The furtive, heartbreaking party that San Francisco forgot

On a November night in 1984, nearly 200 people flocked to San Francisco’s Mission District to laugh, eat and, at opportune moments, to reflect on the fact that many of them would die within a year.

The gathering was a secret Thanksgiving dinner for AIDS patients and their caregivers, held at a cabaret called the Valencia Rose. At the time, people with AIDS faced discrimination and threats of violence. Forty years later, few public details exist about the dinner, but it’s a poignant snapshot of a period in San Francisco’s history marked by extremes of courage and loss, as well as the unexpected bright spots that shone between the cracks.

“There was something very heartwarming about everyone coming together and doing this, and there was something very heartbreaking about it,” said Dirk Alphin, who worked at the Valencia Rose as a manager. 

It was more than a decade before the development of the lifesaving “AIDS cocktail.” At the time, a diagnosis was seen as a death sentence, and many of the men huddled around the Valencia Rose’s round tables suspected that it would be their last Thanksgiving. Some had healthy, full cheeks just months earlier; now, Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions pocked their skin. Caretakers pushed men in their 20s on wheelchairs, and other guests leaned on canes. But in spite of the bleak occasion, the mood in the room was celebratory. Diners laughed at comedians and nodded along to a pianist’s routine.

“Everyone there felt like they had something to be thankful for,” explained Cary Norsworthy, who organized the Thanksgiving dinner. “It’s not like they were saying, ‘Oh my God, woe is me, I’ve got AIDS, and I’m so bitter and angry and upset about it.’ They were like, ‘I am so grateful for this community … I feel like I have so much to be thankful for because I’m still here, you know?’”

In the early ’80s, a shadow fell over the LGBTQ+ renaissance that San Francisco experienced in the 1960s and ’70s. People, mostly gay men, were stricken by a mysterious illness. Young men became gaunt, and strange spots appeared on their skin. Even healthy men fell ill and died within a span of months. President Ronald Reagan waited years to acknowledge the existence of AIDS, and a dearth of White House funding stalled research and prevention efforts.

Cleve Jones, the co-founder of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, summarized the mood of the times: “’84 was a year of extreme fear, confusion, conspiracy theories, quackery, heroics. There was no one coming to our rescue.”

One year earlier, Norsworthy took a part-time job answering the phone at the newly formed AIDS Foundation. The organization, which was established in 1982, had fewer than 10 staff members at the time. Norsworthy also ran a food bank for SFAF, which operated out of the organization’s coat closet, soliciting donations and handing out groceries to clients with AIDS. The idea for the Thanksgiving dinner grew out of this routine.

It was as much about company as it was about food: AIDS was not only deadly but isolating. Although by 1984 the CDC had effectively ruled out the possibility that the illness could be transmitted through the air, food and surfaces, this observation did little to dispel the stigma that followed AIDS patients. Some were fired from their jobs, and others were kicked out of shared apartments by roommates. In 1983, a New York doctor’s neighbors tried to get him evicted from his office for treating people with AIDS. For a community whose visible ailments led to alienation, it was a rare chance to commune without the risk of judgment.

Searching for a venue, Norsworthy called up a handful of local restaurants. Most said no: “In ’84, nobody wants to turn over their restaurant for AIDS,” she explained, summing up the difficulty. Finally, she got a call back from Ron Lanza, one of the co-owners of the Valencia Rose.

Today, 766 Valencia Street is the site of a knife shop called Bernal Cutlery, but in the early ’80s, the boxy building was the center of San Francisco’s budding queer comedy scene. Whoopi Goldberg, Lea DeLaria and future state assemblymember Tom Ammiano all performed at the Valencia Rose. Its two stories contained a stage theater, meeting rooms and a club room, which had previously served as the casket showing room of the mortuary that used to occupy the building. The city’s queer community came to the Rose to laugh and socialize but also to gather; the venue’s meeting rooms were a hub of LGBTQ+ organizing.

“It was a very hopping place,” recalled Alphin. 

“It was a grim time in which to try to build a comedy venue, and I think that’s part of why it was so heroic and important,” said Jones, who was friends with the Valencia Rose co-founders Lanza and Hank Wilson.

Lanza agreed to open the Rose, with some stipulations. Norsworthy had to hand him a deposit check. She couldn’t use the Rose’s oven, so she opted to bring food precooked. Alphin believes that volunteers ate food off of paper plates with plastic utensils, which were thrown away. 

Norsworthy didn’t publicize the dinner, either. Instead, the SFAF food bank’s volunteers told clients about the meal as they handed out groceries, assuring them that the gathering would be confidential. “I didn’t want people showing up who either weren’t people with AIDS, who had ill intentions or who were from the media who might take pictures of people and that sort of thing,” Norsworthy said.

Norsworthy didn’t know how to cook a turkey. To pull everything together, she assembled a team of “sidekicks” from her coworkers and acquaintances. One food bank volunteer introduced her to Jay Young, whom she remembered as a “very outgoing, big gay guy with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots.” Young was tapped into San Francisco’s bar scene. After bouncing between bars, he would march into the AIDS Foundation’s offices with pockets stuffed with napkins, on which he had written different bars’ commitments: orange juice from the Castro Station, and so on.

She appointed Michael, a “rough and tumble” man who volunteered with the food bank, as her right-hand man. Patty Rose, a nurse whose brother had AIDS, managed volunteers. Social worker Steven Pratt carved the turkey. Comedian Danny Williams agreed to entertain, and Jim and JoVanna Luque, whose son had AIDS, volunteered to handle logistics. Alan Selby, who owned a leather store called Mr. S Leather, served food in a Snoopy apron.

Laid out on a long table near the entrance was a potluck-style array of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits and corn. Norsworthy thinks that Ammiano might have brought a salad. Because many people had trouble eating chewable food, there was also something like a custard, Alphin recalled. Some tables had floral arrangements, and flickering candles gave the room a warm glow. 

By the time the guests and their caregivers had filed in, the main showroom was full. Diners worked at their food, talked and laughed at the comedians’ jokes. The dinner came together beautifully, Norsworthy said. After a comedian concluded their routine, a young man got on stage, took the microphone and gave an impromptu speech about what it was like to watch friends and roommates succumb to AIDS. More spontaneous speeches followed.

“These guys were really young, in their 20s, 30s at the most,” Norsworthy said. “We were crying. It was really cathartic.”

The scene was both mirthful and heady, Alphin said. Men would laugh at a comedian’s joke, then stare vacantly at their plate in the next. Their caregivers tried to keep them present, offering slices of cake and drinks. To keep the mood bright, Lanza and Alphin resolved to wear smiles, but observing the scene, Alphin occasionally peeled off to a back room to take a deep breath.

 By the end of the night, the Valencia Rose remained standing. The secret gathering was a success.

In future years, the gathering grew into something else: less furtive, less DIY, more official. In 1985, word about the dinner had gotten around, although amateur bouncers still stood outside the Rose’s doors to keep out the press. Armistead Maupin volunteered to show up and read a passage of “Tales of the City,” and, according to Norsworthy, restaurants volunteered to cater food. After the Valencia Rose closed, the dinner moved to Most Holy Redeemer Church and eventually landed at the Hilton Hotel, where it unceremoniously concluded around the turn of the millennium. By then, Norsworthy had long since moved on and handed responsibility to another volunteer. 

Only traces of information about that first, secretive dinner persist online. It’s briefly mentioned in a documentary about Hank Wilson, as well as in a Bay Area Reporter retrospective piece from 2015. Given the severity of an AIDS diagnosis at the time, it’s uncertain what happened to the guests. Additionally, only a few members of Norsworthy’s original team who helped organize the dinner are still alive. Pratt died in ’86; Young, the napkin cowboy, died that same year after spending five months holding a protest vigil in United Nations Plaza; Selby died in 2004. 

Lanza, the co-owner of the Valencia Rose, died in 2013. He and Norsworthy were too busy to speak much on the night of the first Thanksgiving dinner, but shortly after, Norsworthy received an envelope from him in the mail. Inside was the torn-up deposit check. 

“Next time,” Lanza later told her, “you can use the ovens.”