Randy Shaw's "The Tenderloin" 10th Anniversary Edition Book Launch

Tenderloin Museum turns 10 this year, and founder Randy Shaw’s seminal neighborhood history— The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime, and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco—has been updated through 2025. Join us in celebrating the publication of a new, updated edition of this foundational book at a public program ft. Shaw in conversation with TLM’s Executive Director Katie Conry. 

Originally published in 2015, Randy Shaw’s The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime, and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco offered readers a dedicated, comprehensive history of SF’s Tenderloin for the first time. Shaw’s Tenderloin considered our city’s most misunderstood and maligned neighborhood with a richly detailed and nuanced perspective that tells a powerful story of over 100 years of resistance and resilience. The book weaves together narratives of anti-establishment social movements, working class culture, and vibrant ethnic diversity–as well as the vice that earned the neighborhood its name. 

The research and writing of that book dovetailed with the creation and opening of the permanent exhibit at the Tenderloin Museum, itself a culmination of Shaw and others’ decades of advocacy for the neighborhood. Now, both the book and museum are celebrating an important milestone: a 10th anniversary. San Francisco has gone through a lot since the original edition; so has the Tenderloin neighborhood. That’s why we are so excited about Randy Shaw’s new edition of his Tenderloin book that brings this vital history into the present. Shaw’s depiction of the Tenderloin as an historic center of resistance perfectly fits the current moment. 

Join us on February 27th to celebrate the launch of Shaw’s 10th Anniversary Edition of The Tenderloin book for a public program featuring the author & museum founder Randy Shaw in conversation with TLM Executive Director Katie Conry. 

Click here to purchase the book directly– all net proceeds support TLM.

About The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime, and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco:

Named for a part of the city where bribes bought police the highest-grade beef, San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood remains an island of primarily low-income, ethnically diverse residents in a city of ever increasing wealth. How has it survived? Randy Shaw searches for answers in this powerful account of the Tenderloin from its post-quake rebuilding in 1907 through today.

The Tenderloin fought back against the establishment time and time again. And often won. Shaw shows how those outside the mainstream—independent working women, gay men, “screaming queens,” activist SRO hotel tenants and many others—led these struggles. Once known for “girls, gambling and graft,” the Tenderloin was also fertile ground for the Grateful Dead, Miles Davis, Dashiell Hammett and other cultural icons. The Tenderloin is the untold story of a neighborhood that persisted against all odds. It is a must read for everyone concerned about the future of urban neighborhoods.

Praise for the book:

“Written with the deep knowledge and admiration of an activist who has promoted the Tenderloin for over four decades, Randy Shaw gives us a rich and accessible history of America’s most maligned and misunderstood neighborhood. This book is full of insights and lessons for building a more just future for marginalized communities.” - FORREST STUART, Professor of Sociology, Faculty Director, Program on Urban Studies, Stanford University

“Randy Shaw’s wonderful book is a perfect companion for a visit to the Tenderloin Museum. Shaw uncovers the neighborhood’s lost history and describes the challenges facing the vibrant Tenderloin today.” - KATIE CONRY, Executive Director, Tenderloin Museum

About the Author:

Randy Shaw is the Editor of BeyondChron and the Director of San Francisco's Tenderloin Housing Clinic. Shaw's latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four previous books on activism, including The Activist's Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.