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. "But we shouldn't relegate the struggle to the past." "Discrimination at clubs doesn't take the same forms now," she said. This way, the project at once enhances the historical record, gathering memories and materials related to a little-documented bar, and addresses a still-urgent need for black-centered queer spaces. Sadie aims for the installation to also be a queer social space, inviting organizations such as the Black Aesthetic film collective to contribute programming. L to R: Alvin and Carl Barnette, Eagle Creek regulars Sammy "La Creek" and Frank "Lady F," and Rodney Barnette. There are branded matchbooks and coasters, and the bar itself is sturdy enough for people to dance on. The bar is part altar, with photos of the Barnette family from the time, and part sculpture, with crushed cans and stereo equipment enameled in glitter. Sadie called the aesthetic "disco limbo," saying in a recent interview that it connects to her work in terms of familiar objects or scenes portrayed with a hyperbolic grandeur to suggest their liberatory potential. "The New Eagle Creek Saloon" is not a reproduction of Eagle Creek so much as a fondly embellished memory. "I want this to channel Eagle Creek, not just be about it." Now the Oakland artist is using her residency at the Lab to to honor her father’s venture with "something living, something more than a referential archive," she said. Sadie was five years old in 1990 when her father acquired the bar that for the next three years provided gay people of color a site of protest, refuge and revelry on Market Street-"a friendly place with a funky bass for every race," as its slogan went. Sadie Barnette (L) used her residency at The Lab to honor San Francisco's first black-owned gay bar the Eagle Creek Saloon, which her father Rodney (R) opened in 1990. "That’s why I bought the Eagle Creek," he said. There was hardly a place for gay black people to dance, let alone throw a fundraiser for a gay black political candidate. In the 1970s and 1980s, Rodney recalled, gay bars were among the least hospitable places in San Francisco for black people such as himself. Arched over the scene was a pink neon sign with the words "Eagle Creek."Īs the music quieted, Sadie Barnette and her father Rodney sat on stools beneath the neon, and explained why this art space, usually known as the Lab, looked and felt like a nightclub. Diffuse blue and fuchsia lights shone on white patent leather sofas, and a DJ played vinyl-mostly throwback funk and disco beating with a steady pulse. One Saturday evening last month, dozens of people hovered around a horseshoe-shaped bar in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Editor's Note: This article is part of KQED Arts' story series Pride as Protest, which chronicles the past and present of LGBTQ+ activism in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Learn more about the series here.