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!
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
Hosted by the TurkxTaylor initiative & Tenderloin Museum
Saturday, August 26th | 7:00-9:00 pm
At Aunt Charlie's | 133 Turk St. SF, CA 94102
Join us to commemorate the Compton's Cafeteria Riot of 1966, a landmark event where the queer and trans community rose against police brutality, years before the Stonewall Riot. As we gather at Aunt Charlie’s — the last queer bar in the Tenderloin — we'll celebrate this legendary event, keeping in mind the historic site is currently operated as a halfway house by a private prison corporation.
Weather permitting, projection activist Alan Marling will shine messages on the Turk and Taylor building. Let’s come together to envision ways to liberate the building and reimagine a more just future for the historic site.
*Feel free to stay for The Hot Boxxx Girls drag show at 10 pm ($5 cover)
Free* | Email info@turkxtaylor.com to RSVP
“When Struggle Gave Improvisation the Blues” is a two act theater-poetry-performance play by the artist, poet, and playwright Charles Blackwell.
Saturday August 12, 2023 | 3-5pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
It is a play about jazz music in relationship to the African American socio-political and socio-cultural events of the 1950’s and 1960s. The play is written in poetic form. It captures historical events with short lines related to episodes in history. Other parts of the play are interwoven in fictional poetic lines to present the mood of the jazz idiom. Join us for this special reading of this original work at the Tenderloin Museum, featuring several familiar faces from the neighborhood in the cast. A special Saturday afternoon program!
Featuring Shavonne Allen, Howard Jennings Jr., Greg Pond, Sylvester Guard Jr., Sawyer Arkilic, Barbara Saunders, and Charles Curtis Blackwell.
Made possible with support from Hospitality House.
Free! All Welcome! Register via Eventbrite
Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers opens a second season of TLM’s Sounds of the Tenderloin live music series with a extended set & ensemble for a very special Concert at the Cadillac, the long-running concert series geared to the residents of the historic hotel that is also the physical home of the Tenderloin Museum!
Friday August 11, 2023 | 1:00pm - 2:30pm
At the Cadillac Hotel | 380 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102 (next door to the Tenderloin Museum)
Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers got their start as a band in the late 1980s performing at The Blue Lamp, a long running Tenderloin dive bar that catered to the theater crowd and a hard crowd of local regulars. Ever since, Lavay and bandleader Chris Siebert have cultivated the big band sound in SF, and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers often feature an intergenerational mix of players, the more senior of whom had roots in the Fillmore’s robust jazz scene and who form the bedrock of the jazz community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many years and career milestones later, Lavay & her band still hold a lot of love for the TL, and on August 11th they’re going to play it out loud at the Cadillac Hotel for an extended Concert at the Cadillac with an extended horn section to create an extra large big band sound!
Free | All Welcome | Mask Wearing Required
Join the Tenderloin Museum and LaborFest for an evening of global poetry for human rights and equality for all featuring poets from across the Bay Area, including the Revolutionary Poets Brigade!
Thursday July 27, 2023 | 4:30 - 7:30PM
at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy Street SF, CA 94102
Presented as part of Education for Action: California Labor School, 1942-1957, a collaboration between TLM & SFSU’s Labor Archives that celebrates the radical, union-founded worker’s school, LABORFEST POETRY was inspired by CLS’ remarkable for its efforts to educate the “whole person” by offering a robust complement of humanities courses in tandem with classes on trade skills and organizing.
The Revolutionary Poets Brigade is a group of poets in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to bringing positive change in the world through the power of poetry. They are poised to gather for community actions at any venue . . . including the streets! Founded in 2009, they call on all poets to put their powerful words in the service of struggles already in motion. Featured members of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade include Lisbit Bailey, Kristina Brown, John Curl, D.L. Lang, Karen Melander-Magoon, Sarah Menefee, Dorothy Payne, Roarschock, Nina Serrano, Raymond Nat Turner and others! Open mic to follow scheduled readers!
Workers’ Voices, Workers’ Power kicks off the program with short monologues & spoken word pieces from the picket line to the protest rally and beyond! For more information contact Bill Shields at billshieldssf@gmail.com
Free! No registration required!
Saturday July 22, 2023 | 3-4pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Join us for a special presentation on the experience of women who lived in the Tenderloin’s residential hotels and worked in the downtown retail and food service industries in the first half of the 20th century. Presented as part of the annual SF Labor Fest and TLM’s special exhibit Education for Action: California Labor School, 1942-1957.
Longtime SF City Guide and professor of city & regional planning Linda Day shares her ongoing research on the San Francisco waitresses and saleswomen who lived downtown in the early 20th century, an overlooked segment of the Tenderloin population who deftly navigated organized labor and the neighborhood’s unique built environment to benefit greatly from union wages and affordable housing development. Building on Paul Groth’s seminal book on life in residential hotels, Living Downtown, Day’s qualitative study links the achievement of union wages, enforcement of increasingly specific building codes, and privately developed single room occupancy hotels (SROs) and small affordable apartments to waitresses and saleswomen’s ability to live in safe, comfortable downtown housing.
Free (or a $10 suggested donation is welcome! No registration required)
Explore the rich history of the labor movement in the Tenderloin on foot! TLM Program Director Alex Spoto and City Guide Linda Day will lead a special iteration of the museum’s weekly walking tour in advance of Dr. Day’s presentation “Union Wages and Housing Development: San Francisco Waitresses and Saleswomen Living Downtown, 1910-1941.”
Saturday July 22, 2023 | 1-2:30pm
Meet at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
The Tenderloin has always been and continues to be a densely populated enclave of primarily working class people, and thus the neighborhood sports a rich history of organized labor and vibrant working-class culture. On this walking tour, we’ll visit key places in the labor movement, including union halls, residential hotels, sites of picket lines and protests, as well as the former home of the California Labor School! This Labor History Walking Tour of the TL is presented as part of Education for Action: California Labor School, 1942-1957, a collaboration with LARC that celebrates the radical, union-founded worker’s school. Established in the TL, the California Labor School was remarkable for its efforts to educate the whole person by offering a robust complement of humanities courses in tandem with classes on trade skills and organizing. The tour will last approximately 80 minutes, and will be followed by Linda Day’s presentation at 3pm. Attend one or both!
Free (or a $10 suggested donation) | (capacity limited to 20 / register via Eventbrite)
LaborFest presents a book talk with leading radical African American trade unionist Clarence Thomas who will discuss a newly published book of writings by Cleophas Williams, the first African American president of storied SF union ILWU Local 10.
Thursday July 20, 2023 | 5-7PM
at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy Street SF, CA 94102
In concert with TLM’s ongoing special exhibit, Education for Action: California Labor School 1942-1957, LaborFest presents a book talk with Clarence Thomas, leading radical African American trade unionist and 3rd generation retired member of International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 who organized (and wrote an introduction to) a new book called Cleophas Williams: My Life Story in the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 (DeClare Publishing, 2023). This book is a compilation of Cleophas Williams’ writings that depicts the esoteric world of a working waterfront and the challenges, achievements, and problems Williams faced as the first African American president of ILWU Local 10, a union known for its legacy of militancy and international solidarity.
Free! No registration required
LaborFest presents a panel conversation that will look at the Writers Guild Of America West strike and what it portends for the rest of the working class.
Thursday July 13, 2023 | 5:30 - 7:30PM
at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy Street SF, CA 94102
The strike of 11,000 writers according to the members is existential. The development and use of artificial intelligence could destroy the industry and force them to become gig worker without living wages, healthcare and retirement. This is also a threat to millions of other workers in transportation, healthcare, education and the building trades.
Speakers:
James Dalessandro, WGAW past Bay Area Picket Captain and filmmaker
Adrienne Williams, Distributed AI Research Institute & Amazonia Organizer
Robert Ovetz, SJSU Instructor, Journalist and Author
Free! Sponsored by LaborFest!
The “Black, blind, gay, sexy artist of San Francisco” Lord Frederick will be present to discuss his interdisciplinary practice across sculpture, fashion, illustration, and poetry, as well as his first solo exhibition Memory of Sight, on view at TLM through July 29!
July 6, 2023 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm
At the Tenderloin Museum
398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
A leather man, a doll enthusiast, and a spiritualist, Lord Frederick lives his personal style unabashedly and completely. He can often be seen navigating the chaotic streets of the TL dudded out in chaps and sporting a wig of silvery white. Imagination and nostalgia animate his present and his capacity to thread joy, exuberance, and whimsy into his trademark handmade dolls. With Memory of Sight, Lord Frederick invites attendees to “see what he remembers seeing, and to see what he sees now.” In a world increasingly dominated by visual culture, Lord Frederick upends the primacy of the visual, channeling his sensory understanding of the world to subvert commonly held assumptions about identity, race, and ability.
This artist talk is presented in conjunction with the monthly SF First Thursday Art Walk in the Tenderloin & Lower Polk neighborhoods. For more information or to get a taste of Lord Frederick’s world, follow him on his Tik Tok, Instagram, or Twitter.
Phillip R. Ford, director of the cult film classic Vegas in Space (1991) and "honorary straight man" in the legendary San Francisco drag troupe Sluts A-Go-Go, presents a “stand up lecture with moving pictures” from his extensive “home movie” collection of performance documentation (& behind the scenes), including many scenes at the Tenderloin’s legendary Club 181!
Thursday June 29, 2023 | 5:30-7:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
In High Spots in a Low Dive: Doris Fish Home Movies 1981 to 1991, Ford presents a selection of greatest hits from his extensive “home movie” collection of videos from stage and TV performances together with many glimpses behind-the-scenes. Live onstage he shares his stories and reminiscences, along with a fabulous assortment of video hits from San Francisco in the 1980s, a rather forgotten period of drag theater history. Among the high spots are clips from Nightclub of the Living Dead, The Happy Hour Show, Bad Seed, Gay Cable Network and The Sluts A-Go-Go All Star Gang Bang and Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?.
Free/$10 Suggested Donation | Registration via Eventbrite
SEE & BE SCENE at Frameline47 June 14-24! Celebrate Pride all around San Francisco and Oakland with 11 days of 100+ queer films and spectacular parties. The Tenderloin Museum is a proud community partner of the featured film, Kokomo City.
Saturday, June 17, 2023 | 1 - 2:30pm
At the historic Castro Theatre!
429 Castro St. SF, CA 94114
Kokomo City is an electric portrait of the inner lives of four Black trans sex workers in America. The central quartet — Liyah Mitchell, Dominque Silver, Koko Da Doll, and Daniella Carter — narrate their own specific journeys navigating Blackness, sexuality, and gender while charting their own path to achieving their dreams for the future. Told with a candid vulnerability, their stories deliver unpredictable bouts of humor and raw humanity, packing the film with mile-a-minute insights into their everyday lives and undidactic observations on contemporary social constraints. Directed by D. Smith Running Time: 73 mins
Tickets $15.50 - $17.50
The Sunday Streets Tenderloin Community Block Party will transform Golden Gate Ave. into a car-free community space featuring free recreational activities, health resources, music, dance, and family-friendly fun. Tenderloin Museum will be tabling and presenting a “Sounds of the TL” live music program ft. The Four Fives.
Golden Gate Ave. (between Jones & Hyde streets)
Sunday June 4, 2023 | 12-5pm
Live musical performance by The Four Fives at 3pm
It’s the 15th year of Sunday Streets in San Francisco! Celebrate Tenderloin style on June 4th for a Community Block Party–from 12-5pm, Golden Gate Ave. between Jones & Hyde will be transformed into a car-free community space featuring fun, free activities provided by local nonprofits, community groups, and small businesses.
Tenderloin Museum will be tabling at the TL Community Block Party sharing neighborhood history, info about upcoming programs, and a “Sounds of the Tenderloin” musical performance by The Four Fives, the brainchild of artists Rasul Grayson and Chris Burch, aka Goya Goon, who’s resplendent 2021 mural “Jupiter Redding, returned, endowed with everything that this world denied them.” looks out over the intersection of Turk and Leavenworth in the heart of the TL. Influenced by inherently Black American genres that emerged when music media was limited to 33, 78, and 45 RPM vinyl playback, ‘The Four Fives’ infuse jazz, blues, soul, and hip hop in a way that re-envisions and redesigns the boundaries of hip-hop through poetry and storytelling, with testimony to the ever-evolving ode to Black radical imagination.
FREE!
Tenderloin Museum is honored to present highlights from The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play written by Donna Personna, Colette LeGrande, and Mark Nassar as part of the SF Pride 2023 Kick-Off: A Night of Queer Entertainment at the historic Castro Theatre.
Friday June 2, 2023
Doors 6:30pm | Show at 7pm
At the historic Castro Theatre!
429 Castro St. SF, CA 94114
This opening event for Pride month is a fundraiser for the organization that makes Pride come to life each year in San Francisco. The evening will also feature screenings of the films "Mrs. Vera’s Daybook" and "The Girl From 7th Avenue", multi-disciplinary performances by up-and-coming local legends, DJs, dancers, raffles, and a convivial time to mark the start of Pride. Join us to support SF Pride, celebrate intergenerational liberation, as well as to hear a special announcement about the future of the play! That’s right, you’ll hear it first at the Castro!
Tickets via Eventbrite ($20 Suggested Donation)
Join us for an opening reception for the first solo exhibition by the Black, blind, gay, sexy artist Lord Frederick and experience his journey of passion, fashion, cartoons & illustrations. See what he remembers seeing; see what he sees now.
June 1, 2023 5:30-7:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum
398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
With Memory of Sight, Lord Frederick invites attendees to “see what he remembers seeing, and to see what he sees now.” In a world increasingly dominated by visual culture, Lord Frederick upends the primacy of the visual, channeling his sensory understanding of the world to subvert commonly held assumptions about identity, race, and ability. Memory of Sight opens on June 1st, 2023 with an opening reception in conjunction with the monthly SF First Thursday Art Walk in the Tenderloin & Lower Polk neighborhoods; the artist will return on the first Thursday in July for an artist talk.
Free!
Celebrate the publication of Craig Seligman’s new book, Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag, at the Tenderloin Museum with a reading and discussion about that legendary queen’s “Sluts-a-Go-Go” era performances and the 1980s scene at the archetypal TL nightclub, Club 181, ft. Seligman, Silvana Nova, Phillip R. Ford, & Janice Sukaitis.
Thursday May 4, 2023 | 6-7:30pm
at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Free (or $10 suggested donation) | Register via Eventbrite
NYC based journalist Craig Seligman’s new book, Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag (Public Affairs, 2023), chronicles the life and times of one of San Francisco’s most prominent and beloved drag queens of the 1980s. Doris Fish story includes a key chapter in the Tenderloin, in which Doris’s irreverent drag troupe the Sluts-a-Go-Go coheres around Naked Brunch, a campy and chaotic live theatrical soap opera, and her performance and writing chops become more fully realized. The venue: Club 181 on Eddy St., an archetypal Tenderloin dive that mixed glamor and grit in the district’s distinct tenor. Join us for a trip through Doris’ scene at the 181; Seligman will read from his new book, we’ll screen performance documentation of these “Sluts-a-Go-Go” shows , and then the author will be joined by a cadre of performers in the Sluts’ circle–-Silvana Nova, Janice Sukaitis, and Phillip R. Ford–to discuss Ms. Fish and this legendary Tenderloin nightclub.
Time travel with us to experience the elaborate neon movie marquees that once saturated Market Street near San Francisco's Tenderloin.
Tuesday May 2, 2023 | 5:30pm - 7:30pmin-person at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
$10 Registration via Eventbrite
Between the 1930s–1960s, Market Street was home to a dense collection of cinemas between 5th and 10th Streets, with extravagant neon marquee and projecting signs. All but three of these movie theaters are now closed, and several of them were demolished; now it is a treasure hunt to discover these beautiful and mostly bygone neon signs where San Francisco's movie-lovers gathered from the near-by Tenderloin, Union Square shops, and beyond. Enter neon nirvana and spend an evening with Al Barna and Randall Ann Homan, founders of San Francisco Neon, with co-presenter Jim Van Buskirk, author of Celluloid San Francisco, to learn about Market Street’s rich history of neon on its many movie marquees!
Explore and celebrate the history of the labor movement in the TL with a presentation by Catherine Powell of the Labor Archives & Research Center at SFSU.
April 22, 2023 | 1-2:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94122
Free! No registration required
Union halls, labor art and education, titanic battles with the city’s employers, and breaking down racial barriers all inform labor’s rich and fascinating historical record in the TL. Join us for a special Saturday afternoon program that explores and celebrates the history of the labor movement in the Tenderloin with Catherine Powell of the Labor Archives & Research Center (LARC) at SFSU. For “Labor in the ‘Loin,” Powell will survey the districts’ deep vein of labor history and connect this lineage to current local unions. We’ll look to the past to see the city from the unique point of view of those who have worked in its garment factories, labored in its hotels, and performed in SF's renowned symphony and jazz halls; we’ll also examine the present day labor scene, including the neighborhood is home to the city’s largest private sector union, UNITE HERE Local 2, as well as the country’s first union to receive government funds to counsel immigrant workers, SEIU Janitors’ Local 87.
The ‘We Are Home’ Tenderloin Community Quilt returns to the Tenderloin Museum for another open quilting workshop with Mattie Loyce. Join us Wednesday afternoon to share your notions of home & contribute a square!
Wednesday April 5, 2023 | 4:30 - 6:00 pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St, San Francisco, CA 94102
FREE
The ‘We Are Home’ Tenderloin Community Quilt project is an art project focused on engaging the extended Tenderloin community in expressing the significance and meaning of ‘home’. Led by Mattie Loyce Community Development Manager from DISH (Delivering in Supportive Housing), from the fall/winter of 2022 – Spring 2023 the ‘We Are Home’ project will be hosting workshops throughout the Tenderloin where people can participate in creating individual quilt squares to contribute to what will be a greater Tenderloin Community Quilt completed by fall of 2023. The project will be amplifying the voices of people who have the lived experience of homelessness, and those that care for or live and work in community with unhoused neighbors.
Working class theater is powerful, fun and needed now more than ever. In this event, we will trace the lineage of activist workers’ theater in San Francisco from the California Labor School of the 1940’s to today’s Work Tales project. Our presentation will culminate with a performance by the janitor-actors of the Tenderloin based union, SEIU Local 87. They will share an excerpt of their work, Bread and Prosperity. The evening will be co-hosted by Bill Shields, director of Work Tales and Olga Miranda, President of Local 87.
Working Class Theater: from the California Labor School to Today
Thursday March 30, 2023 | 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
At the Tenderloin Museum 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Free event!
Join us to learn about the history of working class theater in San Francisco and how it intersects with labor organizing today, especially among immigrant workers in the post pandemic era. Working Class Theater: from the California Labor School to Today is presented as part of Education for Action: California Labor School, 1942 - 1957, a special exhibit in collaboration with San Francisco State’s Labor Archives and public program series, and is inspired by the CLS arts curricula. The Labor Archives is a Work Tales partner.
Swallow THIS, a short documentary, shows how the pandemic liberated people who take methadone and the need to abolish the methadone clinic system. Film screening + directors Helen Redmond and Marilena Marchetti in-person.
Thursday March 23, 2023 | 7:30pm - 9pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
FREE
Swallow THIS: A Documentary About Methadone and COVID-19 reveals what happened in methadone clinics during the pandemic. Federal agencies lifted rigid restrictions on take-home doses and everyone was eligible for 14 or 28 days of medication. No more standing in line six days a week to drink methadone. It was LIBERATION!
Directors Marilena Marchetti & Helen Redmond traveled across the country to document the impact of this unprecedented change. In bracingly honest interviews with patients, clinic staff, and drug-user activists from Connecticut to Tennessee, the filmmakers found that the new take-homes policy was adopted inconsistently and then ended.
Methadone clinics were created in the 1970s during the Nixon presidency and were designed to control, surveil, and punish patients. Now is the time to shut down these carceral facilities and allow methadone to be picked up at the pharmacy. It is time to free people who take methadone.
Swallow THIS is a call to action to abolish methadone clinics.
After the screening, join the directors for a Q & A conversation.
Runtime: 27min. View trailer here.
Marchetti and Redmond's feature-length documentary is Liquid Handcuffs: A Documentary To Free Methadone.
ABC7 and Tenderloin Museum invite you to attend the community screening of ABC7 Originals documentary “Injecting Hope” on Thursday, March 23, 2023, followed by panel Q&A with ABC7 News reporter Tara Campbell and San Francisco leaders working to address the drug overdose crisis.
Thursday, March 23, 2023 | Doors at 5:30pm Screening at 6pm
At the Tenderloin Museum 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
FREE | Register via Eventbrite
The ABC7 Originals documentary “Injecting Hope” takes viewers onto the streets of Vancouver to see how safe consumption sites, sometimes called safe injection sites, are saving lives amid the worst drug overdose crisis North America has ever seen.
From the mayor's office to the alleys of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, ABC7 News reporter Tara Campbell meets those trying to solve the drug overdose crisis and those caught in addiction.
Following the screening, Campbell will moderate a panel featuring:
Matt Dorsey, SF Supervisor
Lydia Bransten, The Gubbio Project
Ellen Grantz, Mothers Against Drug Addiction & Deaths
Laura Thomas, SF AIDS Foundation
Hillary Ronen, SF Supervisor
The event is free to attend. Doors at 5:30pm, screening & panel at 6pm. Learn more about the film at: https://abc7news.com/injecting-hope-safe-consumption-site-injection-vancouver-fentanyl/12665640/
Interdisciplinary historian Joseph Plaster shares a presentation about his recently published book, Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Susan Stryker and featuring Cecilia Chung & Anthony Cabello.
Ft. author Joseph Plaster with Susan Stryker, Cecilia Chung, & Anthony Cabello
Thursday March 16, 2023 | 5:30pm - 7pm
At the Tenderloin Museum: 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Free with registration via Eventbrite ($10 suggested donation)
Tenderloin Museum welcomes Joseph Plaster for a talk and panel discussion in celebration of his recently published Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin (Duke University Press). Focused on San Francisco’s Tenderloin, the book explores informal social support and mutual aid networks amongst abandoned and runaway queer youth, and in doing so excavates a history of queer life that has been overshadowed by major narratives of gay progress and pride.
For this event at the Tenderloin Museum, Plaster is joined by two of the voices featured in his prior “Polk Street Stories” project--Cecilia Chung, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Evaluation at Transgender Law Center, and Anthony Cabello, who currently manages Palo Alto Hotel, a Polk St. SRO. Moderating this panel is Susan Stryker, co-director of Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, the 2005 documentary that helped resurface the TL’s seminal act of queer resistance, and former executive director of the GLBT Historical Society, the archives at which were a critical source of Plaster’s research.
SF Urban Film Festival presents a program centered around two recent films that explore how community artists assume the role of catalysts, organizers, and ministers and often involve neighbors and residents in transformational acts of creation. Curated by Robin Abad Ocubillo and John Brett.
Friday March 10, 2023 | 6pm - 8:30pm
In person at The Tenderloin Museum
398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Register required via the SF Urban Film Festival’s program page
Rituals of communion, mourning, and celebration express the beating hearts of our communities. Often, community artists assume the role of catalysts, organizers, and ministers - involving neighbors and residents in transformational acts of creation.
With “Communion and Wellbeing: Arts and Outreach,” the SF Urban Film Festival presents a program at the Tenderloin Museum centered around two recent films, Jeanne Marie Hallacy’s He Had Wings (USA, 2022, 29 min) & ABD/Skywatchers’ The Slow Art of Belonging (USA, 2022, 38 min), that feature Mission and Tenderloin artists whose work with locals has adorned those neighborhoods with murals and performances, inspiring collective action while ritualizing belonging and identity.
After the screening, join us for a discussion with panelists responsible for impactful social ministry, health, and artistic creation in the Tenderloin and Mission neighborhoods. Featuring Rev. Dr. Glenda Hope, Founder and 40 years Director of SF Network Ministries, Celestina Pearl, LVN/Outreach Director St James Infirmary, Father Richard Smith, Chaplain, SF Night Ministry; moderated by program curators Robin Abad Ocubillo and John M. Brett.
Learn more about the SF Urban Film Festival and explore its full 2023 program at https://sfurbanfilmfest.com/2023/.
San Francisco Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus and Freedom Songs Revival converge for a joint concert that shares the tradition of song in working class culture and surveys their local living canon of labor songs plus a program of civil rights music.
Saturday, February 25, 2023 | 3pm - 4:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Free!
Coming together in song is a primal act of solidarity. For those who work and organize workers, songs are powerful units of cultural transmission and tools for building labor movements. Whether from the folkways or on the picket lines, labor songs not only are integral parts of the working class culture that sustained robust union activity in the 19th & 20th centuries but also tell the history of that culture and usher it into the present.
Tenderloin Museum welcomes the Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus and Freedom Songs Revival for a joint concert in celebration of Education for Action: California Labor School 1942-1957,TLM’s collaborative special exhibit with the Labor Archives at SFSU. Both of these labor choruses have deep roots in the Bay Area’s contemporary community of labor activists (as well as abundant overlap between their members & activities), and are uniquely suited to perform in an homage, continuation, and extension of the choral and labor song traditions practiced by CLS.
Treasured SF drag performer, educator, and artist Per Sia returns to the Tenderloin Museum for a Drag Story Hour at which she will use drag to read books that explore the themes of work and solidarity, subjects of TLM’s special exhibit about the California Labor School.
Saturday, February 25, 2023 | 11am - 12pm
At the Tenderloin Museum 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Free!
Drag Story Hour is Education for Action! The beloved program (originated in 2015 in SF!) features storytellers using the art of drag to read books to kids in libraries, schools, bookstores, and in this case the Tenderloin Museum! For this particular story hour, Per Sia selects titles that explore the connections between labor organizing, working class culture and drag performance, inspired by TLM’s current special exhibit Education for Action: California Labor School 1942 - 1957. Set against the backdrop of Legends of San Francisco, a photo and floral show celebrating elder queens, this special Drag Story Hour echoes the intergenerational exchange at the heart of the Legends of Drag project and its current exhibit in the TLM gallery.
A free musical performance featuring top talents in Bay Area jazz, vocalist Tiffany Austin & Destiny Muhammad, plus Tenderloin Voices, an original song cycle by Larkin Street Youth Artists & Composer/Trumpeter Sarah Wilson.
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Doors at 1:45pm | Performances from 2pm - 5pm
at GLIDE Memorial Church, 330 Ellis St. SF, CA 94102
Tenderloin Museum is honored to present its “Sounds of the Tenderloin” live music series in the Glide Memorial Church, a nexus for the history, community, and action that exemplify the Tenderloin’s potential for empowerment and transformation. Featuring an encore performance of the original song cycle Tenderloin Voices alongside sets by harpist Destiny Muhammad and vocalist Tiffany Austin, the program seeks to explore GLIDE’s core values by putting them into musical action.
Learn more about these projects and performers here.
Entry is free. Registration is encouraged but not required. Please visit: https://tlvoices.eventbrite.com
Please note that all attendees will need to wear a mask and provide proof of vaccine for entry.
Please join us for an open quilting workshop and contribute to the ‘We Are Home’ Tenderloin Community Quilt.
Thursday January 19, 2023 | 3:30 - 5:00pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St, San Francisco, CA 94102
FREE
The ‘We Are Home’ Tenderloin Community Quilt project is an art project focused on engaging the extended Tenderloin community in expressing the significance and meaning of ‘home’. Led by Mattie Loyce Community Development Manager from DISH (Delivering in Supportive Housing), from the fall/winter of 2022 – Spring 2023 the ‘We Are Home’ project will be hosting workshops throughout the Tenderloin where people can participate in creating individual quilt squares to contribute to what will be a greater Tenderloin Community Quilt completed by fall of 2023. The project will be amplifying the voices of people who have the lived experience of homelessness, and those that care for or live and work in community with unhoused neighbors.
Celebrate the opening of Legends of San Francisco, an exhibition of photos and florals celebrating the local drag queen elders featured in Legends of Drag: Queens of a Certain Age, with a party and drag show of legendary stature! Featuring performances by Donna Personna, Collette LeGrande, Olivia Hart, Carla Gay, Renita Valdez, & BeBe Sweetbriar, Joan Jett Blakk, plus MCs Juanita More & Sister Roma!
Thursday January 12, 2023 | 5:30-8pm
At the Tenderloin Museum 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
FREE
Inspired by a revelatory night at Aunt Charlie’s, artists Harry James Hanson, Devin Antheus, and Deb Leal began the project in the spring of 2018. It has grown to include 81 queens in 16 cities. Those portraits and accompanying stories from drag queen elders were published as Legends of Drag: Queens of A Certain Age in May 2022, from Abrams Books. Legends of San Francisco spotlights our local models, in the city where it all began. Knowing all of the queens involved, rest assured this opening reception will be the stuff of legends!
Inspired by the “People’s Songs Branch” gatherings at the California Labor School, San Francisco’s radical workers’ school with roots in the TL, Tenderloin Museum presents an inclusive group sing-a-long exploring labor songs, work songs, and more.
Thursday January 5, 2023 | 5:30-7:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St, San Francisco, CA 94102
FREE
To celebrate the opening of the special exhibit Education for Action: California Labor School, 1942 - 1957 (in collaboration with The Labor Archives and Research Center), Tenderloin Museum is hosting a sing-a-long in lieu of a reception so as to capture the participatory & inquisitive spirit of CLS, explore a wide-open repertoire with of labor songs, and gather with the purpose of singing together.
This event will utilize the In Song Sing On songbook, an ever growing collection of well loved and newly loved songs selected by a wide cast of contributors and compiled by artists David Wilson and Colter Jacobsen. Books will be passed around with lyrics, some guitar strummers will help hold the tune, and we will open up our voices toward one another. For this iteration of In Song Sing On, Wilson will be joined by fellow interdisciplinary artist Raphael Villet & will focus on labor songs and songs about work. All are welcome and encouraged to sing and to bring a song to share!