GLR September-October 2023

the deterioration of their health and looks from living on the streets. However, many of them found or formed “ street fami lies, ” fellow streetworkers who hung out together, pooling their money to secure housing for a night or a meal at the diners, warning each other away from johns who got violent or didn ’ t pay, taking sick friends to the free clinics, and otherwise caring for one another in ways their families had never done. Plaster refers to this as the “ moral economy, ” based upon reciprocity and fairness — the street kids all “ had each other ’ sbacks. ” Many individuals and groups offered services such as free needle ex change and communal dinners provided by religious groups. Clergymen such as River Sims and Raymond Broshears organ ized “ street churches ” complete with Catholic-inspired rituals; they “ ordained ” some of the street kids to offer aid to other street kids. Other reformers, social workers, sociologists, LGBT organizers, and Protestant ministers also intervened in the lives of the street kids. Organizations such as Glide Methodist Church and Vanguard (a mutual aid group founded in 1966) provided resources to street kids as well. The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’ 90s decimated Polk Street denizens. Queer businesses suffered a decline in patron age. The market for hustlers also diminished as many suc cumbed to AIDS and johns grew wary of contracting HIV.

Many hustlers who once prowled Polk Street turned to the bur geoning internet as a means of advertising their wares. In the early 2000s, as the tech boom drew more affluent people to San Francisco, rents and the price of everything else skyrocketed. Gentrification of the Polk Street area forced many businesses to close and displaced the hustlers, transgender women, and other queer folks. These days, Polk Street is nearly devoid of queer culture. There remains only one gay bar, The Cinch, at the northern end of the district. The once-queer spaces have been replaced by straight bars, nightclubs, high-ticket restaurants, upscale con dominiums, and expensive boutiques. Only fading memories remain of Polk Street in its heyday. The ghosts of my friends at the long-gone Polk Gulch Saloon still haunt me whenever I walk by. Kids on the Street is an admirable, thoroughly researched, and carefully documented history of the once vibrant queer cul ture of the Tenderloin and Polk Street. Featuring scores of in terviews with one-time Polk Street denizens, it is also a lament for the displacement of the multiracial, multigender culture of San Francisco ’ s first post-Stonewall queer district. Drawing at tention to that once-thriving, often overlooked culture, the book is a valuable contribution to queer history.

mistress for the Bryn Mawr School in Bal timore, an all-girls ’ school affiliated with the college, working there for 28 years. After retiring, she moved to New York with Reid, one of the first female stockbro kers, and began writing. Toward the end of her life, she and Reid moved to Washing ton, D.C., where they were part of a social set involving politicians, journalists, and educators. Although generally living quietly, Hamil ton had moments of drama. At college, she fell deeply in love with another female stu dent, who sadly could never fully recipro cate. Reid, nearly thirty years younger than Hamilton, had been a student at Bryn Mawr School; their relationship caused some con troversy at the school and tension with Hamilton ’ s sister, who also worked there. After Hamilton ’ s death, Reid published a memoir that glossed over many of Hamil ton ’ s female friends. By the same token, Hamilton ’ s works on the ancients does not address the topic of homosexuality. C HARLES G REEN WHEN LANGUAGE BROKE OPEN An Anthology of Queer & Trans Black Writers of La ti n American Descent Edited by Alan Pelaez Lopez University of Arizona Press. 320 pages, $30. The contributors to this anthology span Latin American and Caribbean countries and territories and their diasporas — Brazil to Borikén, Liberia to Hispanic USA. Their essays interrogate conformist binaries (out vs. closet, nostalgic past vs. survived pres

ent, homeland vs. diaspora) and rebels against the confinements of ethnicities, gen ders, and nationalities. Some standout essays include the mem oirs of Charles Rice-González and Lor raine Avila that navigate between the meditative and the narrative. No reader can escape the irony in Darrel Alejandro Holnes ’ poem-manifesto “ I ’ dAlways Promised I ’ d Never Do Drag ” : “ this boy dressed as a girl,/ boy dressed as girly man, boy dressed as man/ enough to drag, man dragging on,/ man moving on, man gone. ” The prose poems by Andrea Alejan dro Freire F. — where the rules of ungen dered verb tenses and gendered social constructions are challenged, braided with Brazilian Portuguese — are gripping. And so are Darriel McBride ’ s “ Disonancia ” on being a Black Boricua; the poignant stories of Yamilette Vizcaíno Rivera and Josslyn Glenn; and an illuminating Alejandro Heredia essay on Dominicanidad. S AM D APANAS FRAMING AGNES Directed by Chase Joynt Fae Pictures; Level Ground Trans director and co-writer Chase Joynt has expanded his twenty-minute 2019 short into a 76-minute feature that ’ s still not nearly long enough for all he hopes to ac complish with it. Most members of today ’ s LGBTQ community know very little about the transgenders who make up the “ T, ” hardly more than most cisgender heterosex uals know. That ’ s a lot of ignorance to cor

rect in 76 minutes, especially when you ’ re being so creative the viewer can hardly focus on what ’ s being said. In the early ‘ 60s, a person who called themself “ Agnes ” went to the UCLA Gen der Clinic for reassignment surgery, falsely claiming to qualify because they were inter sex. Unlike Christine Jorgensen, who be came famous a decade earlier as the first person Americans had ever heard of receiv ing a sex change, Agnes got no publicity and soon disappeared from history. The records of UCLA ’ s Dr. Harold Garfinkel, which included Agnes ’ story, were un earthed in preparation for Joynt ’ s films. Five other subjects were chosen, and trans gender actors were picked to portray them. Joynt took the role of Garfinkel, but inter viewing them as a ‘ 60s talk show host rather than a doctor or scientist. The question-and-answer scenes, mostly from real transcripts in Garfinkel ’ s files, are shot in black-and-white to distinguish them from contemporary scenes in which Joynt as himself talks to the actors, sometimes comparing their own stories with those of the people they ’ re portraying. We learn some of what has and hasn ’ t changed. His torian Jules Gill-Peterson narrates, adding context by filling in general details and putting things in perspective. The six characters and the actors who play them are humanized to some extent, but there ’ s too little time to get to know them. Still, if Framing Agnes weren ’ t so good, I would not be left wanting more. S TEVE W ARREN

September – October 2023

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