The opening of Polk Street Stories at the GLBT Historical Society. James Beale, Project Director Joey Plaster and David Kapp of the Deco Lounge. James and David are married and have been together for 2 yeears, and they are featured in the show. Photo by R

The face of San Francisco is changing, and so are its stories, according to the GLBT Historical Society. This is seen most dramatically in the Polk Gulch district. A new exhibit opened on Jan. 15 at the Downtown Branch of the Society on 657 Mission Street #300 focusing on the history of the Polk, from the 1980s to the present, by presenting stories from people in the middle of current changes in the area. The question asked: What does it mean to the identity of San Francisco (or the identity of the LGBT movement?) as a “safe haven,” and for its queer sociability and politics, that Polk Street’s economy and culture is changing so dramatically?

Since the late 1970s, the low-income Polk Gulch district has been a national destination and home for some of the most underrepresented segments of the LGBT community. These include runaway and homeless youth, often fleeing abusive or unwelcome homes; immigrants, primarily from Asia and Latin America; working class and poor transgendered women; the homeless; and seniors.

In the past five years, a citywide building boom, escalating land values, and skyrocketing rents in the central city have pushed and pulled middle-income small businesses, clubs, and residents to the area. At the same time, the scores of gay bars that formed the backbone of the Polk community have all but closed. Polk Street (a.k.a. Polk Strasse, Polk Gulch, Lower Polk, Polk Village) was San Francisco’s premiere gay male center in the 1960s and 1970s. The residential enclave and business district provided fertile ground for the development of gay economic and political power through organizations such as the Tavern Guild, the Imperial Court, and the Council for Religion and the Homosexual.

Its bloc of middle-income gay businesses evaporated in the late 1970s, leaving a “blighted” area known for its underground sex work and drug economy. During these decades, Polk Street served as a home, refuge, and family for queer runaway and homeless youth, often fleeing abusive or unwelcome homes; immigrants, primarily from Asia and Latin America; and, increasingly in the 1990s, lower-income transgendered women and seniors.
The neighborhood now is again changing dramatically, bringing in upscale, heterosexual and mixed drinking establishments, while the street’s sex work economy has largely disappeared. 

Tension, bitterness, and misunderstandings have emerged as a result of this transition, with new neighborhood and business associations, the homeless, the few remaining gay and transgender bars, and social service organizations competing for prized territory in the urban landscape.

The conflict, notes GLBTHS, has sometimes been dramatic: Polk made national news last year when a gay activist group plastered the street with “wanted” posters featuring a photo of the new neighborhood association’s president. Owner of the gay bar Rendezvous claimed that a “smear campaign” by the association stopped him from relocating on Polk Street when he lost his lease in 2005. Management of Divas, one of the nation’s only transgender (i.e. transsexual) clubs, alleges that police have been targeting the club because of complaints from new merchants.

The downtown GLBTHS location has been closed until now, but it reopens on Jan. 15 with a special talk and reception at 5:30 p.m., where organizers will present personal histories, available on headphones, from twenty stakeholders who are living through and shaping these changes. Profiled narrators have also been invited to lend items to represent their own history in the area. Some of these items are displayed in wall hangings. Materials from the GLBT Historical Society further historicize their stories and are presented in three large cases representing: Religion and the Imperial Court; Bars and the Tavern Guild; and Street Families, Police, and Merchants. For further information, call (415) 777-5455.