398 Eddy Street
San Francisco, CA, 94102
415-351-1912
San Francisco California
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Tenderloin Museum is thrilled to partner with Unspeakable Vice, “a volunteer history initiative making queer belonging accessible to everyone,” to offer a monthly walking tour focused on the LGBTQIA+ history in the Tenderloin and Polk Street neighborhoods.
Saturday, October 18, 2025 | 2:00-4:00 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.
Thursday, October 30, 2025 | 5:30-7:30pm
at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
FREE | Register to attend via Humanitix
ABC7 hosts a special community screening of Tara Campbell’s ABC7 Originals documentary, A Mother’s Hope, followed by a panel conversation with the women she interviewed.
Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 6:00-8:00 PM
835 Larkin St. (The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot venue)
FREE! | No registration required | All welcome
Part of SF First Thursday Art Walk
Join sculptor, meditation instructor, and longtime Tenderloin community member Ramekon O’Arwisters for Crochet Jam, a community art experience rooted in the African-American tradition of weaving in a calm, nonjudgmental space. O’Arwisters founded Crochet Jam in 2012 and has organized scores of them in the TL, around SF, and beyond; this iteration will be hosted at TLM’s venue for The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play at 835 Larkin St. near the epicenter of the monthly SF First Thursday Art Walk. Over 2024-2025, Tenderloin Museum tapped O’Arwisters to participate in an “Artist Circle” convened by the Tenderloin Museum for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Shaping Legacy project, a multi-year equity-focused initiative by SFAC to critically examine the monuments and memorials in San Francisco’s Civic Art collection. On the heels of this work, TLM invited the artist to share his signature community practice–the Crochet Jam–in a space that hosts community theater memorializing a pivotal overture in the Tenderloin’s timeline and LGBTQ Movement.
Thursday November 13, 2025 | 5-8pm
At Dodge Alley (Turk & Larkin St.)
Free to attend | No registration required
$15 vouchers for food/drink at nearby businesses first come first serve
TLM teams up with Movement, a local “musical discovery platform” highlighting immigrant musicians, to present a special musical encounter between master musicians for 2nd Thursdays at Dodge Alley. Our November program features Salma Al Assal, a renowned Sudanese vocalist who specializes in aghaani banaat–a repertoire of party music performed by women for weddings and other celebrations. Al Assal–whose name translates to “Sweet Honey Salma”--fuses traditional Sudanese sounds with reggae and American soul to create a rousing, original style sure to bring joy to the streets of the TL! The Tenderloin has been home to a large and multitudinous diaspora from the Arab world going back to the 1960s, and at present sports the only explicitly Sudanese restaurant in the Bay Area (Z Zoul). TLM is thrilled to bring a star of the Arab music scene for a free, outdoor concert for the Tenderloin community. Al Assal will be joined by a special musical collaborator from a different musical tradition, TBA.
Saturday, November 15, 2025 | 2:00-3:30 PM
Meet at Tenderloin Museum, 398 Eddy St., SF, CA 94102
$15: Tour only / $25: Tour + museum admission
Explore the rich architectural history of the Tenderloin on a guided walking tour by historian Linda Day that highlights the neighborhood’s early 20th-century building boom. Between 1906 and 1929, a small group of talented local architects helped shape the Tenderloin’s distinctive character, designing elegant apartments, hotels, and theaters in a range of styles—from Beaux-Arts to Moorish Revival.
Tenderloin Museum is thrilled to partner with Unspeakable Vice, “a volunteer history initiative making queer belonging accessible to everyone,” to offer a monthly walking tour focused on the LGBTQIA+ history in the Tenderloin and Polk Street neighborhoods.
Saturday, November 29, 2025 | 2:00-4:00 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.
