Many of the materials in Box 1 are descriptions of San Francisco Street Patrol (SFSP) for people outside the group, or potential and new members. The collection also contains a number of internal group documents and news updates for group members. SFSP members wore a uniform on patrol and the collection includes drawings of the SFSP T-shirt designs.

San Francisco Street Patrol (SFSP) began in August 1990, as a working group of Queer Nation San Francisco. Its original name was DORIS SQUASH (Defend Our Rights In the Streets/Super Queers United Against Savage Heterosexism), and the group took the name San Francisco Street Patrol in early 1991. The group was active from 1990 to 1994, and its mission was to promote GLBT peoples safety by primarily discouraging queer bashing through organized and regular nighttime patrols of the Castro. Women were among the founding members of the group, which always included roughly equal numbers of men and women. A founding patrol member and group leader was transgender, and other members included lesbians, gay men, bisexual men and women, two heterosexual men, and a heterosexual woman. SFSP members tried to verbally deescalate potential bashings when it seemed possible, and they made citizens arrests when "bashers" persisted in homophobic violence. Members were unarmed but carried handcuffs and whistles, and were trained in martial arts and self-defense. SFSP wasn't out to clean up the streets, and their patrols intervened only in bashings and not in street drug use or sex work. The group's aim was simply to make the Castro a place where Queer people can hang out without being targeted for violent attack.

1 manuscript box and 1 oversized box 10.3 linear feet

Copyright to unpublished manuscript materials has been transferred to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.

Collection open for research.