Drew de Pinto

On an unknown date in August 1966, trans women in San Francisco's Tenderloin district rioted against police violence at Gene Compton's Cafeteria. There was no news coverage, and the arrest records no longer exist. Decades later, historians Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman unearthed the history of the riot and interviewed the surviving “Compton’s queens.”

As the threat of closure looms, the caretakers of San Francisco's historic queer bars carry on among phantoms of the past and future.