Saturday, August 29, 2026 | 2:00-3:30 PM

Meet at the SW corner of Geary and Powell Street, Union Square

Register to attend via Humanitix

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. 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. 

Saturday September 5, 2026 | 1-2:30pm

Meet at Le Marais Bakery | 1138 Sutter St. St. SF, CA 94109

Linda Day, TLM’s resident expert on the Tenderloin’s built environment, debuts another close look at an architect who defined the neighborhood’s style. James Francis Dunn was a self-taught architect raised by a widowed mother in a working-class Irish-American Mission District neighborhood. Enchanted by Beaux Arts architecture, Dunn studied architectural journals to learn the design flourishes that would make his buildings all things French. Hotel Essex at 684 Ellis, designed by Dunn with an Art Nouveau flavor, was constructed to "evoke the urban character of life on a Parisian boulevard." Dunn designed in many other styles, including Moorish as with the 860 Geary Street Alhambra Apartments, designed with Daniel Kearns. With the Tenderloin Museum closed for repair, this tour of Dunn’s six Tenderloin buildings begin and end at Le Marais Bakery, 1138 Sutter Street, a Tenderloin French outpost.

$15 | Register to attend via Humanitix

Thursday September 10, 2026 | 5-8pm

At Dodge Alley (Turk & Larkin St.)

2nd Thursdays at Dodge Alley welcomes the return of ELENAH to the Tenderloin. The genre-defying musical project of Bay Area artist (and longtime Hyde St. Studios engineer) David Saenz invokes a multitude of Latin American and Afro-diasporic sounds–reggae, cumbia, bolero, hip-hop–to conjure high-energy, socially conscious songs that speak to resilience, migration, love, and begs listeners to get up on their feet and dance.

David Saenz first brought his ascendent Spanish-language, reggae-forward band ELENAH to Tenderloin for TLM’s inaugural season of concerts in Dodge Alley in 2022. Since then, the band has released several collections of original music and performed widely around the Bay Area and beyond, becoming mainstays of several local music scenes, but noted for their musical rigor and high-octane performances. The Los-Angeles born, Ecuadorian-American Saenz has a knack for synthesizing a truly multicultural set of sonic influences into catchy, danceable songs that speak to migration and resilience as naturally as love and happiness. Afro-Carribean grooves marry to Latin American styles with a punk-rock delivery. Learn more at https://elenamusica.net/bio .

Free to attend | No registration required

$15 vouchers for food/drink at nearby businesses first come first serve