The Mural
Your help, your hands, and your hearts are always needed
acrylic on wall, 54 x 13 ft, 2025.
For the Compton's Cafeteria Riot Immersive Theatrical Experience
@comptonscafeteriariot
comptonscafeteriariot.com
Presented by The Tenderloin Museum
@tenderloinmuseum
tenderloinmuseum.org
Made with help from:
Nick @badlycutpasta_studio
Nic @nichampton
Zann @zann.epk
Pablo @party_pablo
Misia @misia.soup
An-Rui @anruismith
Susan
Nathaniel @njbice
Chelsea @godstolemyfingers
Bob
Cabure @typo_daddy
Zadie @zadie_joy
Katana @rogueleaderrr
Ally @the_ochoanator
David @findgof
Chaya
Chris @christfarris
Thank you to @brandonjosephbaker for taking photos and video of the finished mural. All of the completed mural photos on my website were taken by Brandon. He is an absolute gem and I would highly recommend him for all of your art documentation needs! You can find his website here.
Much love to @turkxtaylor for helping me when I was researching for the mural for answering so many of my questions! Also Transition Times was a wonderful resource! Highly recommend reading—you can get a copy from the shop on their site turkxtaylor.net
@emilylfromm for all the advice you gave me. You taught me SO MUCH and have been so encouraging and supportive.
Special thank you to Mark and everyone at @comptonscafeteriariot for believing in me
@typo_daddy for all of your love and support
@tenderloinmuseum and Alex for getting it to all come together ✨💖
@galasadurni_artist who is always pushing me to do my best. Your love and support means the world to me. You’re the best.
And finally, thank you to the Tenderloin, for always being there for me. For being there for each other. The outpouring of support every day sent me to the clouds. This mural is for you. I hope it is a reminder for everyone that we are stronger when we come together.
Y’all are all amazing wonderful people and this would not have been possible without you!!
While working on the mockup for this mural, I wrote this poem about it:
cop cars burning
a prison in ruins
the bars covered in vines
flowers bloom
a butterfly shows its fist
as clouds roll by
on top of the platform
the purple rhino smiles
About the mural:
The title of the mural comes from the Presidents Page in the Feb 1967 issue of Vanguard Magazine (you can read it at digitaltransgenderarchive.net). Vanguard started right here in the TL! Queer people, street kids, queens. Feeding people, sharing clothes, finding jobs, and making community when no one else would. They wrote “Your help, your hands, and your hearts are always needed” and that line became the name of this mural.
The butterfly with a fist was the logo for SF Pride in 1972. A butterfly is soft, fragile, beautiful, and a fist is power, fight, survival. They are western tiger swallowtails, which used to be abundant in the TL. It’s the yellow butterfly you’ll see floating through Market Street every summer, weaving through all the chaos of the city like it’s nothing. Living, adapting, and making beauty in the middle of it all.
And then there’s the Compton Cafeteria Riots. In 1966, trans women and drag queens said enough!! Throwing coffee, breaking windows, fighting back against police raids right in the middle of the Tenderloin. Survival boiling over into resistance. Out of Compton’s came a new kind of courage, one that echoed forward into everything else: the magazines, the protests, the Lavender Panthers and more. It’s all part of the same story! People in the TL refusing to disappear, refusing to be silent. Choosing to fight for each other.
The purple hand comes from Halloween 1969, when queer protestors gathered outside the Examiner. It’s known as The Friday of the Purple Hand. The paper had a policy of printing the names and addresses of men arrested in gay bar raids or even in tearooms, bathrooms. Examiner staff dumped vats of purple ink onto the queer protestors in the street, trying to humiliate them. Instead, people pressed their hands into the ink and smeared them back across the walls, leaving purple handprints everywhere. The Examiner called the cops, who stormed in breaking ribs and shoving people into vans. But it didn’t break the movement, it pulled people closer. That day showed how the community would come together to protect each other, and the purple hand became a symbol of unity and resistance. Everyone who was with me in the alley while we painted the mural left their own purple handprint here, tying us back to that moment.
The coast live oak is here, up top, growing over old ruins. Its deep roots can survive drought, fire, and still keep growing. For me it’s a reminder that something strong and rooted can always take hold again.
And scattered across the wall are all the little critters that live here with us, pigeons, moths, squirrels, raccoons. Tiny survivors in their own right. They’re the background of our days, often overlooked, but just like us, they find a way to keep going.
The story of the Tenderloin—survival, care, resistance. This wall is just one more mark in that history.