Thursday July 16, 2026 | 6:30-8:30 pm

NEW LOCATION! UC Law SF Auditorium, 198 McAllister St., Lower Level

Celebrate Tenderloin Museum’s 11th Anniversary with a special presentation of West is West, featuring director David Rathod and actor Sumati Patel in conversation with novelist Shruti Swamy. Shot on location in the mid-1980s, this jaunty rom-com follows Vikram, a would-be student from Mumbai whose college plans quickly disintegrate, as he lands a room and a job in a Tenderloin SRO and falls in love with a plucky, punky artist working at a Market St. cinema. While he finds his footing in work and love, his visa runs low, imperiling his new life in San Francisco. Exploits ensue, making for a highly entertaining, fast-paced romp of a film that also happens to quite realistically portray the milieu of the TL at that time, with its network of Indian run residential hotels and seedy culture of movie-going on the bedraggled Mid-Market strip, as well as the ever-present challenges immigrants face attempting to live and work in America. All this, and a love story!

Originally released in 1987, this overlooked gem of local independent cinema stars Ashutosh Gowariker, who would go on to direct the Oscar-nominated Bollywood smash Lagaan, and was directed by David Rathod, who still lives locally and is an active filmmaker. Rathod will present West Is West in person, after which he and Sumati Patel, an actor in the film, will be in conversation with San Francisco-based writer Shruti Swamy. 

$10 | Register to attend via Humanitix

Monday July 20, 2026 | 7pm book event (6pm Appalachian music pre-show)

At Medicine For Nightmares | 3036 24th St. SF, CA 94110

Jesse Montgomery’s new book,  It Is Not Enough To Survive: The Young Patriots Story, chronicles one of the New Left’s most evocative and enigmatic anti-racist organizations composed of poor white Southern migrants who helped found Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition. Formed in the late 1960s, the YPO grew from a local street gang into a powerful political and social force in the city’s Uptown neighborhood, where it fought against police brutality, racism, economic exploitation, and displacement through community organizing, the establishment of survival programs, and working-class cultural organizations.

The milieu that created the YPO has several direct links to San Francisco and the Tenderloin by way of the radical student movements of the ‘60s and Oakland’s Black Panther Party. But more broadly speaking, the aims, discourse, and challenges of the YPO should resound in the Tenderloin. Our neighborhood, like the YPO’s Uptown Chicago, has been characterized by its dense population of embattled tenants, transplants, immigrants, and refugees struggling on the margins (or just outside of) the working class and perennially fighting against forces of urban renewal. 

Due to TLM's unanticipated facilities-related closure, we are teaming up with our friends at Medicine for Nightmare, the superlative independent bookstore and community event space in the Mission, to co-present their event with Jesse Montgomery on Monday 7/20 at 7pm. Please join us there! Arrive early (6-7pm) to hear some old-time Appalachian music in homage to The Young Patriots while shopping at Medicina's excellently curated selection!" James Tracy, co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power, a book that helped open the field for Montgomery’s scholarly focus on the YPO, will introduce the author, Chika Okoye (Center For Political Education), and Finn Finneran.

No registration required | more info via Medicine For Nightmares website

Thursday July 30, 2026 | 6pm

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

NEW LOCATION: 835 Larkin St. SF, CA 94109 (Compton’s venue!)

It is the greatest comeback since Lazarus! Bambi Lake has risen from the dead in the form of a new book. Wow. Did you hear? This book, aptly titled, Devour Me, Again, features poetry and an interview series—words of wisdom and revolution, a time long gone; glitter, glam, queens colliding, and, of course, some gossip…

Out July 21 via Nightboat Books, this volume was edited by August Bernadicou of the LGBTQ History Project, a non-profit digital archive that preserves primary sources of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement and makes accessible thousands of hours of oral histories with queer activists, performers, and “cutting edge catalysts.” Bay Area writer, rocker, and multi-valent performance artist Brontez Purnell contributed a beautifully witness reflection on Lake as a forward; Purnell will read at the July 30 TLM event alongside Donna Personna, Britney Smears, Stanley Frank, Fauxnique, Tahara, August Bernadicou, Birdie Bob Watt, and Nicole Henares and MORE!

Free to attend | Register via LGBTQ History Project Partiful