We showed up before. Now let’s show up again. 💪
San Diego’s arts and culture funding is on the line, and the fight isn’t over.
Join us: Monday, May 18 3:30 PM arrival | 4:00 PM Press Conference Civic Center Plaza, 1200 Third Ave Stay for the 6 PM City Council Meeting and make your voice heard.
Bring a friend. Bring a sign.
RSVP: https://bit.ly/RSVP_May18_CallToAction_PressConference
Can’t make it? Take 2 minutes to email your City Councilmember and tell them to oppose these cuts.
History doesn’t preserve itself, and neither does funding. Show up for San Diego’s creative community.
Huge thanks to @sdartmatters and @artsculturesd for your leadership and advocacy on behalf of the arts!
🔗 Links in bio.
This month, visit Lambda Archives to explore local archival materials tracing the history of AIDS activism, community organizing, and survival in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. Also on display: an AIDS Memorial Quilt panel honoring San Diegans we lost including Lambda founder Jess Jessop, Brad Truax, and members of the Diversionary Theatre community.
The exhibit runs concurrently with Diversionary Theatre’s preview performances of RENT, each paired with a pre-show conversation featuring local HIV/AIDS organizations. Free on-site HIV testing will also be available in the Lambda Archives offices on May 23 and 24.
Come early. Stay curious. Remember with us.
Performances run May 21-29. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
Purchase tickets for RENT here:
diversionary.org/rent
The Queer Chican@ experience - curated by Betty Bangs, Bucky Montero, and Paulina Lara featuring archival materials from Lambda Archives of San Diego
- including materials documenting the history of Las Hermanas Women’s Cultural Center and Coffeehouse, a space that stood at the intersection of Chicana feminism, queer community, and cultural resistance in San Diego. These primary sources illuminate a chapter of local history that has too often gone unacknowledged, centering the voices and organizing legacies of queer women of color who shaped the region’s broader liberation movements.
Join Us for our annual Pride Party!
Celebrate and kick off San Diego Pride with Us on Saturday, June 27, during the Museum’s annual Pride Party celebration.
Enjoy free admission, activities and resource tables with community partners, and storytime and mini-performances with special guests – Queens from the Haus of St. James @hausofstjames !
Learn more about our participating community partners:
ArtReach @artreachsd
Casa de Luz @casadeluz.tijuana
CA vs. Hate @calcivilrights
Lambda Archives @lambdaarchives
ProjectTRANS at The Center @lgbtcenter
SheFest @sdshefest
Learn more and register online for free admission at museumofus.org/blog/pride-party-2026. Link in bio.
Five years. Countless stories. Lasting impact. One enduring legacy. Join Lambda Archives in celebrating the Fifth Annual Larry T. Baza Memorial Scholarship Fund Celebration on Tuesday, June 30 at 6pm at The Woo in Barrio Logan. Link to RSVP in bio.
The community made this possible. Come out and celebrate this year’s scholarship recipients with us!
This week, we celebrate Transgender History Week, an annual commemoration that grew out of advocacy to ensure trans lives, stories, and struggles are recognized alongside the broader LGBTQ+ movement. Trans History Week was first observed on May 6, 2024, coinciding with the 91st anniversary of the Nazi raid on the world’s first transgender clinic. That date marks the 1933 Nazi raid on the Institute of Sexology, established in 1919 by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. During the raid, 20,000 books and years of research were destroyed in one of the first public book burnings carried out by the Nazi regime.
Trans History Week is now an international event, held each year the week of May 6, Trans History Day.
Here in the San Diego-Tijuana binational region, that history runs deep.
Our community has been shaped by trans trailblazers who have fought for trans visibility and dignity in San Diego for decades. San Diego’s trans community has marched, organized, sued, survived, and built institutions when institutions failed them. And across the border, in Tijuana and the broader Baja California region, trans women, particularly trans women of color, have led their own movements for survival and recognition under conditions of extraordinary difficulty and extraordinary courage.
This week, we honor every trans person who ever had to fight to exist, and every one who is still fighting today.
#TransHistoryWeek 🏳️⚧️
Published from 1988 to 1996 by Kymberleigh Richards, Cross-Talk was one of the most important transgender community publications of its era: a 40-page monthly public service magazine covering community news, personal narratives, event calendars, health resources, fiction, and humor. For thousands of readers before the internet, it was a lifeline.
Here’s a small but telling detail: somewhere between February and April 1995, the subtitle quietly changed from “The Gender Community’s News & Information Monthly” to “The Transgender Community’s News & Information Monthly.” That shift in language mirrors a much larger shift happening in the movement itself, as “transgender” was gaining traction as a shared, unifying term across the community.
That kind of granular history lives in our collection. If you want to see it for yourself, schedule a research appointment and explore every issue we have on hand.
🏳️⚧️ #TransHistory #QueerHistory #CrossTalk
Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Our May newsletter is out today and we have so much to share! Here’s what’s happening and coming up at Lambda Archives:
🎓 Larry T. Baza Memorial Scholarship Fund Celebration is coming up! Join us June 30 at 6pm at The Woo (2212 Main St, Barrio Logan) for the Fifth Annual celebration honoring Larry’s legacy. We’ve distributed more than $22,000 in scholarships to date, and we’re adding to that total this year. Free and open to the public, with a suggested $15 donation. RSVP in our bio! 🔗
📚 Two new finding aids are live on the Online Archive of California: the Julian Eltinge (Susan Walters) collection and the Live and Let Live Alano Club collection, made accessible through the incredible work of interns Aris Lazerson and Gracie Petesmyer. 🙌
🗣️ On May 4, Head Archivist Gabrielle will be presenting at the virtual Society of American Archivists Diverse Sexuality and Gender Section Annual Meeting on Lambda’s finding aid workflow. Open to the public, link in bio!
🏕️ Lambda materials are featured in a new Great Outdoors History Video, check it out via the link in our bio.
Read through the entire newsletter for more updates and a section including local queer history that happened in the month of May in years past!
The Queer Chican@ experience - curated by Betty Bangs, Bucky Montero, and Paulina Lara featuring archival materials from Lambda Archives of San Diego
- including materials documenting the history of Las Hermanas Women’s Cultural Center and Coffeehouse, a space that stood at the intersection of Chicana feminism, queer community, and cultural resistance in San Diego. These primary sources illuminate a chapter of local history that has too often gone unacknowledged, centering the voices and organizing legacies of queer women of color who shaped the region’s broader liberation movements.
In 1985, a benefit concert by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles sparked something lasting: approximately 45 San Diego men came together to form what would eventually become the San Diego Men’s Chorus.
Through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, SDMC showed up for our community in one of its most devastating chapters, performing at funerals and memorials for those lost to AIDS. By the mid-1990s, the chorus found its footing as a voice of inspiration and hope, centering the transformative power of music.
After performing together in December 2009 for the first time in 17 years, the San Diego Men’s Chorus (SDMC) and the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego (GMCSD), with their uniquely distinctive and proud histories, officially merged to create the new San Diego Gay Men's Chorus (SDGMC).
This weekend, the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus brings that legacy to the Magnolia Theatre in El Cajon with HERstory: Icons, Rebels & Trailblazers. We are proud to be part of this celebration. Stop by the lobby before the show to see a special display featuring artifacts from the Lambda Archives collection that trace the history of queer women and lesbians in the San Diego community.
Tickets and more information at sdgmc.org.
📸 “San Diego Men’s Chorus: Cabaret in the Park III” poster, 2011, SDGMC Collection
