The Compton Cafeteria Riot

Three years before the riots at Stonewall, the LGBTQ community of San Francisco's Tenderloin rose up. And the story was almost lost to time.  Learn how and why today. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should Know. It's one of our overlooked history editions. And Chuck,
this is your pick, and hats off to you, Wiggs
off to you.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yes, it was my selection to pass along to Livia
to help us with. But this is a listener suggestion.
This came from gg Cowlin and big thanks to Gigi
because I and I'm sure you will agree with me,
found that not only is the story of the Compton's
Cafeteria Riot interesting in and of itself, but sort of

(00:50):
the larger story, or a part of the story, is
the fact that how we preserve history because Compton's Cafeteria
Riot happened in nineteen sixty six and was almost lost
to history.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, I agree with all of that, which is.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Crazy to think about something that happened in nineteen sixty
six in San Francisco could be lost to history. But
it almost was if not for the efforts of one
Susan Striker, one person like, yeah, this may have really
gone away, Oh totally, I mean it had gone away,
and she managed to clutch together a bunch of just
different tiny little scraps of mentions of it or.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Put like the neighborhood and just just over the years
cobbled together all this little stuff and finally got an
idea of it and was able to corroborate it like
it was Gonsville until Susan Striker came along.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, and we'll talk about what Susan Striker did with
this information. But hats off to you, Susan Striker and Digigi.
And here we go with the almost forgotten Compton's Cafeteria
riot story.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah. And the reason why it's significant that it's almost
forgotten or it was forgotten for a while, that the
Stone Wall Uprising, which was a really great episode we
did on that too. That's considered like the watershed moment
of gay rights in history, like the riot at the

(02:15):
Stone Wall in that was it, that was what started
it all. The thing is, when you think of things
that way, it erases the stuff that came before that. Yeah,
And one of the things that came before Stonewall was
the Compton's Cafeteria riot in San Francisco in nineteen sixty six.
And there wasn't a lot of difference between the two.

(02:36):
It was based on. It was a reaction and a
response to police harassment that had been building over the time.
It was a multi racial group of LGBTQ people like
fighting back against the police that spilled out into the streets.
Like it, it bore a striking resemblance to Stonewall. And yet,
like you said, there are reasons that we'll talk about

(02:57):
that it was just pushed into the dustbin of history.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, it's very interesting. So as way of setting this up,
we'll talk a little bit about the area at the
time in San Francisco called the Tenderloin. This is in
the nineteen sixties. The Tenderloin has long had a reputation
and even still does today in some ways. In the sixties,
it was a place where you could go buy drugs

(03:25):
or deal drugs. You could go do some illegal gambling,
you could get involved in set sex work on either side.
It was a neighborhood that didn't have a lot of money,
and it was a neighborhood that attracted transience people that teenagers,
namely who were either run out of their hometown because

(03:46):
they were LGBTQ or maybe even run out of their
family or maybe even run out of a different neighborhood
in San Francisco to sort of collect in the Tenderloin
where they could turn to sex work because they couldn't
get other jobs, and they could turn to each other
for support in community.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, community developed of essentially what one of the people
Susan Striker interviewed described as like the lowest drawing on
the ladder of not just society of like including LGBTQ society.
At the time, these were unhoused, teenage street trans people

(04:29):
and like they had no rights, they had no respect
from anybody, and yet they still came together and looked
out for another, informed that community you were talking about.
But they lived in really dire straits day to day,
and yet they still formed that community. And the reason
why they all kind of ended up in this the

(04:49):
Tenderloin is because there was a few square block section
of the Tenderloin that that was the only place they
could live. And even there they got harassed. But like
if they straight out of it, they were beaten. They
were You couldn't leave that area if you were trans
in San Francisco at the time, And I think Susan

(05:11):
striker compared it to a ghetto, essentially that there was
a trans ghetto in San Francisco in the sixties.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
That's right, and just the mirriad people that were interviewed
from the time, it's clear that the cops basically could
do whatever they wanted in there. They could arrest someone
for quote unquote female impersonation. One was arrested. I believe
Amanda Saint James, who was a transforman there ran a
residential hotel, was arrested for obstructing the sidewalk I saw

(05:46):
in this documentary that we're going to talk about later.
You know, any kind of cross dressing or drag. They
could arrest you for having the buttons on your shirt on.
You know what they deemed the wrongs because you know,
traditionally the buttons on like men and women's shirts and
clothing is reversed. I never understood why was it to

(06:10):
draw a distinction between the two when you're shopping.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
I think it's just to be difficult.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
It may be a short step at some point, but
they would say like, oh no, your buttons are on
the wrong side. You're impersonating a female, so let me
crack your skull and throw you in a jail cell
where you will be abused more and by fellow inmates
and by the people who ran the jail.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah. And one of the reasons that this group of
people were in such a pickle was not just because
there was a small area of the world that they
could leave. It's that they couldn't even work because they
couldn't get id that reflected their gender, the gender they
identified with. If they wanted to work as the gender

(06:53):
they didn't identify with, they could just go back to
their family that kicked them out in the first place.
So to be themselves, to live as themselves is the
way that they they they were who they were. They
really really suffered and paid for it and were very poor.
Resorted to sex work almost across the board unless you

(07:15):
were really good at singing and dancing and you could
make a living that way. And even those people who
are successful at entertaining very frequently were stuck in that
area of the tenderloin too. So it was a really
it was a it was a tough position to be in.
And I mean just the fact that they're like, well,
if I want to be myself, it sucks that society
treats me this way, but I'm going to be myself.

(07:37):
You really have to respect that.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Oh yeah, totally. Within this community, there was a place
called Compton's Cafeteria which provided a haven late at night.
So it was at one oh one Taylor Street, right
there in the Tenderloin, and it was a restaurant and
it was one of quite a few in San Francisco.
It is a small chain, local chain started up by

(08:00):
a man named Gene Compton in the nineteen forties. This
one opened in fifty four, and it became a gathering
place for these people late at night who were unwelcomed
even at gay bars. It was very centrally located. It
was clean, it was open twenty four hours, it was
well lit. It was a place where they could go
and have coffee after you know, they got done with

(08:21):
work or you know, doing whatever they were doing late
at night. And what I really wanted more than anything
when I was learning about the story was like I
wanted to learn that Compton's Cafeteria was a bright spot
in a haven where the owners would run the cops
off and let these people do as they as they
would and live in peace. Sadly, that was not the case.

(08:42):
I didn't get the idea that they were just like
completely unwelcome there. But they did call the cops here
and there over you know, over the years, and like
you know, the cops would come down there and run
them out. So that was sort of a one discip
pointing spot for me. But that's you know, that's what happened.

(09:02):
So that's the way we have to report it.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
So the still I mean, even having to face that,
like Compton's was the place you went to because like
I was saying, like even in the LGBTQ community, the
trans community and the Tenderloin were not well thought of,
Like they couldn't even go into the gay bars in
the Tenderloin. They were limited also and where they could go.

(09:27):
But one of those places they could go was Compton's
Cafeteria and go be themselves and like a real like
you could check in on one another, you could give
each other tips to like steer clear of this guy
in this car kind of thing. It was despite the
setbacks and drawbacks of going there, it was a place
that they could go. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah? And it was also a time, you know, we
mentioned that they couldn't even go into certain gay bars.
It was a time where the LGBTQ community was starting
to organize a little bit, starting to kind of speak
up a little bit for like the most basic rights
you could imagine. And it was it was through the
lens though, of what were called homophile organizations. One was

(10:11):
called the Mattachine Society. These organizations where they were gay people,
but they were like, hey, listen, I'm middle class, I
have a great job, I am gay, and I just
I just don't want to be harassed. So they they
were organizing, but it wasn't like it wasn't like the
kids on the streets, and they weren't They weren't rabbel rising,

(10:34):
they weren't radical. In fact, within homophile organizations there were
often disputes between some of the sort of you know,
middle age more you know, not well healed, but sometimes
well healed people sort of disagreeing with people in their
own community. Some of these younger kids that were more radical,
they're like, we don't even want you in our group anymore, right.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, And those those homophile groups are they were the
ones they had the connections to say the press or
they had a working relationship with the police, department. They
were trying to show the rest of society they were
respectable people living respectable lives, and so being inclusive of

(11:16):
unhoused teenagers who were also sex workers kind of it
didn't really stand up to their argument. So they just
pretended they weren't there. They excluded him, they kept him out.
But what's cool is those same unhoused teenage trans sex
workers they were like, well, we'll go organize ourselves. And

(11:37):
they were really, really fortunate to have in the neighborhood.
A couple of blocks away from Compton's a place called
Glibe Memorial Methodist Church, probably one of the more progressive
churches in the United States of all time. There was
a reverend named Cecil Williams. He was a Civil rights
movement VET and he was very much interested in supporting

(11:59):
these trans kids who were just getting abused one way
or another by every quarter of society, and he helped
them organize. Actually they organized into an organization called Vanguard.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
That's right, and Ceca Williams is still alive. My friend,
Oh yeah, he's ninety four years old.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I saw footage of him preaching and he looked pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, So that church was there and like you said,
just to have any formal organization on your side for
these kids who are trying to radicalize the movement was
a really really big deal. So Vanguard had formed in
sixty five, and through the church and through Ceci Williams
and Vanguard, they eventually would help get the Tenderloin recognized

(12:44):
as a War on Poverty target district in May of
sixty six. Usually when these districts were recognized, it was
there were you know, impoverished communities, and usually racism was
sort of at the core of what they were facing.
But these kids basically stood up with Cecil Williams and

(13:04):
they're like, well, no, it's we're suffering the same way,
and so we should be recognized thusly, and they were
in May of nineteen sixty six.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, that was a big deal to get those kind
of grants, and that ended up there was like a
center for the kids living on the street. There was
a van that doled out medical services like it had
a pretty good effect, as we'll see. Yeah, so you
said that there were times when Compton's Cafeteria would call

(13:32):
the police on their patrons, their trans patrons. Apparently that
really picked up after Vanguard. It became clear that these
trans kids weren't just like keeping to themselves as much
as they could, that they were starting to have a
little bit of self respect, that they were organizing, that
they were getting political. That's apparently when it really started

(13:53):
to step up and the vanguard I think at one
point picketed outside of Comptons. That was one of the
things that they did. And that was a month or
so before the riot happened. So you've got these trans
kids organizing, starting to have like a certain amount of

(14:13):
self esteem and self respect that's coming out of their community,
and that that usually leads to pushback from establishment, and
that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
That sounds like a great place for a break, my friend,
Thank you all right? Well, Josh sat it up perfectly
and will be right back to knock him down right
after this. I know why a bowling analogy happened just there,

(14:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
But it was great. I love your sports metaphors.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Is bowling a sport?

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Oh boy, I'm gonna get in trouble for.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
That, Yes you are, I said, sure, everybody.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
So this is how lost to time the Compton Cafeteria
riot has been is they're not even positive. Still what
the exact date was, Yeah, Striker did a lot of
research Susan Striker, who we mentioned and who will talk
a lot more about in this segment. Eventually Striker narrowed
it down to August twenty seventh, which was a Saturday,

(15:33):
the last Saturday of that month. But we can safely
say it was in August of nineteen sixty six, probably
late August, very early in the morning, as in Saturday
leading into Sunday. And the story is a lot like
like you said, it's a lot like Stonewall. The police
get called in because things are kind of rowdy. The
police get there, start being very physically aggressive with these people,

(15:56):
and then one of them through coffee in one of
the cop faces, and it was on. After that, Basically
it went downhill pretty fast. Other patrons joined in, the
cops started fighting back. The cops eventually go outside and retreat,
wait for reinforcements. The management, you know, close the place up,

(16:17):
and the people inside started breaking the windows, They started
trashing the place, they flipped the tables over, they started
wrecking it, and you know, the cops showed on, showed
up en mass to deal with about sixty people or
so that fought the police with their purses and throwing
high heels, and I think they destroyed a police car
by the end of the night and set a news

(16:38):
stand on fire.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
I saw potentially hundreds of people, like the nearby hotels
like drained, the bars drained, like it went. It got serious,
like after they left Compton's.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, so unsurprisingly some of them were successfully arrested and
taking to jail, and Compton's, you know, for their part,
basically said from now on, you know, they called them,
you know, drag queen patrons at the time said you're
not allowed here anymore, no more gay hustlers. Apparently there

(17:15):
were there were pickets after that, Like the ensuing days
were kind of a mess. They would some people would
still go down and picket. They wouldn't be allowed in
the restaurant. They started closing at midnight instead of being
twenty four to seven and just closed I think like
five years after that permanently.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yes, but they they it had immediate effects. First of all,
it took that kind of sense of organizing among the
trans kids in the Tenderloin. It like bolstered it. It
gave them like a feeling like, oh, we actually can
make things happen together, even if it was violent in
the face of police violence. And apparently it had an

(17:53):
effect that they the police kind of stopped so casually
harassing or beating or even kidnapping the trans kids in
the Tenderloin after that, immediately after that, there was an
immediate effect.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, for sure. They ended up having an ally in,
a community relations cop named Elliott Blackstone, who basically was like,
you know, I would like to help you folks out.
I'm going to advocate for an end to these anti
cross dressing laws. You won't get harassed for dressing how

(18:28):
you want to dress. I'm going to help you get
the services that you need. Eventually, a public health unit
called the Center for Special Problems started offering their support
as well, including getting IDs that reflected their gender identities,
which is what you were talking about. That kept a
lot of them from getting jobs, and that allowed many
of them to go get legal work, and you know,

(18:50):
they could leave sex work behind.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, I mean it had a significant impact, especially considering
that it was forgotten really quickly after that. That was
also given credit for establishing the National Transsexual Counseling Unit,
which is a support group for trans people, probably the
first one in history, and it was a place where like,

(19:14):
if you needed a place to stay, they could tell
you who to go ask. They could help you fill
out applications for hormones and tell you what doctor to
go to. It was a mail drop for some people
who had just showed up and didn't have a place
to live yet. Like basically everything that supported unhoused trans
kids in Tenderloin. In the Tenderloin in the late sixties,

(19:37):
the Canceling Unit did. And again this Compton's Cafeteria riot
is directly responsible for not just saying like, hey, we
have these needs that are being completely unmet, where the
police are beating us with impunity anytime they feel like it.
I read. I read one story where this kid had
just shown up to San Francisco and one of the

(19:59):
first things he's was another kid laying on the street
in agony saying his ribs were broken. And the kid
who'd just got into San Francisco was like, well, we
got to call the police, and the kid with his
rib broken said, the police are the ones that did
this to me. And that guy, I think he was
one of the vanguard founders. He's like that just crystallized
the situation for him almost immediately, but in responding to

(20:23):
that with violence. It's sad that it took violence, but
they finally stood up and said, no, we're done putting
up with this, and that actually had a positive impact
in drawing attention to their needs and then getting the
city to start responding to those things at the very
least recognizing that they exist.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, boy, it would be a kettle of fire
as an episode. But I wonder if one day we
could tackle protests, nonviolent and violent protests, okay, through the years,
because it is a fraught topic.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Supposedly. I don't know where I saw this, but I
think I just saw it today. Something like fifty nine
percent of nonviolent organizations are non violent movements succeed in
their goals, but only like a quarter of violent movements too.
So usually you want to back the non violent ones

(21:21):
is if you're betting on it, if you're betting on
outcomes of civil movements.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
So we mentioned forgetting about the riot and how that
could happen in nineteen sixty six, not even that long
ago relatively speaking, historically speaking, I guess I should say,
and how does that happen? And here's how that happens.
No one really wrote about it, even in San Francisco.

(21:49):
The straight quote unquote straight publications didn't write about it,
and largely the gay publications didn't even write about it much.
I believe there were a couple of members of the
local gay community who wrote about it. A gentleman named
Raymond brush Here wrote about it in the nineteen seventy

(22:09):
two so this is five years later.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
He was a local, very very radical reverend who was
also gay. I think he was a Vanguard founder too.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
So he wrote about it in the nineteen seventy two
Gay Pride program, so just in a program for a
Gay Pride event. And then a drag queen at the
time named Sandy Green mentioned it, just mention it in
a letter to the editor. Again, this is six years later.
I'm sorry, five years later, I guess seven years Wow,

(22:40):
we got pretty bad the seventy three issue of Gay
Pride Quarterly. But it was not It wasn't even remembered
in the LGBTQ community in San Francisco, forget about the
rest of San Francisco or America at large. And the
question is like, why did own wall become the thing?

(23:02):
And there's a few reasons. One is that it was
in New York and it was the center of publishing,
so that certainly didn't hurt a bit and media. Another
is that these homophile groups that we talked about in
that kind of short three year span from sixty six
to sixty nine started to model themselves a little bit

(23:23):
more after things like the Black Power movement and the
woman's rights movement, and we're a little more sort of
activist and action oriented than they were before when they
were just in sixty six saying like, you know, can
we just have rights like everyone else? Get a little
more aggressive.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
And I saw it put in that there was more kindling,
Like they were just starting to bring the kindling out
at the time of the Compton riots, but by the
time Stonewall happened, there's a lot more kindling to go.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Up, totally okay, And that's you know, that's another really
big reason.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, it's pretty pretty interesting stuff. Also, I think the
fact that like it was almost purposefully, if not purposefully
ignored or just kind of relegated to the sidelines by
the larger LGBTQ community in San Francisco, because you know,
it was a riot and that really again doesn't jibe

(24:18):
with the idea that hey, we're just respectable, middle class
Americans who want to live a quiet, respectable life and
be left alone. Rioting doesn't really kind of coincide with that.
So when you put all those things together, it definitely
makes sense that the Compton's Cafeteria riot kind of was
lost to history. And the fact that it was written

(24:38):
about in just two places or it was mentioned directly
is really significant. Like it really underscores what Susan Striker
did when she came up with the I guess the
detective work of putting the whole thing together.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
I think that's another great spot for a break.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Oh man, I didn't even mean to do that. You're
just so good.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
We'll be right back everybody.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
So, back in I think the early nineties, maybe even
ninety one, Susan Striker was she was wrapping up her PhD.
At UC Berkeley. She was a trained historian. At the
same time, she was also transitioning to a woman, and
this is nineteen ninety one, so she's basically like, I
might as well not even apply for jobs in academia

(25:49):
because I'm not going to get one because I'm trans
so instead she started volunteering. She wanted to put her
historian chops to work, and she decided to volunteer at
the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society in San Francisco and
the Castro And it was there that I think she
first came across that nineteen seventy two Gay Pride Parade

(26:11):
program that Ray bro Shears wrote that mentioned the Compton's riot,
and she's like, what is this guy even talking about
six years later? I think I said, four eight ninety.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Two just terrible. Yeah, And you know, when you see
this documentary that I promised you were about to name it,
you can like Susan Striker is struck by the fact that,
like she was just like I couldn't believe what I
was reading, almost like how did I not know about this?
Like I'm an active member of this community and everyone

(26:47):
knows about Stonewall, Like, how did I not even know this?

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Well? She questioned that it might not have even been
a thing, or if it was a thing, that Bruce
Ears was maybe blowing it up out of proportion.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, but you know, if you know, obviously way pre Internet,
there's traditional media, and if traditional media didn't cover it
at all, the only thing you're left with is people
in oral history. So that's what Striker did. She at
first tried to go to the city archive is to look
for police records and arrest records, and the archives said,

(27:18):
you know, in the sixteen seventies they basically shredded and
burned a lot of stuff because of police misconduct, so
we don't have anything for that period or that event
at least, And so Susan Striker was like, all right,
I guess I got to start finding people, like literal
humans who were either there or were nearby and knew

(27:38):
about it firsthand. And that was really hard to do.
I mean, all of a sudden, it's like real detective
work going on because Susan Striker is having to track
these people down, these people that were living on the margins,
you know, fifty years ago I guess at the time
about forty years ago. So oh no, lessen that thirty
something years. I'm trying to think something like that. And

(27:59):
there were there are plenty of different stories, like in
one story, she found a trans woman who was a
cook at Compton's but was put in a men's prison,
was not allowed in interview, and ended up dying before
Susan Striker could speak to her, she thought about writing
a book and ultimately said, you know what I think
this should be. It'll get to more people if I

(28:19):
make a documentary out of this. So at long last,
we can say that the name of the documentary that
Susan Striker along with Victor Silverman made was called Screaming
Queen's colon the Riot at Compton's Cafeteria in two thousand
and five, which I watched on YouTube. That's great in
full under an hour's like fifty five fifty six minutes,

(28:40):
but it's also dramatized, which I have not seen, but
I'm going to check it out tonight. And Netflix's showed
Tales of the City in twenty nineteen that I believe
Elliott Page stars in.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Oh, is that right?

Speaker 1 (28:54):
I think I saw Elliott Page in the cast, but
I didn't dive too deeply yet.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
So there's an Unsung History podcast episode that interviews Susan
Striker and that she kind of goes into detail about
putting this whole history together and it's kind of thrilling actually,
Like it turns out one of her cohorts at the
Gain Lesbian Historical Society was a geographer and helped put

(29:21):
the like create a map of this vanished area in
the tender Loin together, so she started to have like visual,
like a visual idea of where these things were happening.
And when she was able to finally talk to people
who were there, she knew that this thing actually had happened,
because she didn't she didn't say, hey, here's all the
stuff I found out. Is this right? She was like,

(29:41):
have you ever heard of this? And then they would
give her all the same information that she already had.
She knew that she was definitely onto something. So it's
definitely worth checking out. It's a great, great episode. And
definitely watched Screaming Queen's too. And the name I think
Chuck was in that there's an initial newsreel about the
tenderloin the red light district down there. Yeah, and they

(30:04):
mentioned how Compton's Cafeteria recently had to start closing at
midnight and they chalked it up to a sidewalk fight
between screaming queens as how they put it like they
just basically made it sound like it was a cat
fight that got out of hand. The police weren't even involved. Wow,
And and That's how they explained how Compton started closing
at midnight. So even then, like this is an old newsreel,

(30:25):
even when like right after it happened, it was being ignored.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, like yeah, that's really hard to believe, but also
easy to believe in some ways, sadly, So these days
you can you can still go over to one on
one Taylor Street. That building is still there. It is
obviously not the restaurant any longer. It is still a
home for many trans people, and the tenderloin itself is

(30:49):
still still has that sort of that sort of spirit
and undercurrent there people are. You know, it's sort of
how San Francisco is treated. Both this area and this
riot is really interesting for a progressive city because they
haven't done the right thing in many cases over the years.

(31:10):
Some people have tried. In twenty fifteen, there was a
developer name called Group I that proposed building a hotel
and retail project there with a nonprofit space a couple
of blocks away from the location at Compton's, and you know,
different people were on board and then like within the

(31:31):
gay community and then we're like, no, I don't think
we should do this here because it's a historical area
and we should just preserve it as that. And I
think that's just sort of like a lot of people
are fighting back against that in general in San Francisco
kind of no matter what the cause.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, for sure. So they finally, I guess they went
along with it, or it just was going to happen
one way or another, but they got some concessions out
of the developer and the city, and one of the
things that was that came out of it was that
the area Taylor Street that Compton's Cafeteria used to be along,
they renamed it Gene Compton's Cafeteria Way. And at first

(32:12):
everybody was like, Okay, that's a compromise because we wanted
it called Compton's Cafeteria Riot I guess way, and the
city was like, no, we're not putting Riot on an
actual official street sign. So they said, well, we'll call
it Gene Compton's Cafeteria Way. And then later on they're like, no, actually,
that's a terrible name for it because it commemorates one
of the people who was anti trance, who like got us,

(32:33):
who kicked us out of his cafeteria routinely. Why would
we want to commemorate him. We wanted to commemorate this
uprising instead, and they finally changed it to what did
they change.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
It to, Well, they dropped the name Compton's because they
didn't want to honor someone who they said, you know,
would frequently call the cops on them.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Right, So, I can't remember what they named it. I
think it might be like trans under Corridor Way or
something like that. And the reason why is because there's
a transgender cultural district there now. And do you remember
our colleague, she was a trans woman, Raquel Willis.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Oh, yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
I read an article about this new cultural district that
she wrote in I Think Out magazine. It's pretty good.
That's yeah, it was great too. So it's probably the
first transgender cultural district in the entire world, and it's
very appropriately in the Tenderloin because this is like kind
of like where a lot of the ground zero was

(33:36):
for the trans community in America. And this this cultural
district has like a I think an entrepreneurial incubator. It
helps people looking for housing and jobs. It's it's everything
that you would kind of want as a start for
a community that's just now starting to have its needs met.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
I think so too.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
What if when they when the city said, oh we
can't have the name right on a street sign, what
if they were like, what about quiet right boulevard on
Russian Hill? You're awfully quiet about that one.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Is there really a quiet right boulevard? I got you
for okay, and the fact that you placed it in
Russian Hill is what got me. That was well done. Oh,
thank you, very well done.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
All right?

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Okay, Well, if you want to know more about the
Comptence CAF tier, you're right. Definitely go watch Screaming Queens
and go listen to that episode of Unsung History. And
thanks a lot, Gigi for the idea, great one, And
since I thank gg, that means it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, and you know that makes the overall gullible score
Josh four hundred and sixty three. Chuck one.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Hey, at least it's not a big goose egg for you.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
I got points on the board.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
That was a sports metaphor, right.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
That's right, followed by a following a quiet riot shout,
which is probably not something you expected to hear in
this podcast.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
No, but they hold up.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
All right, I'm gonna call this Handburger. Then, quite frankly,
the only reason I'm reading it is because of that word,
because I think it's hysterical what this guy says. This
from Danny. Hey, guys, just finish to the latest episode,
and the listener mail Sam mentioned he was hesitant to
try the show because the title of the show sounded condescending,
as if it was suggesting that he should already know

(35:28):
certain things at this point in his life. I've heard
you mention this about other people. It always cracks me up,
because that's exactly why I started listening. It started about
seven years ago. The person I was dating at the
time would constantly hooke fun and belittle me for not
knowing certain things. So one day I, huh, that's abuse.
It is abuse. So one day I literally typed stuff
you should know into Google, hoping to find a list

(35:51):
of things that I ought to know. Awesome, true story
is what this guy says. What I found instead, Thank God,
was your show. Admittedly, it took me a while to
realize you two weren't simply performing a public service to
the world informing idiot boyfriends of their obvious knowledge gaps
and remedying the situation. It probably wasn't until the Jackhammer's
episode that I asked myself, should I really know this?

Speaker 2 (36:13):
That's an abuse too?

Speaker 1 (36:15):
That it's Danny. Uh. This is the best part though,
needless to say, but I'm gonna say it anyways. The
relationship did not work out. What I learned, though, is
that everyone has some knowledge gaps. So what if I
thought it was a handburger rather than a hamburger.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
I think that's important.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
There's no ham and you eat it with your hands.
That's what Danny says.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
It makes sense, but everyone else calls it a hamburger
so or a steam tam is steamedam right?

Speaker 1 (36:42):
I'm only going to call them handburgers from now on, though.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, because it makes a really love peace for why
you would call it a handburger.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Or that I didn't know IV stood for intravenous? What
am I a doctor who gives a rip?

Speaker 2 (36:56):
I like Danny.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
All that to say, thanks for doing what you do, guys,
for teaching me stuff I want to know, as well
as some things I probably should know. Keep it up
until the bitter end, Danny.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Thanks a lot, Danny, that was an excellent email and
we're glad that you're on board.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
I wonder what Danny thought i'veys did for I don't know,
or if it was like ivy or something. Right, He's
like four, like, why are you gonna put ivy in
my arm?

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Uh? Where was I? Oh? Yeah? If you want to
be like Danny and send us a rock and email,
we would love to hear from you, wrap it up,
spank it on the bottom, send it off to stuff
podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit

Speaker 1 (37:40):
The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.