Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts

The Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts once stood at fifteen nineteen Mission Street as a vital hub for the city’s LGBTQ performing arts community. It opened in nineteen eighty-five, one year after the death of its namesake, Jon Reed Sims. Sims was a pioneering musician from Kansas who famously founded the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus in the late nineteen seventies. He sought to create a cultural alternative for gay men and women that existed outside of the nightlife scenes found in bars and bathhouses. The center functioned as a multidisciplinary space where artistic voices were nurtured regardless of sexual identity. At its height, the facility provided three distinct rehearsal and performance spaces that served as the official home for several prominent local groups. Among these were the San Francisco Tap Troupe, the Barbary Coast Cloggers, and a jazz ensemble known as City Swing. The center also hosted an annual artist-in-residence program, acting as a crucial incubator for talent within the South of Market neighborhood. The institution faced significant challenges in its later years, including the instability of its leadership and executive management. In November of two thousand six, the doors closed permanently following a financial crisis that involved the mysterious disappearance of thirty-five thousand dollars in grant funds. Although the physical center is no longer in operation, the legacy of Jon Sims continues through an endowment fund that provides financial support and grants to LGBTQ performing arts organizations across the country.