Mythologizing the Polkstrasse: Memoir & Memory
ft. author William Martin
Thursday January 23, 2025 | 6 - 7:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
$10 Suggested Donation | Register via Humanitix
Readings and discussion exploring queer life on Polk St. from the gayborhood's 1970s heyday and celebrating William Martin's expansive book series San Francisco: the Luxury of Eccentricity. Featuring the author & friends David Nemoyten, Dirk Alphin and Juanita MORE!
Author William Martin has described Polk St. in the 1970s as the “epicenter of Gay Civilization.” With an emergent culture of queer liberation, San Francisco occupied a mythical place in queer consciousness, and Martin’s expansive novel series–San Francisco: the Luxury of Eccentricity–casts this mythical time and place in an epic light. The books chronicle the “adventures and misadventures of young, queer, gender-fluid Twink, Trevor Oliver Tadich III from 1970s until present day” as he finds himself and makes his home in SF. The tales form a coming out, a coming-of-age, and “coming-of-place” for both Trevor and the city itself.
Within these fictions are richly detailed accounts of Polk St. during its “gayborhood” heyday and during a formative moment in the LGBTQ Movement. These books conjure a colorful and entertaining picture of these times and places from the perspective of someone who lived them. Martin is a raconteur with great panache, and his prose is effervescent and unfettered, matching the energy of its subjects. The Polk St. scene–the old Polkstrasse–is rendered in a sprawling, semi-fictionalized universe where memoir and memory transmute into a prolific creative opus.
Stage Struck, the 7th book in San Francisco: the Luxury of Eccentricity, was published in the final days of 2024 and follows Trevor Oliver Tadich III as he becomes enthralled with theater and film. Like his protagonist, Martin thrived in the theater and film scenes of San Francisco–in addition to being a longtime denizen of the Polkstrasse, Martin is a prolific playwright who was deeply involved with Theatre Rhinocerous and the San Francisco Playwright’s Center, as well as an actor and independent filmmaker in addition to his more recent novelistic pursuits.
To celebrate Martin’s series, the importance of Polk St. history, and the power of memoir and storytelling to shape that history, Tenderloin Museum hosts a reading by the author plus discussion with some of his longtime friends and compatriots from the Polkstrasse: David Nemoyten, Dirk Alphin and Juanita MORE! Join us for this special program exploring queer memoir and memory and “mythologizing the Polkstrasse” at the Tenderloin Museum!
Legendary queer photographer Dan Nicoletta had this to say about Life in an Ivory Tower–Book 1 of San Francisco: the Luxury of Eccentricity:
“There are many reasons that memoirs about the heyday of queer liberation in the mid - 70’s in the Bay Area abound now. The ubiquity and popularity of print on demand format has thankfully ushered forth a sea-change of accessibility, and the era in question is one of grand social experimentation that helped foster the blossoming of a long simmering civil rights movement for LGBT equality that pre-dates the 70’s.
Who wouldn’t want to get at the heart of such an epic chapter in human history, especially if that story happens to be their own? This is true for both writers and readers. The endeavors beg the question – was it a dream? What DID happen then and why? And how did we or our forebears pass through those rites of passage with or without scarring and (hopefully) with our élan still intact.
Enter the speaker’s voice which is what sets these kinds of books apart. William Martin does not mince words intellectually and can thankfully also turn a phrase. His wit and his grasp of poignance and social relevance make his book a page turner.
Never mind that I am uniquely fascinated by the early days of Polk Street and how that morphed into queers essentially taking over the region and how that impacted the Nation and the world and history. This book has it all without exercising the need to include it all, and it does so by staying focused adeptly on personal narrative… William Martin’s amusing perspective is a delightful carnival ride – get on!”
ABOUT WILLIAM MARTIN
My first story, at age 5, was about the adventures of a fish who was flushed down the toilet post flush. In second grade Mrs. Sleusser Read us the classic Grimm Fairy Tales in the afternoon once she had pounded out "When The Caissons Go Rolling Along" on the upright to get us to settle down. One day she asked us to write our own Fairy Tale. Mine was about a lonely Prince who dove down to the bottom of the ocean in search of the pearl of great price. My story was a great hit with Mrs. Sleuser. She sent me to the sixth grade classroom to read it out loud. From that day onwards, everyone told me I should be a writer. That same year I wrote a Charlie Brown play for my Boy Scout troop about Snoopy turning his doghouse into an airplane. I gave Snoopy all the lines because I wanted to play the part. They told me that was selfish because I had written the play. I sulked and by the time I was over myself all the parts have been passed out except for Pigpen who had two lines and Lucy who had the second most lines to Snoopy. I ended up playing Lucy. Eighth grade found me in a Catholic school writing risqué plays that got me in the doghouse with the nuns. As an Act of Contrition I volunteered to run the school newspaper. My pen scribbled a mile a minute in high school. More plays. A journal. Poetry. Stories in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald and a term paper on Method Acting where I never managed to string together my 1000 index cards of informational bits in a way that made any kind of sense. For my Senior paper I compared Blanche Dubois with Antigone. Mr. Black felt there was a problem with my reality testing and maintained that these two should never be in the same paper together.
Twenty years later I would win awards and scholarships in my Humanities Masters for wild juxtaposition and interdisciplinary pastiche. My 20's prolifically multiplied into one play after another. I experimented with the style of Noel Coward, Chekov, Strindberg, Tennessee Williams, and Brecht. I was chairman of the San Francisco Playwright’s Center where 15 of my plays saw staged readings and elsewhere there were five full productions. I was a member of the historic Playwright’s unit of Theatre Rhinocerous during the AIDS years. Feeling increasingly constricted by the play writing form I broke out and wrote a pretty terrible romance novel that sprawled through the life of an imaginary Maria Callas opera diva. I did get an agent in New York but after two years of back-and-forth with the agent it ended up in a box in the back of my closet. A couple of years later I got my masters in Humanities. I won the graduate achievement award. My first published book "Dance of the Animal Spirit Through History" is that thesis which won special distinction. I probably should've kept going with the wild, rogue writing style I was developing but I went and got another Masters in counseling. I won a Graduate Achievement award for that Master’s program as well. Then, I disappeared into a sea of clinical writing and reports for the next 10 years. I did keep 10 years worth of journals and there were a few really amazing ones. But I lost them all in a move. As well as all of my Humanities graduate papers. I intend to re-create some of them and expand them into books.
At age 40, I broke out of my clinical corset and reached back to retrieve my teenage dream of being an actor. Somehow, this led to me co-authoring a cheesy horror movie Feature and then I Co wrote an award winning Beat romance feature which I also starred in. I did that collaboration with Palm D'Or winning filmmaker Rob Nilsson. Sadly, in 2010 I fell into a depression which lasted for many years. Circa 2019 I rose from the ashes of that rough patch and these last years have seen a Renaissance of writing. I have done an Art History Blog. have written the rough draft of a cutting-edge take on Borderline Personality Disorder. I have published a post modern, fractured, puzzle piece collection of a book series all about various places in San Francisco and how they interface with my history and my family's five generations of living in California. I also step back even further and view these places in the light of San Francisco history and cultural trends. Most of all I try to entertain in a very quirky way. Recently I finished up a Masters in Theological Studies and Social Justice , leaving me free to write like a fiend!