to the Tenderloin Museum to view Rainbow in the Clouds in community.  The writer, artist, preacher, public theologian, and current  Minister of Celebration at Glide Memorial Church Marvin K. White will introduce the film, share a brief invocation, and host a group reflection after the screening.

Free to attend (donations welcome) | Register to attend via Humanitix

Tenderloin Museum partners with Unspeakable Vice to offer a new walking tour on queer history in San Francisco’s Tenderloin and Polk Street neighborhoods, focusing on the 1960s-1990s. TLM members have the opportunity to experience it first–space is limited, register today!

Saturday, October 26th, 2024 | 2-4pm

Meet at Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

Tenderloin Museum is thrilled to partner with Unspeakable Vice, “a volunteer history initiative making queer belonging accessible to everyone,” to offer a new walking tour focused on the LGBTQIA+ history in the Tenderloin and Polk Street neighborhoods. Created by downtown San Francisco resident and professor at California College of the Arts Shawn Sprockett, Unspeakable Vice began as a close look at the queer origins of San Francisco, traversing the city’s North Beach and Barbary Coast areas to trace the history through from 1770-1960. This new tour extends Sprockett’s richly detailed and craftily delivered approach to the TL and Polk Street to offer a deep dive into the emergence of LGBTQIA+ icons and movements that shaped the area from the 1960s to the 1990s. 

The “Valley of the Queens” tour highlights key events such as the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, a landmark action of trans resistance that predates the Stonewall Riots, and the site of San Francisco’s first Pride parade. The tour also uncovers lesser-known yet significant histories, including a drag ball raided by the San Francisco Police Department that was defended by local Christian ministers—showing how a diverse coalition of activists, sex workers, and religious leaders helped shape the foundations of queer San Francisco.

“The Tenderloin and Polk Street areas are filled with stories of courage and defiance,” says tour creator Shawn Sprockett. “These are stories not just of struggle but of triumph, community, and the formation of an identity that has influenced the broader queer movement nationwide.”

“Valley of the Queens” (open to all) will happen monthly starting on October 27th. Learn more about the tour–and the Unspeakable Vice North Beach tour–at unspeakablevice.tours. For the upcoming monthly “Valley of the Queens” tour, book your ticket through the Tenderloin Museum to support the organization and keep queer community history thriving in the TL. 

Free for Tenderloin Museum members! Become one to join!

Email info@tendelroinmuseum.org to reserve your spot

Join Unspeakable Vice for a neighborhood/community focus group in advance of the new “Valley of the Queens” walking tour of LGBTQIA+ history in the Tenderloin & Lower Polk neighborhoods.

Wednesday October 2, 2024 | 6-7pm

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

Unspeakable Vice is a local gay-owned-and-operated volunteer historical tour group that is researching a new walking tour around the Tenderloin’s LGBTQ history. We are seeking the input and perspective of former and current Tenderloin residents, especially concerning transgender experiences and those of queer People of Color. Please attend this early preview of the tour’s intended content and help ensure all stories are heard.

Free to attend | No registration required

Dancer, researcher, and master practitioner of Bharatanatyam Preethi Ramaprasad premieres a new work of dance on film created during her time as an artist in residence(AIR) at the San Francisco Public Library as part of the San Francisco Arts Commission’s AIR Program, paired with a special walking tour of the Tenderloin’s rich South Asian history.

Thursday, September 26 | 6-7pm walking tour | 7-8:30pm Film Screening, Talk, and Reception

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

Yours, Tenderly is a multimedia experience that pays homage to the vibrant immigrant South Asian community of the Tenderloin and the greater San Francisco metropolis. Conceptualized by Preethi Ramaprasad, each component draws on her experience as a resident artist and researcher at the San Francisco Public Library and San Francisco Arts Commission of the local performing arts scene, residents, restaurants and other South Asian cultural markers of which there are only some remnants in the city.

The evening showcase will begin with a walking tour led by Anirvan Chatterjee and Barnali Ghosh, visiting notable places connecting to the area’s radical South Asian history and homes and will include stops featuring librarian and author Moazzam Sheikh, Dancer Shruti Abhishek, and Yoni Ki Baat on South Asian stories of Feminism. The tour will begin and end at the Tenderloin Museum. Space is limited, and registration is required.

At 7pm, Tenderloin Museum hosts an artist reception at which Ramaprasad will talk about her project and premiere her new film! Conceived as a dance film, Yours, Tenderly traces the history of South Asians in the Tenderloin through the artistic form of Bharatanatyam dance. In the film, Ramaprasad visits sites significant to the South Asian community, found through her research at the SFPL, and performs in front of them. Through performance, the film commemorates South Asian immigration and early cultural centers in the area, South Asian performances in the area, and generally, a celebration of the Tenderloin’s contribution to the national economy and culture.   

After the program on 9/26, Tenderloin Museum will exhibit Ramaprasad & collaborators' Yours, Tenderly in its main gallery space through the month of October.

Produced by: San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Public Library

Event Partners: Tenderloin Museum, Radical South Asian History Walking Tour 

Concept, Choreography: Preethi Ramaprasad

Production Director: Xiomara Forbez

Film/Cinematography/Editor: Joanna Ruckman 

Music: Ganavya Doraiswamy

Creative Advisors, Mentors: Prof. Sudharani Raghupathy, Priya Murle

Dance Collaborator: Nadhi Thekkek

Both the walking tour and film screening/reception are free to attend, but space is on the tour is limited—email sfac.galleries@sfgov.orgto reserve your spot!

“The dean of postmodern lounge jazz swing singers” Mr. Lucky brings his ace group of local luminaries–The Cocktail Party–to the Tenderloin for a Concert at the Cadillac! 

Friday September 20, 2024 | 1:00 - 2:00pm

At the Cadillac Hotel | 380 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

Mr. Lucky has been a character on the San Francisco music scene for decades. Pierre Merkel got his start as a lounge singer haunting the strip of bars that served the after-theater crowd in the “Tenderloin heights” such as the Curtain Call and the Blue Lamp. At those bygone joints, Merkel would sing jazz standards in a sharkskin suit while mixing martinis onstage, and thus Mr. Lucky was born. His act “tunes up” the Great American Songbook with an energy informed by performance art as much as Ellington and Mancini. 

His popularity took off from out of the underground during the swing craze of the 1990s, and Mr. Lucky has performed at practically all of San Francisco’s iconic venues–Bimbo’s 365, Club Deluxe, Flower Piano, etc.--except (until now) the Cadillac Hotel! Mr. Lucky’s longtime band, “The Cocktail Party,” was assembled in 1998 by Bay Area legends J. Raoul Brody and Ralph Carney. Today, the group features some of the Bay Area’s best musicians:

Joshua Raoul Brody: 'The Maestro' on piano,

Michael Groh: humming on guitar,

Randy “Ring-a-ding” Odell:  swell on drums,

Joe Quigley:  eclectic bass (Lisa Loeb’s ‘Stay’),

Jeff Hobbs:  terrific on violin and cornet,

and…Jamin ‘Sudsy’ Barton:  San Francisco’s hot-shot one-man-band on Theremin, saxophone, saw and more…!

Merkel’s intrigue extends beyond his musical persona: he worked for years as a private investigator in SF and is also an accomplished visual artist. But above all, Mr. Lucky is a lover of all things San Francisco, in particular the Tenderloin (and specifically original Original Joe’s on Taylor Street). Don’t miss this special performance of a San Francisco original at the Concerts at the Cadillac, presented in collaboration with the Tenderloin Museum as a “Sounds of the Tenderloin” live music program. Funding for this series is provided by Specified General Fund for the Museum Grant Program under the California Cultural and Historical Endowment.

Free | All Welcome!

A new book by Alison Owings chronicles the life and times of Del Seymour, his “journey from living on the streets to fighting homelessness in San Francisco,” and, in turn, a nuanced, on-the-ground history of the Tenderloin’s past decade. Owings and Seymour join longtime SF Chronicle writer Leah Garchik for a conversation celebrating the publication of Mayor of the Tenderloin. 

Thursday September 19, 2024 | 5:30-7:30pm

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

Long a fixture in the Tenderloin, Del Seymour is well known as an ambassador for the neighborhood and one of its most ardent supporters. His Tenderloin Walking Tours combine a passion for the neighborhood’s history with the experience and perspective of someone who has lived it. His organization Code Tenderloin teaches the unhoused, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons, and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job. While Del wears his own tale of transformation on his sleeve–he overcame eighteen years of homelessness and addiction–never has his story been told in such rich, thoughtful detail.

In Mayor of the Tenderloin (out 9/10/24 on Beacon Press), author Alison Owings brings the rigor of a journalist and the methodology of an oral historian to bear witness to the extraordinary life of Del Seymour. Owings spent nearly a decade shadowing, interviewing, and writing about Seymour, and the result is a feat of biography: this deep and dedicated account “slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco’s Tenderloin to reveal a harrowing and life-affirming account” of one man who now “gives back to people struggling with the same daunting setbacks he once faced.” 

Owings traces Del’s story and those in his orbit: from his daughters, sobriety buddy, and ex-girlfriend, to a police captain and a psychiatric social worker, housing activists and corporate philanthropists, and Del’s Code Tenderloin students. In doing so, she also conjures a detailed and nuanced look at the Tenderloin over the past decade. “Honest and compelling, Mayor of the Tenderloin follows homelessness in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods as it was lived—in the words of someone who lived it and is now fighting to solve it.”

Free to attend! | Register via Humanitix to let us know you’re coming

Support the museum by purchasing a copy of the book!