San Francisco’s Tenderloin has always been more than its headlines.

Long treated as a containment zone, it has also been a refuge — a place where marginalized communities found belonging, built culture, and made public life possible in spite of neglect, oppression and disinvestment.

In 1966, that history erupted inside a cafeteria at Turk and Taylor. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot is often told as a single night of resistance. But like most movements, it began long before that moment — and it didn’t end there.

Today, the site of that uprising is owned by one of the largest private prison contractors working with ICE. Which raises a complicated question: what does it mean to honor a place if you don’t control it?

In this episode, Chip speaks with Breonna McCree, Co-Director of San Francisco’s Transgender District, about what it means to move from being tolerated in a neighborhood… to claiming it. The conversation weaves together history, policy, art, and activism to explore how cities remember — and who gets to decide what stays.

The Transgender District is a formally recognized cultural district in the Tenderloin, created to honor, protect, and sustain a neighborhood that has long been a center of transgender life, community, and resistance. Breonna and Chip explore what a district actually is and does, how this particular place came to be named, and why formal recognition matters, how neighborhoods carry history long before they’re officially acknowledged, and what it takes to turn lived experience into lasting civic infrastructure.

Transgender District

Susan Stryker

Compton’s Cafeteria Riot

Tenderloin Museum

Screaming Queens

Tenderloin Community Benefit District

Glide Memorial

Crossroads of Turk and Taylor

Comptons x Coalition

TurkxTaylor Initiative

Miss Major

SF Black Wall Street