Street photographer Dave Glass discusses his current show at TLM, Central City 1970-2016, with his collaborators, fellow photographers, and co-directors of the Tenderloin’s Book and Job Gallery, Adrian Martinez & Austin Leong.

Thursday December 7, 2023 | 6-8pm

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

Dave Glass is a prolific street photographer with a working class perspective whose oeuvre could function as a lyric history of San Francisco in photographs. His current show at the Tenderloin Museum, Central City 1970-2016, surveys the guts of our city: the routines, rituals, and recurrences of its denizens, a tall pour from an old barkeep, a parade down Market Street, and the familiar glow of the corner store’s neon sign. 

On Thursday December 7th, Glass discusses his 50+ long year photography practice and Central City 1970-2016 with Adrian Martinez & Austin Leong, co-directors of the Tenderloin’s Book and Job Gallery. In addition to running the gallery, Martinez & Leong are themselves photographers and both work as arts professionals in San Francisco. This year (2023), they collaborated with Glass on Wash Castle, a collection of Glass’ photographic portraits of launderettes, published on their collaborative press, illetante books. All three share a deep interest in the relationship between place and people, in street photography, and in San Francisco.

$10 Suggested Donation | Register via Eventbrite

Hyde Street Studios Sessions: Lady Bianca

Thursday November 30, 2023 | performances at 6pm & 7:30pm

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

Experience an intimate live performance inside the historic Hyde Street Studios with Lady Bianca, a Grammy-nominated Gospel and R&B vocalist/pianist, artist, producer and band leader who has an extensive discography cut at the TL’s iconic recording studio. 

As part of its Sounds of the Tenderloin live music series, the Tenderloin Museum presents “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 that made the “San Francisco Sound.” The inaugural program features Grammy-nominated Blues, Gospel, and R&B artist Lady Bianca, who has recorded extensively at the historic Tenderloin studio and has assembled a special 6 piece ensemble to share music and stories that survey her illustrious career. Not only will audiences be up close and personal with this Bay Area musical luminary, they will 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. Lady Bianca and her band will play two separate sets on the floor of Studio 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! 

Tickets $25 via Eventbrite 

Join us to celebrate the life of Felecia Smith, longtime Tenderloin resident, community organizer, tour guide, and friend of the museum on Tuesday November 21, 2023 from 2-3pm.

Tuesday November 21, 2023 | 2-3pm

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

Tenderloin Museum mourns the recent passing of Felecia Smith (1961-2023), a longtime Tenderloin resident, community organizer, walking tour guide and dear friend of the museum! Felecia grew up in Cedar Springs, MI but called San Francisco, where she had a career in administration at UCSF and raised two children, home since 1980. In the mid 2000s, she moved to the Tenderloin, where she became a valued member of the community, and was especially passionate about her organizing work, which began with her participation in the Central City SRO Collaborative. Felecia moved back to Michigan earlier this year after discovering some serious health conditions and passed away surrounded by family in October. To honor Felecia’s memory and contributions to the neighborhood, the Tenderloin Museum is hosting a celebration of life–all who knew her are welcome to gather for this memorial, pay respects, and share a memory. 

For those who would like to attend but are out of the area, email info@tenderloinmuseum.org for a Zoom link.

Join TLM and SF Neon as we ignite a new, historically-informed neon sign above the entrance to the Tenderloin Museum in San Francisco! Three years in the making, this 25-ft double-sided neon will brighten our corner and serve as both a literal and figurative beacon for the Tenderloin neighborhood.

Wednesday November 8, 2023 | 6-7:30pm

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

Our new two-and-a-half-story neon sign is an homage to the old Cadillac Hotel sign, which photographic evidence suggests lit up our community in the 1950s. This new recreation proudly bears the name "Tenderloin" on one side and "Cadillac" on the other, a fusion of history and artistry, illuminating the Tenderloin community and adding to the vibrancy of our neighborhood. No mere replica but a visionary work of art, the Tenderloin/Cadillac neon sign serves as a beacon of hope for the Tenderloin, welcoming visitors, invigorating foot traffic, and adding essential street lighting for the block.

After three years of multifaceted planning, which even included successfully advocating for new legislation to create a neon sign district in the Tenderloin, the Tenderloin/Cadillac sign is ready to shine its light on the neighborhood! The project was made possible by support from the San Francisco Community Challenge Grant Program (CCG), Magic Cabinet, as well as by the advocacy of Supervisor Dean Preston, Tenderloin People’s Congress, and the CCSRO Collaborative Land Use Committee. Join us as we come together and celebrate the completion of this new, historically-informed sign that we hope will foster a sense of pride, identity, and belonging for the people of the Tenderloin! The sign lighting ceremony will feature special guest speakers and live music and streetside fanfare by Brass Mafia, plus look for a video projection outside the museum featuring “Lost Neon Landscapes” compiled by SF Neon from the Prelinger Archive.

Let us know you’re coming, register for free via Eventbrite

Thursday October 26, 2023 | 5:30 - 8:00pm

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

Join us for a community screening of Home Is a Hotel (2023), a feature-length documentary that examines inequality in San Francisco through the lens of five SRO residents as they fight to stay housed, followed by a discussion about how community shapes the TL with featured resident Sylvester Guard, historian Susan Stryker, activist Shavonne Allen, and filmmaker Kar Yin Tham.

Across America, cities are struggling with homelessness and housing affordability. How does one decades old solution — cramped Single Room Occupancy units — impact the lives of those who live in them? Home Is a Hotel takes you inside San Francisco's SRO housing through intimate portraits of their residents filmed over five years. This character-driven, verité documentary immerses viewers in what it means to call a single room home in the heart of one of America’s richest cities. It's the story of an immigrant single mom in Chinatown, a blind Latina librettist fighting harassment and eviction, a divorced couple in recovery co-parenting a six-year-old son, a graffiti artist who paints murals for the tech companies gentrifying his neighborhood, and a determined mother on a quest to find her runaway daughter — all of them trying to better their lives within the four walls of rentals as tiny as 80 square feet. Winner of Documentary Feature Award & Audience Award at the 2023 SFFILM Festival!

Free or Suggested Donation | Register via Eventbrite

The volunteer-led tenant advocacy organization SF Tenants Union brings its regular Monday evening tenants’ rights workshop to TLM.

Monday October 23, 2023 | 6:00 - 7:30pm

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

A volunteer-led tenant advocacy organization, SF Tenants Union hosts regular Monday evening 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

In honor of electronic music and disco pioneer Patrick Cowley on his birthday, Josh Cheon, founder of Tenderloin-based Dark Entries Records, interviews singer-songwriter and frequent Cowley collaborator Maurice Tani, plus music by DJ Steve Fabus.

A revolutionary musician and producer who catalyzed his own style of “Hi-NRG” dance music, Patrick Cowley tapped into the Bay Area’s deep lineage of new, technologically innovative sounds to create music that vividly captures the confluence of a talented man, his place, and his moment. Cowley’s chart-topping collaborations with Sylvester such as “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” immortalized the “San Francisco Sound” and illustrate the indelible influence of queer artists and club culture on the evolution of electronic dance music. 

To celebrate Cowley’s music and legacy on what would have been his 73rd birthday (October 19), the Tenderloin Museum’s “Sounds of the Tenderloin” series hosts an interview between Josh Cheon, founder of Dark Entries Records, and Maurice Tani, a prolific singer songwriter and frequent Cowley collaborator going back to their student days in Gerald Mueller’s Electronic Music Lab at San Francisco City College. Their conversation will be bookended with music by Steve Fabus, who DJ’ed at SF disco hotspots the Trocadero Transfer and Endup in the ‘70s & ‘80s during Cowley’s heyday.

$12 General Admission | Register via Eventbrite

Sunday October 15, 2023 | 12-3pm

On the 300 Block of Ellis (btwn. Jones & Taylor Streets)

Come out for the 3rd Annual Sunday Streets Phoenix Day block party in the Tenderloin, and at 12:30pm celebrate the opening of a new exhibit celebrating 60 years of GLIDE history.

On October 15th, Tenderloin Museum will be tabling at the 3rd Annual Sunday Streets Phoenix Day, a city-wide activation of block parties, slow streets, activities provided by local nonprofits, community groups and small businesses. This year, the Tenderloin block party is happening on Ellis St. between Jones & Taylor (and between GLIDE & Boeddeker Park) between 12-3pm. During the Phoenix Day activities, we'll also be celebrating the opening of 60 Years of GLIDE, an exhibit of historical collages showcasing Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani's work and a collaboration between GLIDE and TLM. Remarks for the 60 Years of GLIDE exhibit will happen at12:30pm in the GLIDE Creative Space; enter through the Ellis St. entrance.

FREE | No Registration Required

Join us for an opening reception for Dave Glass: Central City 1970-2016, a selection of images made in the Tenderloin that documents its denizens and iconic establishments by Dave Glass, a prolific San Francisco street photographer with a working class perspective.

Thursday, October 5, 2023 | 5:30-7:30pm

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

A San Francisco native who worked for three decades as a laundromat owner-operator and appliance repairman, Dave Glass traversed the city, a camera always in his truck, shooting from the unique vantage of someone who bears frequent witness to locals’ most intimate, everyday spaces. The fourteen images in Central City 1970-2016 survey the guts of our city, its humanity, and its streets thrumming with life. In taking a long view with Glass, we see cycles of urban decay, reconfiguration, and gentrification, as well as the more resilient and persistent aspects of our city: the routines, rituals, and recurrences of its denizens that create continuity across time. In his photographs of the Tenderloin and Mid-Market area, this translates to a tall pour from an old barkeep, a parade down Market Street, and the familiar glow of the corner store’s neon sign. Presented in concert with with SF First Thursday Art Walk in the Tenderloin.

Free!

Interdisciplinary artist and Tenderloin resident OnSean Zion premieres a suite of original musical arrangements that showcase his instrumental and orchestration skills learned and honed during his recovery from a period of being unhoused. 

Friday, September 29, 2023 | 6:30pm-8:00pm

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

In 2005, OnSean Zion was voted the #6 salsa dancer in the world; but struggles with mental and physical illnesses led to him becoming unhoused and derailing his career as a performing artist. His life began to turn around in 2019, however, when he obtained permanent supportive housing in a residential hotel in the Tenderloin, and this stability reinvigorated OnSean’s creative life: he learned how to play 8 instruments, sing, and arrange for large ensembles.  “A Soulful Celebration” is the fruit of OnSean’s studies as well as of his recovery, telling a story of hope, resilience, and transformation. He has assembled an eclectic repertoire that ranges from popular songs, classical melodies, Broadway numbers and spirituals. OnSean personally arranged each musical selection, re-casting these familiar songs with a sound he says is informed by his experiences growing up in Guyana, dancing salsa professionally, and overcoming hardship on the streets of San Francisco.

$10 or suggested donation | Register via Eventbrite

Empress Hotel & Tenderloin Double Feature

Thursday September 14, 2023 | 5-9pm

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

Tenderloin Museum presents a double feature of two films from 2009–the documentary Empress Hotel and narrative feature Tenderloin–that share subjects, themes, and filmmaker community while depicting the neighborhood in the late 2000s from two distinct perspectives.

The films Empress Hotel and Tenderloin depict the TL from documentary and narrative forms respectively while sharing a verite quality and filmmaking experience–Tenderloin director and editor Michael Anderson was also a camera operator for Empress Hotel. Join us for a double feature screening with in-person filmmaker discussion after each film.

Empress Hotel (2009; 85min; screening at 5:15pm)

The Empress Hotel, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, is home to a rarified clientele–people afflicted with mental illness or addiction who have lived on the streets. Not every person can stay on meds or get clean, yet out of chaos and hopelessness, a remarkable community is formed. Directed and produced by Academy Award-winners Allie Light and Irving Saraf, the film Empress Hotel tells the stories of ten residents, providing insight into the lives of homeless people and their demons. 

Tenderloin (2009; 80 min; screening at 7:10)

Tenderloin is a compelling drama of a broken Iraq war vet who moves into San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin neighborhood. Can he find hope among the junkies, hookers, and elderly poor who befriend him? Can he be a father to his young son and a partner to his seductive, addicted girlfriend? The screenplay was written by Ned Miller who lived in the Tenderloin for eleven years. The film was shot and directed by acclaimed filmmaker, Michael Anderson.

Free or $10 Suggested Donation | Register via Eventbrite

TLM is thrilled to be the community partner for light slants in the wrong direction, program 4 of San Francisco Cinematheque’s signature CROSSROADS festival celebrating artist-made cinema.

San Francisco Cinematheque is the Bay Area’s premier venue for avant-garde/experimental, underground and personally expressive film, video and media performance, inspiring aesthetic dialog among artists, stimulating critical discourse, and encouraging appreciation of artist-made cinema across the broader cultural landscape. 
CROSSROADS 2023 is the 14th manifestation of Cinematheque's annual film festival.

Tenderloin Museum is proud to be the community partner for program 4 of the festival, light slants in the wrong direction! SF Cinematheque has this to say about the program: 

Wafting across the blue of distance and embodying tentative positions of emotional precarity and strength these films explore internal landscapes, hauntings of childhood, distanced erotics and subterranean unravelings. The mirror is a placeless place, as tears go by.

Register for  PROGRAM TICKETS ($12 General/$10 Cinematheque Members, Gray Area Members & students with ID) or full FESTIVAL PASSES

Part of the Neon Speaks Festival & Symposium, hosted by San Francisco Neon

September 9, 2023 | 9:30am - 3:00pm

at the Great American Music Hall | 859 O’Farrell St. SF, CA 94109

Our friends at San Francisco Neon host their annual Neon Speaks Festival & Symposium over two weekends in September, with a day-long, in-person gathering in the TL at the historic Great American Music Hall. Join us at GAMH for the “Neon Symposium & Curiosity Lounge,” and be sure to check out the full schedule for neighborhood-specific walking tours, shop talks, and virtual events.

SF Neon produces the annual Neon Speaks festival and symposium to bring neon preservationists and advocates together to celebrate and share information on historic neon restoration and preservation. Vintage neon signs have evolved from advertising to art, and now they serve as landmarks of the day-to-day human experience within communities. The artisans and advocates who take on these preservation projects deserve and desire public acknowledgment, and the opportunity to share experiences.

The Neon Symposium and Curiosity Lounge is SF Neon’s signature day-long event of the festival! Join us for a morning of coffee and panelists featuring neon experts on the frontlines of preservation. Next up are presentations and book signings by the authors of two new fabulous books on vintage signs: Hollywood Signs and Signs That Define Toronto. After a delicious catered lunch and social time, stick around for neon exhibits for the Neon Curiosity Lounge, part science fair and art show.

Register (w/ SF Neon) via Eventbrite!

Thursday September 7, 2023 | 5-8pm

At the Phoenix Hotel | 601 Eddy Street San Francisco, CA 94109

Join us for an enchanting evening at one of the neighborhood’s unique venues–the Phoenix Hotel–to meet and mingle with like-minded supporters of the Tenderloin neighborhood and community, hear the sounds of a celebrated San Francisco jazz legend with roots in the TL Lavay Smith, and to enjoy delectable bites and drinks by the Phoenix’s historic landmark pool! 

For 8 years, the Tenderloin Museum has held down a near-weekly schedule of robust and wide-ranging public programming, walking tours, art gallery shows, and special historical exhibits that bring to life the overlooked history of the TL and often have a great deal to teach us about the city as a whole. By purchasing tickets to our annual gala at the Phoenix Hotel, you’ll be helping to sustain all of these activities and to cultivate new ones: namely, the return of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play at our new venue on Larkin St. in early 2024!

Our neighborhood has experienced many challenges, through which the Tenderloin Museum has persevered, gained experience, and is now thriving to the point that we are expanding! We need your support as we continue to flourish, grow,  and create lasting positive impacts in our neighborhood.

Support the museum by registering to attend via Eventbrite