For a brief period in the mid-1960s, when the city’s LGBTQ community was beginning to find its voice, “San Francisco’s Finest Female Impersonators” performed at the Casa Blanca Lounge in Glen Park.

Evelyn Rose of the Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project shares how the story of the Casa Blanca not only reveals the rich Italian heritage of the 2900 block of Diamond Street but also sheds light on a time when expression of an individual’s authentic self in San Francisco was an arrestable offense.

Dr. Rose has been a community historian in San Francisco for over 20 years. She founded the Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project in 2014, and hosts the history website, Tramps of San Francisco.