The Pacific Center for Human Growth, or simply the Pacific Center, is a community center focusing on LGBT people. [1] [2] The center operates from a Victorian house on Telegraph Avenue south of the University of California in Berkeley, California. [3]
The center was founded in 1973 as a response to a brutal gay bashing in downtown Oakland, [1] [4] a major city that neighbors Berkeley. Often referred to as the Berkeley LGBT or gay Center, it is the oldest LGBT community center in the Bay Area and the third oldest in the country. [5] Will Roscoe campaigned successfully in 1976 for United Way membership for the Pacific Center, the first LGBT agency to achieve this. [6]
The Oakland-East Bay Gay Men's Chorus was founded under the auspices of the Pacific Cent in 1999 before becoming an independent organization. [7]
In 2001 the Pacific Center was involved in trying to help the city curb cruising for sex by men in Berkeley Aquatic Park by getting the city to set up a support network for men who have sex with men that do not identify as gay or bisexual. However, funding was never acquired. [8]
In 2002 the center was vandalised with anti-gay and neo-Nazi-themed tagging, considered a hate crime by the center. [3] Flyers on the bulletin board at the entrance to the center were vandalized with the anti-gay slur "fag" and a swastika. [3]
When California legalized same-sex marriage in 2008, the youth group at the center marched around the neighborhood with the rainbow flag to celebrate the victory as the center was actively involved in campaigning for equal gay rights. [9]
The center, along with Berkeley and the larger surrounding region is known for their eclecticism and liberalism and the Pacific Center is not different.
In the past it has offered drag-quit smoking classes, [10] transgender film screenings, [11] and young queer women's groups among other unique initiatives. [12]
Today the center offers peer support groups alongside mental health counseling for LGBT people from the community. [13] There is also a drop-in after school program for LGBT, Questioning, and Intersex youth. [13]
The center is located along the AC Transit 1R BRT line and is within walking distance of Ashby BART station. [14]
Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.
San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay Area and the eighth most populated city in California. With a population of 440,646 in 2020, it serves as the Bay Area's trade center and economic engine: the Port of Oakland is the busiest port in Northern California, and the fifth busiest in the United States of America. The city was incorporated on May 4, 1852. Oakland is a charter city.
Emeryville is a city located in northwest Alameda County, California, in the United States. It lies in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, with a border on the shore of San Francisco Bay. The resident population was 12,905 as of 2020. Its proximity to San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, the University of California, Berkeley, and Silicon Valley has been a catalyst for recent economic growth.
The culture of San Francisco is major and diverse in terms of arts, music, cuisine, festivals, museums, and architecture but also is influenced heavily by Mexican culture due to its large Hispanic population, and its history as part of Spanish America and Mexico. San Francisco's diversity of cultures along with its eccentricities are so great that they have greatly influenced the country and the world at large over the years. In 2012, Bloomberg Businessweek voted San Francisco as America's Best City.
People in the San Francisco Bay Area rely on a complex multimodal transportation infrastructure consisting of roads, bridges, highways, rail, tunnels, airports, seaports, and bike and pedestrian paths. The development, maintenance, and operation of these different modes of transportation are overseen by various agencies, including the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the Association of Bay Area Governments, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. These and other organizations collectively manage several interstate highways and state routes, eight passenger rail networks, eight trans-bay bridges, transbay ferry service, local and transbay bus service, three international airports, and an extensive network of roads, tunnels, and bike paths.
The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus (SFGMC) is the world's first openly gay chorus, one of the world's largest male choruses and the group most often credited with creating the LGBT choral movement.
The GLBT Historical Society maintains an extensive collection of archival materials, artifacts and graphic arts relating to the history of LGBT people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California.
Oakland Gay Men's Chorus (OGMC) is a choral ensemble of some 60 voices, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area's East Bay. Membership is open to singers with voices in the tenor, baritone, and bass ranges. The chorus sings an annual season of three programs with concerts held in various East Bay communities. In addition, the group performs several outreach programs throughout the community each year. Its mission: The Oakland Gay Men's Chorus gives voice through song to a community where everyone matters.
Bay Street Emeryville is a large mixed-use development in Emeryville, California which currently has 65 stores, ten restaurants, a sixteen-screen movie theater, 230 room hotel, and 400 residential units with 1,000 residents.
The history of LGBT residents in California, which includes centuries prior to the 20th, has become increasingly visible recently with the successes of the LGBT rights movement. In spite of the strong development of early LGBT villages in the state, pro-LGBT activists in California have campaigned against nearly 170 years of especially harsh prosecutions and punishments toward gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people.
Victoria Kolakowski is an American lawyer who serves as a judge of the Alameda County Superior Court since January 2011. Kolakowski is the first openly transgender person to serve as a trial court judge of general jurisdiction in the United States, the first elected to a judgeship, and the first to serve as any type of judge in California..
Friends of Five Creeks is a regional community volunteer organization founded in 1996 by Sonja Wadman originally dedicated to the stewardship of creeks in northern Alameda County and western Contra Costa, California, United States. Education about wildlife and restoration is also a major facet of the FFC's mission.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of Asian and Pacific Islander ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally-specific identities. This timeline includes events both in Asia and the Pacific Islands and in the global Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora, as the histories are very deeply linked. Please note: this is a very incomplete timeline, notably lacking LGBTQ-specific items from the 1800s to 1970s, and should n0t be used as a research resource until additional material is added.
The Castro District, commonly referred to as the Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood through the 1960s and 1970s, the Castro remains one of the most prominent symbols of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activism and events in the world.
The White Horse Inn is a gay bar located at 6551 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland's Bushrod Park neighborhood. It officially opened in 1933 but is rumored to have operated as a gay speakeasy since before the end of Prohibition. It is said to be the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the United States, along with Cafe Lafitte in New Orleans, Louisiana which has also operated since 1933. The White Horse is situated geographically near the Oakland-Berkeley border and in close proximity to the University of California, Berkeley campus.
The GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance, sometimes GAPA, is a 501(c)(4) non-profit social welfare organization that was incorporated in February 1988 in San Francisco, California, as a social support group for gay and bisexual Asian Pacific Islander (API) men. It engages in direct social, cultural and political advocacy, with a vision of "a powerful queer and transger Asian and Pacific-Islander (QTAPI) community that is seen, heard, and celebrated," and a mission "to unite our families and allies to build a community through advocacy, inclusion, and love."
Robert Brokl is an American visual artist and activist based in the Bay Area, known for expressive woodblock printmaking and painting that has focused on the figure, landscape and travel for subject matter. His visual language combines the influences of German Expressionism, Japanese woodblock printing and the Bay Area Figurative Movement with a loosely autobiographical, Romantic interest in representing authentic personal experience, inner states and nature. Critics and curators characterize his style by its graphic line, expressive gestural brushwork, tactile surfaces and sensitivity to color, mood and light.
| Culture | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| History | |||
| Rights |
| ||
| Institutions | |||
| Media | |||
