Tenderloin Museum

In celebration of the recent publication of Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s new book, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco, Tenderloin Museum hosts the author for a double-header book talk with Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, fellow activist-artists and scholars of human sexuality, who will discuss their latest latest, Assuming the Ecosexual Position:The Earth as Lover. Program moderated by Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield. A celebration of the erotic performance cultures that have shaped San Francisco, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco (UC Press, 2024) explores a milieu that is indelibly intertwined with the Tenderloin’s history: the city's bohemian past and its essential role in the development of American adult entertainment by highlighting the contributions of women of color, queer women, and trans women who were instrumental in the city's labor history, as well as its LGBT and sex workers' rights movements. Otálvaro-Hormillosa utilizes visual and performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic research (including participant observation as both performer and spectator), and interviews with legendary burlesquers and strippers to share a remarkable history and to frame an intersection of art, activism, performance, and human sexuality. Otálvaro-Hormillosa explores how, in the 1960s, topless entertainment became legal in San Francisco for the […]

Trans Temporal Resistances is the closing public program for Transition Times: Re-Membering Anticarceral Resistance in the Tenderloin, an archival exhibit contextualizing the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria. Program curators Emji Saint Spero and Leila Weefur invite writers and artists to engage with trans archives and architectures through performance.

Tenderloin Museum has teamed up with our neighbors to offer an evening-length experience of our block at its best! The “Leavenworth Passport” starts at TLM for a historical mini-tour of the 300 block of Leavenworth St., stops at Azalina’s for a tasting menu of Mamak Malaysian cuisine, and lands at the Black Cat for an evening of live jazz by the Joel Wenhardt Quintet Feat. Vocalist Georgia Heers! Visit the Tenderloin Museum to learn more!