On December 1, the Tenderloin Museum will screen a piece of rediscovered history: Gay San Francisco by Jonathan Raymond, a previously lost documentary depicting gay life in San Francisco five decades ago. 

Shot between 1965-1970, Gay San Francisco features a collection of incredible footage of San Francisco’s thriving gay culture, with a focus on the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s first “gay ghetto”.

Shot between 1965-1970, Gay San Francisco features a collection of incredible footage of San Francisco’s thriving gay culture, with a focus on the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s first gay neighborhood. Scenes from gay bars are intercut with fascinating interviews featuring gay men, lesbians, and drag queens discussing issues from harassment to sex to job security. The film also includes a not-to-be missed Halloween drag show at On The Levee, one of SF’s many historic gay bars that closed it’s doors long ago.

This screening compliments the Tenderloin Museum’s first major temporary exhibition, The Unseen World of the Tenderloin: Rare Historic Photographs 1907-71.

For more information please visit the museum’s website.