Colum McCann’s Apeirogon tells the story of two friends brought together by tragedy Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, the main characters in Colum McCann’s Apeirogon, are atypical friends. Geographically, they…
Tag: history
Liberation Before Stonewall: The Compton Cafeteria Riot
Thanks to the extensive archival work of noted historian Dr Susan Stryker in 1991, we know that in August 1966 at the corner of Turk and Taylor Streets in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, police raided Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, an all-hours coffee shop popular with “gay hustlers, ‘hair fairies,’ [drag] queens, and street kids,” during a stand-in picketing.