SF Jacks (San Francisco, California) — 1980s–1990s
In the underground nightlife map of late-20th-century San Francisco, SF Jacks was more than just a bar — it was part of a constellation of private clubs and after-hours spaces that carried queer nightlife through the turbulent years of the AIDS crisis and city policing. Jacks appears in archival records as one of several specialized social/sexual clubs that used a shared clubhouse at 890 Folsom Street, a multi-level space rented by organizer Buzz Bense from 1986–1991.
This Folsom Street clubhouse — sometimes dubbed the Sextine Chapel of Inanna in underground circles — hosted SF Jacks alongside other queer affinity groups, providing a physical refuge after the closure of traditional bathhouses and sex clubs in the late 1980s. The space became a site for community gatherings, parties, and resistance to police harassment.
