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KIDS ON THE STREET Book Talk & Panel Discussion
Interdisciplinary historian Joseph Plaster shares a presentation about his recently published book, Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Susan Stryker and featuring Cecilia Chung & Anthony Cabello.
Tenderloin Museum welcomes Joseph Plaster for a talk and panel discussion in celebration of his recently published Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin (Duke University Press). Focused on San Francisco’s Tenderloin, the book explores informal social support and mutual aid networks amongst abandoned and runaway queer youth, and in doing so excavates a history of queer life that has been overshadowed by major narratives of gay progress and pride.
Drawing on oral histories with more than eighty individuals, Kids on the Street constitutes a richly detailed and powerful entry into the history of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, performing essential documentary work for the queer Polk Street scene, their world-making practices, and their voices. The book contextualizes its focus–the 1950s to present– with a “performance genealogy” of downtown lodging-house districts where marginally housed youth regularly lived–”tenderloin” districts–that were a common feature in many American cities going back to the late 1800s.
However, Kids on the Street is also a chronicle of Plaster’s dynamic, interdisciplinary practices and methods; he utilizes archival and ethnographic research alongside participatory public humanities that often intersect with his subjects and their stories. This multivalent approach does more than just inform; it involves both its subjects and audience so as to form complex narratives that resist simple, superficial understandings.
Notably, the book highlights two of Plaster’s Tenderloin-centered public humanities initiatives: “Vanguard Revisited,” a project co-created with Megan Rohrer that put contemporary queer youth of the TL “in conversation” with 1960s Vanguard youth organizers through stories, art, and poetry; and Polk Street: Lives in Transition, a project that drew on oral histories to intervene in debates about gentrification, policing, queer politics, and public safety in the polarized setting of gentrifying San Francisco. For those unfamiliar with Plaster’s work and seeking an accessible introduction, tune into his 2010 radio adaptation of the “Lives in Transition” project, “Polk Street Stories” (listen via Transom).
For this event at the Tenderloin Museum, Plaster is joined by two of the voices featured in “Polk Street Stories”--Cecilia Chung, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Evaluation at Transgender Law Center, and Anthony Cabello, who currently manages Palo Alto Hotel, a Polk St. SRO. Moderating this panel is Susan Stryker, co-director of Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, the 2005 documentary that helped resurface the TL’s seminal act of queer resistance, and former executive director of the GLBT Historical Society, the archives at which were a critical source of Plaster’s research.
For the Tenderloin Museum, Kids on the Street is an immediate addition to our core curriculum–it’s a substantive, nuanced, and innovative work that adds considerably to the field of our specific purview. We are honored to celebrate the work upon its publication in the place of its origin, as well as to welcome Plaster to present at TLM and be in dialogue with Stryker, Chung, and Cabello. Panel will be followed by a Q&A. Don’t miss this very special event! Registration is required (via Eventbrite) and free (or a $10 suggested donation).
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/1604610-0
