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. [1] [2]
The Guild was the first gay business association in the United States, formed in response to rising tensions between the police and gay people. This coalition helped unify and protect gay bars and bartenders by fixing drink prices, developing a phone network to track police raids, and setting up funds for members who were unemployed. They also organized many fundraisers and charity events, including the annual Beaux Arts Ball. [3]
The Tavern Guild was founded on a Tuesday night in 1962 at the Suzy-Q, a gay bar on Polk Street. Phil Doganiero, a popular bartender at Suzy Q, was elected the first president of the organization, succeeded by Bill Plath (owner of the D'Oak Room) and Darryl Glied (owner of the Jumpin' Frog) in the following years. . [4] [5] The organization met weekly to discuss the various issues of the gay bar community, including the constant police raids and discrimination. In order to bring business to the bars and protect its members, the Guild fixed drink prices so that bars wouldn't compete with each other, as well as monitored and eradicated unsafe business practices and rumormongering (straight bar owners had a habit of marketing themselves as a gay bar if their business was struggling and then turn away homosexuals once their bar was doing better [6] ). Showing a unified front also helped keep the police and the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) off their backs, and helped relations between alcohol distributors and Guild bars. [7] [8]
One of the first things the Tavern Guild set up was a phone networking system that kept track of police and Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control movements, warning bars that were about to be raided. They also set up a loan fund for Guild members that were left unemployed due to police raids and shutdowns, making sure good bartenders stayed employed. [9] As the organization developed from a small group of drinking buddies to a large non-profit charity, the Guild put on many fundraising events. Hosted at bars or featuring many drinking activities, these events helped the Guild become a huge financial and political force, one that could push an LGBTQ civil rights agenda and hold sway with politicians. [10] They held Monday night auctions to increase patronage at various bars, hosted annual Election Day Parties as well as an annual picnic in Marin County known for its drinking games and cruising. [11]
One of the most important events the Tavern Guild sponsored was the annual Halloween drag ball, known as the Beaux Arts Ball. It was San Francisco's first large public drag ball, [12] beginning in 1963 and continuing well into the 70's. [11] During the 1965 Ball, José Sarria was named queen of the ball, then declared himself Empress, which became tradition. Every year at the ball an Empress would be elected to lead newly established Imperial Court System. [13] By 1980 the Guild had at least 184 members and 86 businesses, and gay bar communities in other cities were forming their own versions. [5]
The Tavern Guild helped raise money for many organizations, including the Society for Individual Rights and homophile organizations such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. They also helped raise money for people not part of the LGBTQ community, including the United Farm Workers and the Civil Rights Movement, even raising funds to send delegates to Selma. [11] Of the many service-oriented fundraising projects that were started by the Tavern Guild, the Community Thrift Store remains in operation in San Francisco's Mission District. While the Tavern Guild disbanded in 1995, Community Thrift Store continues to operate under The San Francisco Tavern Guild Foundation with all proceeds benefiting Bay Area charitable organizations. [14]
The Stonewall riots, also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall, were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighborhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered the watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
The Daughters of Bilitis, also called the DOB or the Daughters, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. The organization, formed in San Francisco in 1955, was conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were subject to raids and police harassment. As the DOB gained members, their focus shifted to providing support to women who were afraid to come out. The DOB educated them about their rights, and about gay history. The historian Lillian Faderman declared, "Its very establishment in the midst of witch-hunts and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not because of what they did, but merely because of who they were." The Daughters of Bilitis endured for 14 years, becoming an educational resource for lesbians, gay men, researchers and mental health professionals.
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A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT communities.
José Julio Sarria, also known as The Grand Mere, Absolute Empress I de San Francisco, and the Widow Norton, was an American political activist from San Francisco, California, who in 1961 became the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States. He is also remembered for performing as a drag queen at the Black Cat Bar and as the founder of the Imperial Court System.
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The Black Cat Bar or Black Cat Café was a bar in San Francisco, California. It originally opened in 1906 and closed in 1921. The Black Cat re-opened in 1933 and operated for another 30 years. During its second run of operation, it was a hangout for Beats and bohemians but over time began attracting more and more of a gay clientele, and becoming a flashpoint for what was then known as the homophile movement, a precursor to the gay liberation movement that gained momentum in the 1960s.
The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, situated between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. It encompasses about 50 square blocks, and is a large wedge/triangle in shape. It is historically bounded on the north by Geary Street, on the east by Mason Street, on the south by Market Street and on the west by Van Ness Avenue. The northern boundary with Lower Nob Hill has historically been set at Geary Street. The area has among the highest levels of homelessness and crime in the city.
The Black Cat Tavern is an LGBT historic site located in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In 1967, it was the site of one of the first demonstrations in the United States protesting police brutality against LGBT people, preceding the Stonewall riots by over two years.
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.
Personal Rights in Defense and Education (PRIDE) was a gay political organization. Established in 1966 as a radical gay political organization that from its origination set a new tone for gay political groups like the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), ACT UP and the Radical Faeries. PRIDE led aggressive, unapologetic, demonstrations against the oppression by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) of gay gatherings or same-sex meetings in the city of Los Angeles. PRIDE's monthly single-page newsletter evolved into The Advocate, the nation's longest running gay news publication.
Finocchio'sClub was a former nightclub and bar in operation from 1936 to 1999 in North Beach, San Francisco, California. The club started as a speakeasy called the 201 Club in 1929, located at 406 Stockton Street. In 1933, with the repeal of prohibition, the club moved upstairs and started to offer female impersonation acts; after police raids in 1936 the club relocated to the larger 506 Broadway location. Finocchio's night club opened June 15, 1936 and was located in San Francisco, California, above Enrico's Cafe at 506 Broadway Street in North Beach.
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.
Sexuality, including same-sex sexuality, and other non-normative forms of sexuality have been central to the history of Chinatown, San Francisco. San Francisco's Chinatown, founded in 1848, is the first and largest in the United States. San Francisco was shaped by early Chinese immigrants, who came from the Guangdong province of southern China. These immigrants gathered in the Bay Area in order to join in the California Gold Rush and to build railroads in the American west. San Francisco's Chinatown made room for these early Chinese immigrants to live, and the area turned into a "bachelor society", where female prostitution was pervasive because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. As a racialized immigration region, Chinatown was viewed as an immoral place with the characteristics of "vice", "sluttery" and "sexual deviance" for a long time. These traits were incompatible with the mainstream culture and dominant norms of American society. From the mid-19th century, the state problematized Chinese female prostitution with the subject of sexual transmission, and the government began to go against industrial prostitution in Chinatown, as well as Chinese immigration. As the sex industry grew throughout the Bay Area, the government had to stop the anti-prostitution and anti-immigration law in the beginning of the 20th century. Just like the Castro district and other areas, Chinatown developed its own sexual industries and provided a variety of sexual entertainment to both immigrants and white visitors.
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