A local literary arts group is aiming to "queer" the Castro through a yearlong program of events in response to concerns that the San Francisco district is losing its identity as an LGBT neighborhood.
Radar Productions secured $25,000 from the city's Grants for the Arts for its Queering the Castro series of readings, performances, and panel discussions. Founded in 2003 by writer Michelle Tea, Radar helps nurture queer artists by promoting their work through public events and commissioning new pieces.
"I think the Castro has always straddled that line between gay conservative and radical queer. We want to bring queer artists into that neighborhood, especially queer artists of color that don't often come into the neighborhood," said Juliana Delgado Lopera, 27, a lesbian who in July became Radar's executive director and artistic director.
In a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter at the Castro's Hearth coffeehouse, Delgado Lopera explained that Radar's intention with Queering the Castro is to highlight LGBT history and queer culture through a variety of events. It also wanted to create pop-up type spaces for queer artists to present their works in the Castro.
Thus, it is collaborating with Magnet, the gay men's health center in the Castro, the San Francisco Public Library's Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library, and the GLBT History Museum run by the GLBT Historical Society.
"There are not a lot of places anymore for queer artists in the Castro," said Delgado Lopera, an award-winning writer who grew up in Colombia and moved to San Francisco seven years ago from Miami. "A lot of places are closing down and getting gentrified out."
The Queering the Castro program was inspired by a series of events that Radar hosted last year to reclaim spaces in the city's North Beach neighborhood that have historical ties to the LGBT community. It hosted a walking tour of various sites and held an afternoon of performances at Jack Kerouac Alley.
Based on the success of those events, Radar decided to venture into a different neighborhood and landed on the Castro. The kickoff event, in September, saw a standing-room-only audience turn out at Magnet for the first of a three-part reading series dubbed Hella Close.
With its focus on queer intimacy, poet and singer Roberto F. Santiago, who lives in Oakland, opted to present works he had never read out loud prior to that night.
"How much more intimate can it get than reading something you have never read to anyone? Also, the poems I chose had to do with that moment where you are trying to explain yourself and get your voice heard," said Santiago, 31, who is gay and of Puerto Rican descent.
After moving to the Bay Area a year ago from New York, Santiago said he was surprised to find the Castro "all sanitized and cleaned up" and lacking diversity. It was therefore somewhat of a shock, he said, to find a young, diverse crowd show up for the reading event at Magnet.
"This made it feel much more intimate, much more queer and much more like Oakland," said Santiago, who works in San Francisco for a company that assists low-income high school students attend and succeed at college. "Something really great about this Radar series is every single reader does something different and represents a different community, so there is definitely something for everyone."
The second installment in the reading series is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, October 26 at Magnet. (Currently located at 4122 18th Street, the health center will relocate to 470 Castro Street sometime this fall.) Its theme is also queer intimacy and will feature bisexual artist/activist Juba Kalamka; storyteller and actor Carson Beker; genderqueer fiction writer Dawn Robinson; and Oakland-based transgender musician and writer Julia Serano.
The final reading event at Magnet is set for Tuesday, November 17. The theme will be fat intimacy, and Radar managing director Virgie Tovar, the editor of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion, is overseeing the guest list.
In February, at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, Radar is teaming up with the literary arts nonprofit Quiet Lightning to produce what it is calling a "literary mixtape collaboration" of readings and performances.
Other events being planned include LGBT artists panels in conjunction with three art shows set to open next spring at the GLBT History Museum (4127 18th Street) and drag queen story hours at the Castro's branch library (1 Jose Sarria Court off 16th Street) and also at Market Street bookstore Books Inc. around the Valentine's Day and Easter holidays.
The organization is also commissioning pieces from queer artists to premiere at its Radar Superstar event held each year in June at the public library's main branch in the Civic Center where it usually hosts its monthly reading series.
"People are very disillusioned with San Francisco right now and also with the arts," said Delgado Lopera, who wrote Cuéntamelo! , an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latin@ immigrants.
The Queering the Castro series, she added, aims to answer the question "how do we come together as queer artists and queer writers and push through what is happening in the city right now."
Updated information about the various Queering the Castro events will be posted to Radar's website at http://www.radarproductions.org/ as well as to its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RADAR-Productions-66777527741/timeline/.