Santa Cruz County Queer History Podcast

Santa Cruz County Office of Education / Santa Cruz Pride
  • 5.0 (2)
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  • Updated Weekly

Created by and for students. Older LGBTQ+ people in Santa Cruz County are interviewed by younger queer students about their stories since the 1970s in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Santa Cruz Pride. Students from across Santa Cruz County conducted the interviews and then edited and produced each 20-minute long podcast. These podcasts will be released each Tuesday in 2025. We thank Patti Maxine on the steel string guitar for providing the music and the art was developed by Hex, one of the involved high school students.

  1. Ep. 20. G Schulz: Gay Mens Groups in Santa Cruz and the Radical Faeries

    10/07/2025

    Ep. 20. G Schulz: Gay Mens Groups in Santa Cruz and the Radical Faeries

    G Schulz grew up mostly in Dallas, Texas and attended the University of Texas in Austin where he obtained a Bachelor’s of Architecture degree.  After coming out in 1978 and graduating in 1979, he took a road trip west and landed somewhat by happen-chance in Santa Cruz. There he found a very active gay community, engaging in a gay men’s rap group (that drew upwards of 90 men every week), Gay volleyball  in front of the Dream Inn, two gay bars and a very active social life. He has now been living in Santa Cruz for over 46 years. G has been involved in a variety of groups including the radical faeries and the Rainbow Sangha meditation group. He also attended the 1987 March on Washington for lesbian and gay rights in Washington D.C.

    19 min
  2. Ep. 19. Shane Hill: Radical Faerie and Transgender Support Therapist

    09/30/2025

    Ep. 19. Shane Hill: Radical Faerie and Transgender Support Therapist

    Shane Hill was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has worked most of his life as  a clinical psychologist, mindfulness teacher, community facilitator and artist. He moved to Santa Cruz in the 1990s. Shane has been involved in a variety of activities across Santa Cruz County including organizing therapists and counselors to better serve LGBTQ+ youth, supporting the Queer Youth Leadership Awards, founding and facilitating the Santa Cruz queer camp for queer youth, has taught at the Rainbow Sangha sits at Insight Santa Cruz in the Buddhist tradition. He co-founded most of the transgender mental health resources in Santa Cruz over 25 years ago including the Trans Families support group, trans support groups at the Diversity Center, facilitated Trans trainings for mental health therapists through the state, and co-founded and supervised the Gender Specialists Consult Group in Santa Cruz for 10 years. He has been part of the Radical Faeries in Santa Cruz since 1992 and continues to be involved today. He published the book, “Faerie Magick” which is about the Santa Cruz Radical Faeries and their creative performances for Pride and other events often organized to make money to support queer youth.

    23 min
  3. Ep 18. Patti Maxine, Musician, Lap Steel Guitar performer, lesbian

    09/23/2025

    Ep 18. Patti Maxine, Musician, Lap Steel Guitar performer, lesbian

    Patti Maxine is a musician who plays the lap steel guitar. She began her lifelong love affair with lap steel guitar and Hawaiian music as a young girl in Roanoke, Virginia and then moved to Santa Cruz in 1970. She played and sang at the first Santa Cruz Pride in 1975 and has continued as a solo artist and as part of many collaborations around Santa Cruz County. She continues to play music around Santa Cruz County most every weekend.  She celebrated her 75th birthday in 2013 by inviting her closest friends to Kuumbwa Jazz Center and performed to a sold out crowd. Patti lives with her wife, Marilyn, in Felton where she continues to create and record music. Patti was interviewed by Levi, a recent graduate of UC Davis.

    22 min
  4. Ep.17 Honey Mahogany, Transgender Activist, Politician and Drag Performer

    06/24/2025

    Ep.17 Honey Mahogany, Transgender Activist, Politician and Drag Performer

    Honey Mahogany lives in San Francisco and was a keynote speaker at an event in Santa Cruz. Following that event, our podcast team traveled to San Francisco to interview Honey, an out transgender woman who helped found the Transgender District in San Francisco.  She serves as the Director of the office of transgender initiatives for the City of San Francisco, one of the first cities to have a department focused on supporting transgender people.  The Transgender District spans six blocks in the southeastern Tenderloin and was founded in 2017 by three Black trans women, Aria Sa’id, Janetta Johnson, and Honey Mahogany. Honey was also a Grand Marshal for San Francisco Pride in 2023, which always takes place the last weekend in June.

    34 min
  5. Ep.16. Marilyn Mariposa Bernstein and the Santa Cruz Dyke March

    05/29/2025

    Ep.16. Marilyn Mariposa Bernstein and the Santa Cruz Dyke March

    Marilyn Mariposa Bernstein is one of the founders of the Santa Cruz Dyke March that began in 1994. The event morphed into the Dyke Trans March and takes place on the Saturday prior to the Santa Cruz Pride parade. Mariposa discusses the reasons why the Dyke March started in Santa Cruz.

    25 min
  6. Ep. 15. Tobin Keller, Artist and Founder of Cabrillo Lavender Grad

    05/16/2025

    Ep. 15. Tobin Keller, Artist and Founder of Cabrillo Lavender Grad

    Tobin was born in Washington D.C. to a military family, later living in Hawaii, and moving with his mother to San Diego. At a young age, he became very interested in art, which acted as a creative outlet for him. He later moved to Oakland to attend art school at California College of Arts and Crafts, and found refuge in the LGBTQ+ and arts communities in Oakland and San Francisco. He moved to Santa Cruz in 1985, and has lived here ever since. He has been teaching art at Cabrillo College since 1990 and at the same time further developed his own art style — most notably his portraits on glass plates that explore both the transparent and opaque parts of personality. He has displayed his art in art shows around Northern California and curated many shows.  He is also the founder of the Lavender Graduation program at Cabrillo College.

    28 min
  7. Ep. 14. Bob Correa, First Executive Director of the Diversity Center

    05/13/2025

    Ep. 14. Bob Correa, First Executive Director of the Diversity Center

    Bob Correa and Denny Carroll moved to Santa Cruz in 1998 after retiring from jobs in San Jose. They had met in San Jose through an activist group that Denny co-founded called the High-Tech Gays. After moving to Santa Cruz, Bob and Denny began volunteering at the Diversity Center and joined the board shortly thereafter. Bob became the first paid executive director at the Diversity Center. In this podcast we discuss the importance of maintaining a physical space for organizing and community building, the fundraising that goes into it, as well as some of the programs and resources that the Diversity Center provides.  The Diversity Center continues to serve Santa Cruz’s queer community today because of the leadership of Bob and Denny in the 1990s and early 2000s.

    26 min
  8. Ep 13. Stuart Rosenstein, Advocate for Youth

    05/06/2025

    Ep 13. Stuart Rosenstein, Advocate for Youth

    Stuart Rosenstein is chair of the Queer Youth Task Force and organizer of the Queer Youth Leadership Awards. The Queer Youth Task Force works to foster a vibrant community where every youth thrives in their expression of their sexual orientation and gender identity.  Stuart grew up in San Antonio, Texas, as well as lived in Los Angeles, before moving to Santa Cruz in 1997. He graduated from UCSC in 1999, majoring in American studies and has lived in Santa Cruz since then. After a chance encounter, Stuart became involved in the Queer Youth Task Force as a notetaker, before eventually leading several projects and shaping QYLA as we know it today. He is driven to advocate and support young people because of his own experiences with bullying as a child and learning how to deal with being Jewish and gay.

    24 min
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About

Created by and for students. Older LGBTQ+ people in Santa Cruz County are interviewed by younger queer students about their stories since the 1970s in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Santa Cruz Pride. Students from across Santa Cruz County conducted the interviews and then edited and produced each 20-minute long podcast. These podcasts will be released each Tuesday in 2025. We thank Patti Maxine on the steel string guitar for providing the music and the art was developed by Hex, one of the involved high school students.

Information

  • Creator
    Santa Cruz County Office of Education / Santa Cruz Pride
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Santa Cruz County Office of Education / Santa Cruz Pride
  • Show Website
    Santa Cruz County Queer History Podcast