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Title: Victoria Fernandez / Vicki Starr papers
Dates: circa 1910s-1990s, bulk 1950s-1980s
Collection Number: 2024-01
Creator/Collector:
Starr, Vicki
Fernandez, Victoria
Fernandez, Julie
Extent: 1.5 linear feet (two manuscript boxes)
Repository:
GLBT Historical Society
San Francisco, California 94103
Abstract: Victoria Fernandez, who performed as Vicki Starr and also went by Vicki or Julie Fernandez, was a transgender woman best known
for performing in topless clubs in North Beach during the 1960s. Among other materials, the collection contains extensive
correspondence, a folder of personal notes and letter drafts, and a folder of materials related to Fernandez’ struggle to
visit her incarcerated partner, in which she worked with legal aid to counter transphobic and homophobic restrictions on her
visitation rights. The collection also contains a box of photographs chronicling roughly forty years of Fernandez’ life.
Language of Material: English
Collection is open for research.
All requests for reproductions and/or permission to publish or quote from material must be submitted in writing to the GLBT
Historical Society Archivist. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair
use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
[Identification of item]. Victoria Fernandez / Vicki Starr papers. Collection Number: 2024-01. GLBT Historical Society
Gift of Paul Kagawa, December 2023.
Biography/Administrative History
Victoria Fernandez, who performed as Vicki Starr and also went by Vicki or Julie Fernandez, was a transgender woman best known
for performing in topless clubs in North Beach during the 1960s. Born in 1932 to an unaccepting family in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, Fernandez moved to New York in the late 1940s and began transitioning in the 1950s. By 1965, she was in San Francisco
working as a topless dancer, part of a local craze for topless entertainment whose first famous performer was Carol Doda.
At the North Beach venue Coke’s, Fernandez performed alongside another trans woman, Roxanne; the two women were billed as
novelty acts, with promotional language that emphasized their assigned sex at birth. Fernandez continued to perform until
the early 1980s, and was also involved in other forms of sex work. Towards the end of her life, she struggled with her mental
health and with alcoholism. Scholar Horacio Roque Ramirez recorded an oral history with Starr before Roque Ramirez's 2015
death, which is now apparently lost. This collection, acquired by the donor’s brother in a storage unit auction, may have
been previously owned by Roque Ramirez.
In addition to the collection itself and conversations with researchers, portions of this note are sourced from Michael Flanagan’s
2022 Bay Area Reporter piece:
https://www.ebar.com/story.php?ch=bartab&sc=barchive&id=321295
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection is divided into two series, Manuscripts and Photographs. Manuscript materials of particular interest include
extensive correspondence, a folder of notes and letter drafts (some as brief as a jotted address, others which reveal Fernandez’
emotional and spiritual life), and a folder of materials related to Fernandez’ struggle to visit her incarcerated partner,
in which she worked with legal aid to counter transphobic and homophobic restrictions on her visitation rights. Other materials
in this series include press clippings and various ephemera. The Photographs series chronicles roughly forty years of Fernandez’
life, from her early years in Puerto Rico, through her early transition, her career as a performer, and her later years in
San Francisco. Fernandez’ dancing career has limited representation in this collection. Interested researchers will find more
about this aspect of her life in the private collection of Albert Tanquero and Lewis Rawlinson, whose book Remember Me, Vicki
Starr documents their own holdings.
The collection arrived without an original order (and had had at least two owners since Fernandez). Only the materials related
to Fernandez’ struggle for visitation rights were originally organized into their own folder. GLBT Historical Society archivists
arranged the remainder of the collection. Photographs have been organized by format, but not by date.
LGBTQ
Transgender people
Trans women
Sex work
People of color
Latinx people
Latinas
Religion and spirituality
Dance
Incarcerated people
Mental health
Addiction and recovery
Photography
San Francisco Bay Area (Calif.)