San Francisco’s ‘last vibrant time’: Photographer captures city’s 1990s queer renaissance

Oakland photographer Chloe Sherman’s new book of images immerses viewers in the last time San Francisco might be able to say it lived up to its promise of being an epicenter of American counterculture.

In the 1990s, San Francisco was the focus of a queer cultural renaissance, largely based in the Mission District. Then in her 20s, Sherman was part of this liberating, boundary-pushing social scene. Camera always in hand, she copiously photographed her friends — stylish and spirited queer youth, punks and artists — hanging out at clubs or around the neighborhood, at the beach or in the intimacy of their apartments.

These photos now star in “Renegades: San Francisco the 1990s” (128 pages, Hatje Cantz). Sherman and her friends gravitated to San Francisco for its beauty and its history of welcoming iconoclasts — the beats in the 1950s, the hippies in the 1960s and gay men in the 1970s and 1980s. Just before the dot-com boom, the city also remained affordable enough for a new generation of young people to enjoy a community where they could experiment with life, art, fashion, sexuality and gender.

“It was such a pivotal time in San Francisco’s queer history,” Shermans said in an interview.

At the onset of the Mission District’s gentrification, these “renegades” created a “ferociously sex-positive subculture” of “radical feminists, queer punks and gender-variant people,” Anna Joy Springer, an author and former vocalist for the punk rock group Blatz, wrote in the book’s introduction.

During this time, there also was an explosion of female-owned clubs, cafes, bookstores and other businesses, particularly along 14th Street. Some of these venues, past and present, play prominent roles in Sherman’s book: The Lexington Club dive bar, Red Dora’s Bearded Lady Cafe, Glama-Rama! Salon and Black and Blue Tattoo.

Sherman grew up in New York, Chicago and Portland. In 1990, in her early 20s, she drove from Oregon to visit San Francisco for the first time with a friend.

“I fell in love with the city’s beautify and physicality and everything else about it. It had a gritty urban feel that I craved.”

Sherman hoped to figure out how to pursue an art career while she picked up work as a bike messenger or at Real Food grocery in nearby Noe Valley. She eventually earned a BFA in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Meanwhile, she paid $250 a month for her first home, a shared apartment in the Mission. The affordability was “huge,” said Sherman, because it allowed people like her to get by with minimum-wage jobs, while having plenty of time to do art, socialize and collaborate on projects.

At the time, it also was easy to meet people. In a pre-digital age, people had to leave their homes to find entertainment and other diversions, and there was always something going on — a party, a show or a gallery opening — most nights of the week, Sherman said. “You had to go out and get somewhere to find something,” she said.

Sherman found young people like herself and photographed them dancing in clubs, performing music, riding in cool cars, getting tattooed or lounging in the grass during lazy afternoon picnics. Her subjects also display the era’s fashion, including glamorous vintage gowns and classic suits and ties, representing the femme and butch aesthetics.  “Viewing these images all in one sitting is like suddenly being invited into the coolest (and tightest) group of friends you’ve ever had,” said KQED arts and culture writer Rae Alexandra.

While Sherman and her friends were having fun, they also were producing music, poetry, fiction, dance and even experimental films. “It was a very inclusive environment for this generation to thrive,” Sherman said. “You were immersed in this group of other like-minded people. It was part of a very DIY approach. We just kind of went for it and made it work. It was often fly by night, but it was often successful.”

Sherman collected her photos into a book after first displaying them in a show last year at the Schlomer Haus Gallery near the Castro. She ended her book with a photo of her good friend Springer at her going-away party in 1999. By the end of the decade, Springer and some others in Sherman’s circle had moved to different cities, either because of career opportunities or because they were being priced out of San Francisco. For family reasons, Sherman has since relocated to Oakland.

Dot-com entrepreneurs may see themselves as belonging to a more recent generation of San Francisco renegades, but Sherman agrees that the immense wealth they generated led to the hollowing out of a creative class that tends to operate at the lower end of the economy.

“I feel really lucky to have been able to be there and to have chronicled that era,” Sherman said. “There’s still beauty to the city, and it’s still a special place. That said, the ’90s may have simultaneously been the last of the most vibrant times.”