Before Stonewall, there was Compton’s. An all-night San Francisco diner where transgender prostitutes gathered for a cup of coffee, bawdy gossip, and a brief refuge from the mean streets of the Tenderloin. Compton’s was also the site of a drag queen riot, an unknown chapter of gay history that this riveting new documentary brings to life before our very eyes. Forced to the margins of the margins of 1960’s society, men who wanted to live as women turned to prostitution to survive, and found camaraderie with each other. Watching their backs for rapists and murderers, they clustered into cheap rooming-houses and safe-havens like Compton’s, one eye on the trick who might get violent, one eye peeled for the cops. As the film incisively observes, the Tenderloin was a “zone of sin” unofficially sanctioned by police, but always subject to its brutal crackdowns. Filmmakers Victor Silva and Susan Stryker, a renowned transgender scholar, sculpt the film as Stryker’s discovery of a buried “cultural history,” uncovering old news stories and nightclub ads, touring the streets and peering into shuttered buildings. What’s more, they’ve uncovered a trove of thrilling archival footage, offering vibrant color glimpses of the Tenderloin in its heyday, as well as candid, late 60’s interviews with trans prostitutes themselves. Throughout it all, the ladies of Compton’s – 40-odd years later and still kicking – narrate their stories with sly wit, raw honesty, and a nostalgia that’s thoroughly contagious.

Susan Stryker received her Ph.D in American history from the University of California at Berkeley. A transgender activist, performance artist, and historian. She has co-written several books including Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography, Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback, and Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay area.

Victor Silverman has served as an associate professor of history at Pamona College, one of the U.S.’s premier liberal arts institutions, since 1993. His published works include Imagining Internationalism in American and British Labor, 1939-1949; The Failure of Jewish Americanization; and as a historian, he has contributed to the Los Angeles Times Front Pages Collections.

Co-director Susan Stryker will attend the screening to discuss the film with the audience

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5:30 pm Screening
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