{"id":245403,"date":"2026-03-31T18:14:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T18:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/245403\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T18:14:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T18:14:17","slug":"meet-the-people-driving-trans-visibility-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/245403\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the people driving trans visibility in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Comic<\/a><\/p>\n

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The International Transgender Day of Visibility is celebrated around the world today, highlighting the contributions made by trans people to culture and society. It began in 2009 , thanks to trans activist Rachel Crandall Crocker, and in 2021, then President Joe Biden recognized the March event. For the occasion, Mission Local met with local activists, community leaders, and artists who make trans people visible in the city and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ACal Calamia. Photo by B\u00e9atrice Valli\u00e8res.<\/p>\n

\"Mission<\/p>\n

Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter below.<\/p>\n

Cal Calamia<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, San Francisco runner Cal Calamia won the non-binary division of the Los Angeles Marathon with a time of 2:49:17. It\u2019s the second win for the S.F.-based athlete, activist, and poet, following another first-place finish in 2024. They\u2019ve only entered the race twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always amazing to perform well athletically because it gives me the platform to speak up about issues that I care about, like trans rights,\u201d Calamia said.<\/p>\n

Calamia, who is trans and uses both they and he pronouns interchangeably (which we do here as well), has been an outspoken activist for the inclusion of non-binary and trans people in sports since 2022, when he successfully advocated for the creation of an award for non-binary runners in San Francisco\u2019s annual \u201cBay to Breakers\u201d race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since then, Calamia\u2019s advocacy has helped drive the introduction of non-binary divisions at several major U.S. races, including the San Francisco Marathon and the Boston Marathon.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Calamia has continued to rack up podium finishes, and in 2025 became the first non-binary runner to place on the podium at all six Abbott World Marathon Majors: the Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City marathons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ACal Calamia running the LA Marathon earlier this month. Photo by Brynn Osborn, courtesy of Cal Calamia.<\/p>\n

The number of athletes competing in the nonbinary divisions is still relatively low. But Calamia has made it their mission to make sure this number continues to grow.<\/p>\n

In 2024, 38 runners in the non-binary category crossed the LA Marathon\u2019s finish line. In 2025, there were 268\u2014the highest number since the introduction of the category in 2021. This year, there were just over 100.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first started advocating for these divisions, I was having my own athletic success,\u201d they said. \u201cAnd I was like, this is so cool, but something\u2019s missing. Like, where is everyone? I felt like I wanted more of that community piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

In late 2022, Calamia created a club for trans and nonbinary runners in San Francisco<\/a>. It has since grown to include 500 people on its mailing list across the country, with 150 active members in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just been amazing to see more trans and non-binary people come into the sport,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Calamia, who is outspoken about their journey and advocacy with their 103,000 Instagram followers, said they receive a lot of positive feedback from young people and parents of trans kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to change trans people\u2019s minds if they think that they don\u2019t belong somewhere,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to see that trans people are showing up to spaces they previously didn\u2019t feel like were for them because of the work that I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"APer Sia. Photo by B\u00e9atrice Valli\u00e8res.<\/p>\n

Per Sia<\/p>\n

Per Sia remembers the first Drag Story Hour in 2015 vividly. \u201cI was so nervous. I remember reading and shaking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

As an educator and a drag performer, she had been invited to co-lead the new program that has drag performers read stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores. \u201cUp until that point, everything in my life had been separate\u2014my life as a TA and my life as a drag performer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

That day, however, felt different. \u201cI remember feeling the most happy, but also the most at peace ever,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause for the first time in my life, I didn\u2019t have to hide anything. It felt like all my worlds had merged\u2014my love of the classroom and my love of drag were in one room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Per Sia first entered into the world of drag as a photographer in her hometown of Los Angeles. \u201cI loved drag queens,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I was never in front of the camera, because I didn\u2019t like that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After she moved to San Francisco to pursue an education in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, she decided to give it a try, \u201csort of as a joke\u201d. \u201cAnd then I was just hooked,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She got her first drag residency at the Latino queer bar\u00a0 Esta Noche<\/a> in the Mission, a neighborhood institution which closed in 2014 after 35 years. Since then, she has also pursued residencies at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Oakland Museum of California and at the bar El Rio, all while working as an after-school arts educator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last October, Per Sia was named as the city\u2019s second-ever Drag Laureate<\/a>. She is the first trans woman to occupy the role, which is a position the mayor\u2019s office created in 2023. The drag laureate\u2019s duties include acting as the city\u2019s ambassador for drag performance, LGBTQ culture, and nightlife. She was selected by a committee that included LGBTQ community leaders, as well as Mayor Daniel Lurie.<\/p>\n

Being the city\u2019s Drag Laureate has given her access to a larger platform and a new audience, including performing in front of politicians. \u201cWhen I\u2019m in those spaces, I make sure that if I\u2019m giving the microphone, I say my piece,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In her acceptance speech, Per Sia promised to highlight joy in the face of adversity. \u201cDespite the current chaos of the world,\u201d she said, \u201cI promise you this: I will keep bringing my joy, my brown joy, my queer joy, all the joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a trans woman, an educator, and a daughter of Mexican immigrants, she said later in an interview, \u201cI can\u2019t dwell on the fact that my government doesn\u2019t want me to exist. So I indulge in the things that I can change and the things that I can do, which is to spread my trans joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the ways she likes to do that is to take public transportation in a ball gown in full drag whenever she goes to perform.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI get to interact with commuters and it\u2019s so wonderful to meet people and have conversations,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s my way of bringing trans visibility to the everyday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ANathaniel Bice. Photo by B\u00e9atrice Valli\u00e8res.<\/p>\n

Nathaniel Bice<\/p>\n

Nathaniel Bice has spent the past six years capturing the streets, signs, storefronts, and landmarks of San Francisco.<\/p>\n

It all began in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the city\u2019s theaters. Bice, who worked as a set designer, began searching for a new creative outlet, and turned to painting. Drawing on his background as an Urban Sketcher<\/a>, he took his work outdoors, where he began to capture scenes of the city en plein air\u2014from neighborhood restaurants and small businesses to some of San Francisco\u2019s most recognizable landmarks.<\/p>\n

Bice grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and studied performance production at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington. He moved to San Francisco in 2018 to complete a fellowship at the American Conservatory Theatre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI, like so many people do, fell so in love with San Francisco,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part of that love story was discovering the city\u2019s vibrant queer scene, and building a community that supported him through the early stages of his transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bice is a founding member of Spooky Haus<\/a>, a collective of trans and gender non-conforming artists in the Bay Area. On March 28, the collective celebrated Trans Day of Having a Nice Snack, an alternative to Trans Day of Visibility that generally involves offering free snacks to trans and gender-nonconforming people, while encouraging cisgender allies to donate.<\/p>\n

Because Bice\u2019s work usually doesn\u2019t delve into explicitly queer themes, he said he used to worry about not fitting in the queer artistic spaces. He has since changed his perspective.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he said, \u201cit\u2019s hard for me to get into regular, high level art spaces as well, just for all of the regular reasons that a young queer person would have a hard time in these spaces that are full of old rich people.\u201d The experience, he said, has left him feeling \u201csuspended in between those two worlds\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"VerticalCastro Neons, one of the pieces featured in BEACONS. Photo courtesy of Nathaniel Bice.<\/p>\n

Bice just closed his first solo exhibition at Queer Arts Featured. Titled BEACONS<\/a>, the exhibit was a dive into the Castro\u2019s queer history through acrylic paintings of the neighborhood\u2019s most iconic neons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a lot of anxiety prior to this show about the fact that my art had kind of nothing to do with my queer life and queer identity. I\u2019m just painting San Francisco,\u201d Bice said. \u201cA lot of people who do queer art will do stuff that you look at it and you know that it\u2019s queer art, like it has symbols in it or it has queer people in it. And that\u2019s just not the work that I\u2019m drawn to making myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, he said, \u201cI think anything I do is queer because I\u2019m queer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AKiki Lopez. Photo by B\u00e9atrice Valli\u00e8res.<\/p>\n

Kiki Lopez<\/p>\n

When Kiki Lopez first arrived in San Francisco in the summer of 2022, she took off her shoes to ground herself in the soil. \u201cThe energy was very embracing, very motherly,\u201d she said of the ritual she often does in a new place. \u201cI might be overromanticizing it, but that\u2019s how I felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now four years later, Lopez, who is originally from the Philippines, calls the city home.\u00a0 It\u2019s where she found protection, love, community, support\u2014and a career in the city\u2019s drag scene.<\/p>\n

Lopez began performing in drag in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her drag alter ego, Mx. Crunch, started as a \u201cbedroom queen,\u201d a term that describes a drag performer who only does drag in private.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She performed professionally for the first time in San Francisco in September 2022 at The Monster Show at The Edge in the Castro.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From then on, she met drag performers and producers who helped her secure other performance opportunities, launching her drag career.<\/p>\n

Later, in 2023, Lopez won a pageant contest organized by GAPA, an organization dedicated to advocating for queer Asian and Pacific Islander. That award, she said, was life changing in the doors it opened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"PersonMx. Kiki Crunch stepped down from her role as San Francisco\u2019s 2025-2026 Imperial Crown Princess on Saturday, March 28. The title is given every year by the Imperial Council of San Francisco, a local nonprofit. Photo by @kc.visualssf on Instagram, courtesy of Kiki Lopez. <\/p>\n

In 2024, she became the co-matriarch of the drag group \u201cMabuhay Bitches\u201d, named after a Filipino greeting. The group now has 10 members in the Bay Area, all Tagalog-speaking drag performers. They perform every first Sunday of the month during brunch at Midnight Sun in the Castro.<\/p>\n

Outside of drag, Lopez described herself as a \u201csimple woman\u201d who enjoys jogging, taking long walks, playing Mario Kart, and growing her Pok\u00e9dex. She also works as program manager at the San Francisco Community Health Center, and is an active advocate and organizer for Queer and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander people in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can definitely tell when you\u2019re speaking with Mx. Crunch or with Miss Lopez,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cI\u2019m already vocal, but Mx.Crunch, she\u2019s way feistier. I think she\u2019s braver to some extent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lopez described starting drag as a \u201clife-saving\u201d moment for her at a time when she was going through a severe depression. \u201cIt was through the art of drag that I realized that I just needed to express myself differently,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said she resonates with drag\u2019s history in the LGBTQ community as an art form dedicated to resisting any form of oppression. \u201cDrag is resistance,\u201d she said. \u201cI like San Francisco so much because it reminds you every day that is what drag is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PersonJoaquin Guerrero. Photo by B\u00e9atrice Valli\u00e8res.<\/p>\n

Joaquin Guerrero<\/p>\n

For much of his youth, Joaquin Guerrero rarely saw people who looked like him. Growing up in Mexico and Vancouver, Canada, transmasculine and queer Latino people were almost invisible, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So in 2014, when Guerrero first came out as trans, he decided to move to California, where he knew he would find community and support among people who shared some of his experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first years in San Francisco were difficult. He was undocumented for a period (he is now a citizen), and for five years, he struggled to find stable housing.<\/p>\n

Even as he was living on friends\u2019 couches or in his car, he never sought to access homelessness services. \u201cAt the time, I didn\u2019t think I was homeless enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In Vancouver, Guerrero had been involved with harm reduction efforts working with unhoused people.<\/p>\n

In San Francisco, he found himself on the receiving end of some of the supportive services he had previously worked to provide. \u201cIt\u2019s given me a more well-rounded perspective,\u201d he said, \u201cand also a lot of compassion for what other people were navigating here.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2019, Guerrero joined the board of St. James Infirmary Clinic, where he had previously been a client. In 2020, he also began working in a shelter in the Bayview, where he was moved by the death of a young resident.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis person that was gender nonconforming passed away behind closed doors because they didn\u2019t have the level of care and the cultural competencies to survive in a general shelter,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cSo I was like, we need a place for our own people. And that motivated me to want to open a new shelter.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021, Guerrero became the inaugural director of Our Trans Home SF, a city-funded initiative dedicated to fighting homelessness among trans and gender non-conforming individuals. In 2022, the organization opened the Taimon Booton Navigation Center, a shelter for trans and gender non-conforming people, and named it after the young person who passed away in 2020.<\/p>\n

After leaving the program in 2023, Guerrero briefly worked doing landlord-tenant dispute resolution for the San Francisco Bar Association, before joining the city\u2019s Homelessness Oversight Commission, which oversees the work of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. He\u2019s been a commissioner for three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know how big of a deal it is to be trans and be a commissioner, because we\u2019re so underrepresented in government,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As much as Guerrero is proud to be visibly trans, he also knows that \u201cit\u2019s not always safe\u201d, particularly under current federal policies targeting trans people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying that trans people should go into hiding at all,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to continue to be on the commission and talk about trans issues. I\u2019m going to continue to be trans in public in a political arena.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am saying that we have to take care of each other and we can\u2019t rely on the powers that be to do that, but we do have to keep fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PersonAleo Landeta. Photo by B\u00e9atrice Valli\u00e8res.<\/p>\n

Aleo Landeta<\/p>\n

Sometime in the mid-2000s, Aleo Landeta was \u201creluctantly\u201d attending community college and trying to figure out what to do with their life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was sort of like, okay, the only way I\u2019m going to finish college is if I get to do a thing that I care about,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They enrolled in a photography class, and, thanks in part to a very dedicated professor, immediately fell in love with the practice. They ended up getting a B.A. in photography at the University of South Florida in Tampa in 2009, followed in 2017 by a M.A. in Arts Education from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.<\/p>\n

Landeta, who grew up in Florida, relocated to the Bay Area in 2010 to pursue their art. Since then, they\u2019ve shown work in galleries across the city and beyond, from installations to pastels, oil paintings, and cyanotypes.<\/p>\n

Queerness and trans identity are recurring themes in their work, with joy as a central throughline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was important for me to provide a counter-narrative,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA soft pastel piece by Aleo Landeta, on display in the Soft Portals exhibition at 120710 Gallery in Berkeley. Photo courtesy of Aleo Landeta.<\/p>\n

That is the vision that inspired their 2023 mural on the wall of the San Francisco LGBT Center. Titled Joy is the fuel, the piece depicts a queer dance party, celebrating the importance of dance and nightlife culture in the queer community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2025, their installation Toward the Then and There, in front of the Palo Alto City Hall, includes a retrofitted payphone that allows the public to hear testimonies from LGBTQ community members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Landeta\u2019s latest exhibition, Soft Portals, is a collaborative show with their partner, Kit Robbins. It opens with a curatorial preview on April 2 at 120710 Gallery in Berkeley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe show for us is really about this idea of trans-for-trans love\u2014two trans people being able to see and understand each other in these really deep and intimate ways,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

As part of the exhibition, the couple will celebrate their wedding in a private event at the gallery on April 4.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

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