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.

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

1.5 linear feet (two manuscript boxes)

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Collection is open for research.