| Paper Doll Club | |
|---|---|
| Location | 524 Union Street, San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 37°48′03″N122°24′29″W / 37.800753°N 122.408143°W |
| Founded | 1949–1961 |
| Owner | Tom Arbulich (1949–1954), Dante Benedetti (1954–1961) |
| Designated | June 25, 2019 |
| Reference no. | 287 |
The Paper Doll Club, also known as Paper Doll, was an LGBTQ bar and supper club in operation from 1949 to 1961, and located at the corner of Cadell Place and Union Street (now 524 Union Street) in the North Beach neighborhood in San Francisco, California. [1] [2] [3] [4] It is believed to be one of the earliest lesbian bars in the city. [4]
The former building has been a designated San Francisco landmark since 2019. [5]
Tom Arbulich owned the bar from 1949 to 1956; Arbulich had helped open the business with Mona Sargent, the owner of Mona's 440 Club. [2] It was found as an upscale gathering spot, serving the neighborhood queer community. [2] It started as a bar, and later turned into a bar and supper club. [2] Prior to 1955, serving alcohol to 'known homosexuals' was illegal, and homosexual acts were banned. [6]
The film noir, The Sniper (1952) was partially filmed inside the Paper Doll Club, [7] though moviegoers who were not familiar with the club did not learn from the dialogue that regular customers were queer. From 1956 to 1961, the club was owned by Dante Benedetti, a North Beach restaurateur and baseball coach. [1] [2] Patrons and performers of the bar included Carmen McRae, [7] Ann Weldon, [7] and Lillian Faderman. [4]
In total, a collection of San Francisco LGBT venues opened and flourished in the early 1950s, including the Paper Doll, The Beige Room, Tommy's Place/12 Adler Place, Miss Smith’s Tea Room, Tin Angel, Dolan's, and Gordon's. [2] In 1961, Benedetti sold the business to Don Farber, a professional baseball player who renamed it Cadell Place. [4] Later the space became the "Manhattan Towers", a lesbian bar owned by Katherine James. [1]
It was featured in the Kim Anno art exhibition "Lost and Found: A Museum of Lesbian Memory, Part 1" (2000) shown at "The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society of Northern California," and at the San Francisco Public Library. [8]
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+) clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBTQ+ communities.
The Frameline Film Festival began as a storefront event in 1976. The first film festival, named the Gay Film Festival of Super-8 Films, was held in 1977. The festival is organized by Frameline, a nonprofit media arts organization whose mission statement is "to change the world through the power of queer cinema". It is the oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in the world.
The Tavern Guild was an association of gay bar owners and liquor wholesalers that formed in 1962 in San Francisco, California, and lasted until 1995.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) 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 not be used as a research resource until additional material is added.
The following outline offers an overview and guide to LGBTQ topics:
The Lexington Club, often referred to as The Lex, was a dive bar, primarily catered towards queer women, in the Mission District in the American city of San Francisco, California. It was recognized as one of the central landmarks for LGBTQ culture, especially for lesbians and queer women, in San Francisco. The club was founded in 1997 and closed at the end of April 2015.
Beverly Shaw was an American nightclub singer whose career centered on lesbian clubs in California. She was also the owner of a gay nightclub in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Rikki Streicher (1922–1994) was an American activist and community leader in San Francisco's LGBTQ movement. In the 1960s, she had an active leadership role in the Society for Individual Rights, an organization that promoted equal rights for gays and lesbians. In 1966, she opened and ran Maud's, a year prior to the San Francisco’s Summer of Love; it stayed open for 23 years, at that time the longest continuously running lesbian-owned lesbian bar in the country. She opened a second bar, Amelia’s, in 1978 in the city’s Mission district, with both venues serving as makeshift community centers for lesbians who had very few accepting socializing options. In the early 1980s, she was a co-founder of the international Gay Olympics, later called Gay Games, she helped to create the Federation of Gay Games and served on the board of directors. In 1994, she received the Dr. Tom Waddell Award for her contribution to Gay Athletics.
Maud's was a lesbian bar at 937 Cole Street in San Francisco's Cole Valley neighborhood which opened in 1966 and closed in 1989. At the time of its closing, which was captured in the film, Last Call at Maud's, it was claimed to be the oldest lesbian bar in the United States. Its history, documented in the film and other media, spanned almost a quarter-century of LGBTQ events.
Peg's Place was a San Francisco lesbian bar (1950s–1988) and the site of an assault in 1979 by off-duty members of the San Francisco vice squad, an event which drew national attention to other incidents of anti-gay violence and police harassment of the LGBTQ community and helped propel an unsuccessful citywide proposition to ban the city's vice squad altogether. Historians have written about the incident when describing the tension that existed between the police and the LGBT community during the late 1970s.
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.
A lesbian bar is a drinking establishment that caters exclusively or predominantly to lesbian women. While often conflated, the lesbian bar has a history distinct from that of the gay bar.
Mona's 440 Club was the first lesbian bar to open in San Francisco, California in 1936. It continued to draw a lesbian clientele into the 1950s. Mona's and the gay bars of that era were an important part of the history of LGBT culture in San Francisco.
The Tay-Bush Inn raid was a police raid on an all-night, one-room café in San Francisco, California around 3 a.m. on September 14, 1961. There 103 LGBT patrons were arrested. It is considered a pivotal event in the history of LGBT rights in San Francisco. It was the largest raid on a gay bar in this city, and received the most press coverage. The arrested were described in the press as mostly white and middle class men.
Tommy's Place and 12 Adler Place were two interconnected lesbian bars in the North Beach district of San Francisco. Together, they created the first business in San Francisco that was owned and managed by out lesbians, beginning in the late 1940s. Tommy's Place/12 Adler Place was the site of an infamous 1954 police raid, during the era of the Lavender Scare. The raid was heavily covered by local media and ultimately contributed to the bar's 1955 closure.
The Beige Room, also known simply as Beige Room, was an American nightclub known for gay female impersonators, in operation from 1949 to 1958 and located at 831 Broadway in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, California.
The Tin Angel was a lesbian nightclub, live music venue, and restaurant in operation from 1953 to 1961, on the Embarcadero at 981 Embarcadero in San Francisco, California, U.S. The venue and its founder were credited as "spearheading the 'Jazz on the Waterfront' movement" in the 1950s. In 1958, the club ownership changed and it was renamed On-The-Levee, before its closure in July 1961.
Miss Smith's Tea Room was a gay and lesbian bar in operation from 1954 to 1960 in the North Beach neighborhood at 1353 Grant Avenue in San Francisco, California, U.S.. It was a lesbian pickup spot, known for its Wednesday poetry nights and was a hangout for Beat poets. It is considered a pioneering gay bar, and had historically faced legal issues in order to maintain operations.
TheAnxious Asp was a lesbian and bohemian bar in operation from 1958 to 1967 at 528 Green Street in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, California, U.S..
| Businesses | |
|---|---|
| Geography | |
| Public art | |
| Religion | |
| Transportation | |
