Rikki Streicher (1922–1994) was an American activist and community leader in San Francisco's LGBTQ movement. In the 1960s, she had an active leadership role in the Society for Individual Rights, an organization that promoted equal rights for gays and lesbians. In 1966, she opened and ran Maud's, a year prior to the San Francisco’s Summer of Love; it stayed open for 23 years, at that time the longest continuously running lesbian-owned gay bar in the country. She opened a second bar, Amelia’s, in 1978 in the city’s Mission district, with both venues serving as makeshift community centers for lesbians who had very few accepting socializing options. In the early 1980s, she was a co-founder of the international Gay Olympics, later called Gay Games, she helped to create the Federation of Gay Games and served on the board of directors. In 1994, she received the Tom Waddell for her contribution to Gay Athletics.
Streicher died of cancer later that year, and was survived by her partner, Mary Sager. The Rikki Streicher Field, an athletic field and recreation center in San Francisco's Castro District, was named after her.
Early life
Streicher was born in 1922.
She served in the military and lived in
Los Angeles in the 1940s, where she spent time in the gay bars of that city. She also frequented the gay bars of North Beach in
San Francisco.
Butch-Femme roles were very fixed at that time. Streicher then identified as butch, and was photographed in 1945 in a widely published image, sitting in
Oakland's
Claremont Resort with other
lesbians, wearing a suit and tie.
[Nan Alamilla Boyd, Horacio N. Roque Ramirez, Bodies of Evidence, The Practice of Queer Oral History, Oxford University Press, Feb 26, 2012, p. 7] She worked as an
X-ray technician after moving to San Francisco in 1944, then entered restaurant management.
San Francisco and national activities
Society for Individual Rights
Streicher had an active leadership role in the Society for Individual Rights (SIR), an organization of gay men and lesbians created in San Francisco in 1964 that promoted equal rights for homosexuals, political empowerment, and community building through fundraisers, dances, and classes.
[JoAnne Myers, The A to Z of the Lesbian Liberation Movement: Still the Rage, Scarecrow Press, 2009, p. 232] By 1966, SIR had established the first public gay community center in the United States, and become the largest homophile organization in the country.
[Brent L. Pickett, The A to Z of Homosexuality, Scarecrow Press, 2009, p. 174]
Maud's
In 1966, Streicher opened Maud's, originally called "Maud's Study", or "The Study", a lesbian bar on Cole St. in the
Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
The following year, the Haight-Ashbury would become the epicenter of the
hippie movement during the 1967 Summer of Love. Maud's, said one historian, served to "bridge the gap between San Francisco's lesbian community and its hippie generation."
[ Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, "A Queer Ladder of Social Mobility," University of California Press, 2003 ] Because women were not allowed to be employed as
/ref> The bar quickly became a popular gathering place for San Francisco lesbians and
bisexual women. One notable customer of Maud's was singer
Janis Joplin.
[Tom Steele, "Janis Joplin" Out Magazine, August, 2005, p. 28] Activists
Del Martin and
Phyllis Lyon were also early patrons of Maud's.
Maud's remained opened for twenty-three years, becoming at that time the longest continuously running lesbian-owned lesbian bar in the country. In the book
Wide Open Town, Nan Amilla Boyd describes Maud's as a "lesbian bar, clubhouse and community center". She highlights the fight of bar owners like Streicher during the 1950s and 1960s to "secure public space for queer people and says many lesbians 'depended on bar life, the central artery of queer life' for their activities.'
[ Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, "A Queer Ladder of Social Mobility," University of California Press, 2003 ]
The bar and its closing in 1989 were documented in Paris Poirier's internationally distributed film Last Call at Maud's.[ Kemply, Washington Post]
Amelia's
In 1978, at the height of the
disco era, Streicher opened Amelia's, a more spacious bar and dance club at 647 Valencia Street in San Francisco's
Mission District, named after
Amelia Earhart. The Mission district, and particularly Valencia Street, became a gathering place for lesbians from the 1970s through the early 1990s, and was home to several organizations and businesses that catered to women, including The Women's Building, a non-profit organization; Old Wives Tales, a bookstore; Osento, a woman-only bathhouse;
and the Artemis Society, a lesbian club which later became the Artemis Cafe.
Amelia's was open until 1991, when Streicher sold it and it became the Elbo Room bar (the Elbo Room closed in 2018).[Morse, Rob (November 12, 1991). "As San Francisco goes, so what?" San Francisco Examiner. p. 3. "It's a victim of the lesbian community becoming more diverse...the 30-and-over lesbian crowd just isn't going out to bars as much anymore. The ones who do tend to go to mainstream bars and clubs. There is an absence of a lesbian community in the presence of a million lesbians...Today it's 'I, me, mine,'...Well, tempus fugit. On Saturday night there will be a goodbye party called 'Last Call at Amelia's.'"] "It's a victim of the lesbian community becoming more diverse," Streicher said, "the 30-and-over lesbian crowd just isn't going out to bars as much anymore. The ones who do tend to go to mainstream bars and clubs."
An obituary in The Advocate, published two months after Streicher's death, erroneously reported that Amelia's was called "Amanda's".[ via Google Books] Every June during Pride Week, the Elbo Room replaced its sign with Amelia's to honor the bar and its lesbian clientele.
Gay Olympics
Streicher was a passionate promoter of gay and lesbian softball teams and co-founder of the
Gay Olympics, later named Gay Games, which started in San Francisco.
She helped to create the Federation of Gay Games and served on the board of directors.
"Sports are the great social equalizer," she said. "It is perhaps the only time that it does not matter who you are but how you play the game."
[Jayne Caudwell, Sport, Sexualities and Queer/Theory Routledge, 2007, p. 93 ] At the fourth annual Gay Games in New York City in 1994, attended by 55,000 people, she received the Dr.
Tom Waddell Award for her contribution to Gay Athletics.
She is also listed in the hall of fame for the San Francisco Gay Softball League.
Death and legacy
Streicher died of cancer at age 68 on August 21, 1994, and was survived by her partner, Mary Sager.
Upon her death, the mayor of San Francisco lowered the city flags to half-mast.
[Eric Marcus, Out in All Directions: A Treasury of Gay and Lesbian America, Grand Central Publishing, Sep 26, 2009 ] The Rikki Streicher Field, an athletic field and recreation center in San Francisco's
Castro District, was named after her. Scholars of LGBT history have speculated that the lesbian bars of Streicher's era, which served an important purpose at that time, have closed as the result of gentrification, greater acceptance of lesbians in mainstream society and the popularity of
online dating and social media.
One writer looking back on the era noted that Streicher and her lesbian bars were instrumental in creating a protective space where lesbian women could come of age and help others do the same:
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