| The Beige Room | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Restaurant information | |
| Established | 1949 |
| Closed | 1958 |
| Previous owner(s) | Al Burgess, Chinkie Naditz |
| Street address | 831 Broadway, San Francisco, California |
| Coordinates | 37°47′50″N122°24′39″W / 37.797184°N 122.410795°W |
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. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The club was owned by Al Burgess and Chinkie Naditz; [5] and was founded in 1949 at 2215 Powell Street, and it moved in 1951 to the Broadway address. [6] On Sundays The Beige Room would host dance parties. [7]
The performers were openly gay, unlike at other female impersonator clubs at the time. [4] The Beige Room performers included owner Al Burgess, [8] T.C. Jones, Lynne Carter, Leslie Marlowe, Ray Saunders, and Kenneth Marlowe. [7] José Sarria performed at The Beige Room before moving to the Black Cat Bar. [6] Lynne Carter was a club headliner, she was famous for doing impersonations of Pearl Bailey and Josephine Baker and would often socialize with the patrons after the performances. [7] [5]
In total, a collection of San Francisco LGBT venues opened and flourished in the early 1950s, including The Beige Room, Tommy's Place/12 Adler Place, Miss Smith’s Tea Room, Tin Angel, the Paper Doll, Dolan's (new supper club), and Gordon's (new supper club). [9]
Female impersonation is a type of theatrical performance where a man dresses in women's clothing for the sole purpose of entertaining an audience. While the term female impersonator is sometimes used interchangeably with drag queen, they are not the same. Drag as an art form is associated with queer identity whereas female impersonation may come from a wide a range of gender identity paradigms, including heteronormativity. Additionally, many drag artists view drag as a lived form of self-expression or creativity, and perceive drag as something that is not limited to the stage or to performance. In contrast, female impersonation is specifically limited to performance and may or may not involve an LGBTQI point of view.
Sally Stanford was an American madam, restaurateur, city council member, and a former mayor of Sausalito, California. From 1940 to 1949, she was madam of a bordello at 1144 Pine Street in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, in a house designed by architect Stanford White.
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 Tavern Guild was an association of gay bar owners and liquor wholesalers that formed in 1962 in San Francisco, California, and lasted until 1995.
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 (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.
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.
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.
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.
Club My-O-My was a former nightclub in the New Orleans area that employed female impersonators as entertainers. Its predecessors were the Wonder Bar, and the Wonder Club.
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 in the North Beach neighborhood in San Francisco, California. It is believed to be one of the earliest lesbian bars in the city.
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.
Scott's Pit was a lesbian biker bar in operation from 1970 until 1984 in Duboce Triangle neighborhood in San Francisco, California, U.S.. This was the first lesbian biker bar in the city, and the former location has been considered an important building in LGBT history.
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..
Mary’s First and Last Chance was a lesbian and gay bar located at 2278 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, California, U.S.. It was once the focus of the 1950s California Supreme Court lawsuit Vallerga v. Dept. Alcoholic Bev. Control, when the bar challenged a state law for the right to serve gay patrons and won in 1959.
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