In the ‘70s and ‘80s, former Black Panther Rodney Barnette says gay bars were among the least hospitable places in San Francisco for a black man like him. That’s why he opened Eagle Creek, the first black-owned gay bar in the city. (KQEDarts)
, looked and felt like a nightclub. In the 1970s and 1980s, Rodney recalled, gay bars were among the least hospitable places in San Francisco for black people such as himself. There was hardly a place for gay black people to dance, let alone throw a fundraiser for a gay black political candidate.Sadie Barnette used her residency at The Lab to honor San Francisco's first black-owned gay bar the Eagle Creek Saloon, which her father Rodney opened in 1990.
at the Lab to to honor her father’s venture with"something living, something more than a referential archive," she said."I want this to channel Eagle Creek, not just be about it."Sadie's most vivid memory of the city’s first black-owned gay bar is from 1992, when the Eagle Creek sponsored what Rodney calls the first black float in the San Francisco Pride parade.
L to R: Alvin and Carl Barnette, Eagle Creek regulars Sammy"La Creek" and Frank"Lady F," and Rodney Barnette. Rodney was wounded in the Vietnam War, and upon returning to Los Angeles realized American police occupied the black community the way American soldiers occupied Vietnam. He founded the Compton chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968, landing on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterintelligence Program watchlist.Sadie incorporated his FBI file, acquired via a public records request, into her installation, which debuted in 2016 at the Oakland Museum of California’s exhibition.
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