The Revival of Transcendent Tuesdays
L.A.'s only weekly Trans event returned on August 6th, 2024
Transcendent Tuesdays was born out of necessity, because there was no future without it.
In Los Angeles, twin gay meccas West Hollywood and Silver Lake stand strong on opposite sides of the city, but the trans community has lacked its own spaces, especially ones that are trans-led and consistent. As elder Kate Bornstein opined, what being a trans woman is all about is “carving out space,” and, in the case of Transcendent Tuesdays, the woman in charge of the carving is Sinistra Black (she/her). When giving her full name to anyone, she quips that it’s “Black like the void,” and it’s thus fitting that she’s the one filling a void in the Los Angeles trans community.
The space she has chosen for this “dawn of a new chapter” for the weekly community event is a venue hosted by arts collective FKA Church (exact address withheld for safety). I arrived at 6:00 P.M., an hour before opening, lingering around the entrance as vendors steadily arrive. While unloading tables and wares, they ask others if they need help, and shuffle around cars to make sure nobody is parked in the red. I’m waiting for an appearance from Sin, who has invited me to arrive early. No word, though, and I eventually ask for her and am directed to the main patio.
Once there, I see the reason for her delay: along with a flaming red two-piece (matching her hair and Supervillainess make-up), fishnets, and boots, Sin is wearing a thousand hats, rushing around with urgency and focus as the clock ticks down to opening. More and more people and elements have begun to appear - “How are queers early?!” she exclaims. She ping-pongs from one corner of the venue to another, checking in with vendors and staff, all of whom she addresses by name, and often with the titles “brother,” “sister,” or “sibling.” She checks to make sure everyone has name and pronoun tags.
Tonight, she is firmly the captainess for her event at this venue, which is a “DIY community art space” that often hosts concerts and benefits, including a Gaza Relief Fundraiser in June. Defined by a distinctly punk aesthetic, Sin said it was a natural choice for the revival of Trans. Tuesdays, whose ethos is a drive to “repoliticize queer spaces…this is our time of crisis, and, in queer spaces, community building is inherently political. We build political power by knowing each other; we need to know each other, love each other, and be invested in each other long-term.” She tells me this during a rare free moment, and her demeanor shifts to a focused and absolutely confident calm.
At the event, this love and investment takes many forms, evidenced by the diversity in vendors: there is tarot, piercings (with stuffed animals available on the chair), tattoos, zines, and community support.
Yvette Geterian (she/her) runs a booth with various safety supplies from her job as a harm reductionist for St. John’s Community Health, including masks, condoms, sharps containers, and Narcan. “Existing support is very localized to specific communities like Hollywood or Downtown L.A.”, she says, “so I would imagine that it would be difficult for some folks to know where to look. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of cohesion when it comes to resources for the trans community.” This is her fifth time vending, and she celebrates the event’s support and the increased outdoor space offered by the Church.
Another vendor, Altamira, also approves of the new space, particularly a conspicuous outhouse in the center of the venue: “this is such a subversion of what we think of a bathroom being. You walk out of the bathroom and it’s not like ‘oh, there’s a corner where I can regain my composure’ - you walk out and you are in the party. I used it earlier, and I walked out, and I felt like a movie star walking out of the green room. It was awesome.”
Altamira (founder of trans voice studio Vocal Team) says she is “the first person to do IRL voice training vending,” and has been a part of Trans. Tuesdays through all of its incarnations. It was first hosted at the Ruby Fruit bar in Silver Lake; initial nights “were not as poppin’,” she observes. But soon, word-of-mouth spread like wildfire, and the event had people “overflowing into the parking lot…it became the Transcendent Tuesdays parking lot instead of the actual Ruby Fruit.” The popularity quickly overwhelmed the venue and staff capability, and the event briefly moved to trans-inclusive lingerie shop Cantiq before going on hiatus throughout the month of July.
Regarding the hiatus, Sin explained that, after hosting events more than weekly for the entirety of 2024 (except for a few weeks after her facial surgery, during which events continued with a guest host) she was “at a crossroads between continuing to grow my events project and breaking back into the film world.” She decided to put other events on hold to focus entirely on Transcendent Tuesdays, as “that’s the thing that’s thriving - I can see from the community response that it’s what people need.”
A member of FKA Church became a regular at Trans. Tuesdays, and created a bridge between the two that led to the collaboration. Sin compliments a staff member’s ACAB hat, and they in turn compliment her explanation of her name: “Sin like a crime against God”, which she says whenever introducing herself. She gently corrects me when I ask about her creative positions, explaining that she is a “writer/directress,” insisting on gendered titles always.
Sin is a consistently tenacious and confident hostess, entering self-described “militant mode” when giving an all-staff speech just prior to doors opening. She lovingly yet firmly lays down the rules for all staff and vendors: no hitting on the guests, no non-consensual touching, no commenting on bodies, and no illicit substances. “I’m trying to foster a safety-forward environment”, she tells me, “a space where it is easy - as easy as it could possibly be to claim your transness and be in your transness with other people.”
After the bulk of this speech, she softens, switching to a more tender mode to thank all of us for helping with this event. She makes sure the staff members running the door have their introductory speech ready before ending our meeting with the mantra of Transcendent Tuesdays: “Hi sibling. Welcome Home.”
And then doors open.
Within the hour, the atmosphere becomes full, loud, and joyful. Music is playing, with the volume set to a reasonable level beforehand to ensure comfort for all guests’ sensory capabilities. Dancing, talking, and vending is soundtracked by girly pop and New Wave; “There’s a lot of Talking Heads”, someone comments, to which another replies: “it’s probably Sin on AUX” (she’s correct).
The patio, which had felt so spacious before, quickly becomes thronged with guests, all of whom are, by their presence, part of a movement that Sin calls “Transgender Solidarity”; the attendees are primarily transfem, though the event welcomes and embraces “all people at all stages and flavors” of their trans journey. Many are in their mid-20s, but I see older and younger, and, as more and more people begin to show up, I realize there is no exaggeration in Sin’s statement to staff that we were “about to see 200-plus trans people in the same space for the first time in our lives.”
Transcendent Tuesday is a place where any and all people who identify as transgender (or think they might like to) can practice new forms of expression, new ways to claim and explore their transness. “I sew quite frequently, and come here to show it off,” says Josie (she/her), who has attended Trans. Tuesdays three times in the past. “I think of myself as a very reserved person, so I felt really welcome in this space.” Though she prefers this new venue because of the spacious outdoors area, she still expresses a desire for more intimate, 1-on-1 spaces - harder to come by, she concedes, in large group events.
The venue does have an indoor space, though it remained largely empty for the majority of the event. In the single (albeit large) room, a handful of guests talk and flirt with each other, or otherwise play and dance along to a piano and drum kit on the far side of the area - it’s mostly used as a brief break before an inevitable return to the main area.
A member of long-COVID support group The Wayside hands masks out to anyone who did not bring their own; on this night, masks were required indoors, but for future weeks the event is asking all guests to mask indoors and out. This rule is new to the current iteration of Trans. Tuesdays, and, coupled with air purifiers, is an attempt to keep attendees healthy while COVID continues to disable people in Los Angeles and beyond.
The purifiers are provided by Airgasmic, who is working with The Wayside to help fortify this event and others against the current Summer wave. Members Dick Swagger (he/him) and Prox (he/they) are thankful for the increased masking and conversation regarding COVID at Trans. Tuesdays 2.0, though they remain critical of most other queer spaces being “horrifyingly hypocritical.”
A general lack of protective measures has caused immense damage to the trans community in particular, with Prox explaining that, due to various factors, “trans people are disproportionately at risk for long COVID,” particularly because of the unpredictability of HRT, which can affect one’s heart and liver health, as well as risk for cancer. Dick agrees: “there’s a lot of gender affirming things affected [by COVID], like hair loss and ED.” Their ethos, however, is support, not fear: if we as a community want to be able to hold consistent events like this, we have to keep each other safe.
Their political drive is echoed in Sin’s Sermon, delivered at each event at roughly 10:00 P.M. (and live-streamed on the Black Rainbow Instagram). The hostess is now the Priestess, with a microphone and audience transforming her into a galvanizing force powered by “the Rage and the Joy.”
She struts across the area of the patio that has now become a stage, building upon points told to me previously with jokes and embellishments: she repeats that an inspiration for creating Trans. Tuesdays was a disillusionment with raves and shows, but adds a barbed question: “do cis people only want to hang out with us when we’re an entertainment product? Ooo, that wasn’t even written on the hand!”
She has her main points for the Sermon written in Sharpie on her hand, though improvisations and spur-of-the-moment conversations pepper the twenty-minute long speech: she gives a no-nonsense call to “love and invest in each other,” before looking quietly at a smiling friend. “You’re high,” Sin says, to laughter.
There is an overarching theme, though, and that is power. She asks us a question she’s wrestled with for years: “How does an objectively, factually disempowered person feel powerful?” She waits for a response, and someone in the crowd answers: community, something that can give us a different kind of power. Sin elaborates:
[Patriarchy] has been built on “power over”. When they say man and woman, they mean strong and weak. But what makes me strong is not my dick, and it does not make me weak that I was born a girl.
Our power has to look different from theirs.
I like the simple definition of power in hard science. Energy, first, is the ability to do work. Work is quite literally making something move. So what is power in that model? Power is the pace at which we make things move.
And friends, siblings, comrades, soldiers - we need to pick up the pace. Because they are. We need to protect our energy so we can give it and make things move faster. It's the airplane rule - your mask has to be on before you can safely help others get the air they need. That is how we can each serve.
Can I get an amen?
And she gets an amen from the audience. Not just in words, but in actions, proving Sin’s commandment that “power is material,” not just an abstract feeling. She gives examples of “power-between” she’s witnessed, including mutual aid and a girl telling her that she had “lived in L.A. [her] whole life but hated it - until now,” because of all the friends she’s made thanks to the event.
Josie tells me something similar, saying that she’s used the event “as a springboard to find other trans people,” and has planned other events to give transfems more spaces alongside Trans. Tuesdays; one of these is Doll Dinner, a “potluck for dolls” (for more information, reach out to @jojokono1 on Instagram).
The impact of the event will therefore be measured by the inevitable influx in trans-led events being created by trans people encouraged by the community, love, and revolutionary spirit of this space that is only growing stronger.
It has the rare quality among queer events of being consistent and actively (not just vocally) supportive of all, no matter where they are on their journey. It’s not far-fetched to predict that its spirit will expand to backyards, bars, theaters, and a plethora of other venues led by people who will bond over knowing Transcendent Tuesdays. Everything about the event is future-oriented, explicitly fighting for and creating a new world that we are building together.
After the sermon, some of the siblings present thank Sin. Others laugh and hug. Some cry, some kiss, some do both at the same time. Most everyone, at the climax of the night, dances along to the booming sounds of Daft Punk, and the words that Sin previously paraphrased in her speech:
For us, more than ever, hour after hour, the work is never over.
Land Back. Free Palestine. Trans Power.
Thank you Sister Elaina — for honoring, and for doing, the Work.