Rikki Streicher

Rikki Streicher (1922-1994) was a leader in San Francisco's LGBT movement, a co-founder of the international Gay Games, and the owner of two lesbian bars of the 1970s and 80s, Maud's and Amelia's.

Streicher was born in 1922. She served in the military and lived in Los Angeles in the 1940s, where she spent time in the gay bars of that city. She also frequented the gay bars of North Beach in San Francisco. Butch-Femme roles were very fixed at that time. Streicher then identified as butch, and was photographed in 1945 in a widely published image, sitting in Oakland's Claremont Resort with other lesbians , wearing a suit and tie.

Streicher had an active leadership role in the Society for Individual Rights, an organization of gay men and lesbians created in San Francisco in 1964 that promoted equal rights for homosexuals, political empowerment, and community building through fundraisers, dances, and classes. By 1966, SIR had established the first public gay community center in the United States, and become the largest homophile organization in the country.

In 1966, Streicher opened Maud's, originally called "Maud's Study", or "The Study", a lesbian bar on Cole St. in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The following year, the Haight-Ashbury would become the epicenter of the hippie movement during the 1967 Summer of Love. Maud's, said one historian, served to "bridge the gap between San Francisco's lesbian community and its hippie generation." Because women were not allowed to be employed as bartenders in San Francisco until 1971, Streicher had to either tend bar herself or hire male bartenders. The bar quickly became a popular gathering place for San Francisco lesbians and bisexual women. One notable customer of Maud's was singer Janis Joplin. Activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were also early patrons of Maud's.

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