Transexuals war in downtown San Diego

On the night of February 25, two San Diego policemen stumbled across what looked like a gang war being fought on downtown's lower Sixth Avenue, between Market and Island streets. Bottles were thrown, knives and clubs brandished, and four gunshots were heard. Two members of the warning parties were arrested and the groups dispersed. The rival groups were transsexuals — men in various stages of having themselves surgically changed into women. While many transsexuals live and work undetected in the mainstream, this group of some 20 to 30 downtown transsexuals works as prostitutes, soliciting male customers. "The most beautiful women you see downtown aren't really women," deadpan Nicole Murray, an acquaintance of many transsexuals and an expert on local sexual subcultures.

These transsexuals, or "queens," often turn to prostitution because they need money — sometimes up to $10,000 — to finance sex-change surgery. They look for business in the same downtown area as female prostitutes, male hustlers and drug dealers — the blocks roughly bordered by Fourth and Tenth Avenue to the west and east, Broadway to the north, and Market Street to the south. But it was competition for the best street corners, coupled with a recent influx of transsexuals from other cities, that led to February's violent confrontation and continuing tension among the transsexuals. Murray, who still patrols downtown on Friday and Saturday nights to talk with friends and lately to help keep the trucelike atmosphere that has prevailed since the altercation, says the younger, prettier, better-dressed queens who make the most money usually secure the corners of Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth avenues along Broadway. Less attractive queens, as well as those transsexuals fleeing police crackdowns in other cities, stake out territory on E and F streets; while the older, poorer, and least attractive queens tend to cluster farther south on Market Street. (Male hustlers and drug pushers favor Horton Plaza, while E Street at Fifth and Sixth avenues is usually occupied by female prostitutes.)

Because the transsexuals are shunned by male homosexuals and often made to feel uncomfortable at gay bars, where bartenders and doormen will sometimes ask five or six times for identification to make them feel unwelcome, the downtown queens tend to frequent two bars — the Chi-Chi Club on Tenth and Broadway, and the Golden Eagle on Sixth Avenue and Market Street. The Chi-Chi welcomes "everything from sex changes to Social Security pensioners," joked one customer on a busy Saturday night. The Golden Eagle tends to attract black transsexuals are black, noting that whites can more easily secure a private clientele or work for an "out-call" service.)

The battle royale of late February was sparked by the arrival earlier that month of several transsexuals fleeing police in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The new arrivals, many of them young and attractive, displaced some of the 10 to 20 locals from their usual corners along Broadway and cut into their revenues, which can reportedly amount to $300 a night. "There was tension brewing before the fight," Murray says "Usually the San Diego queens would mingle and get along, sometimes in a big group. But this [the influx] split everyone up." Murray says the antagonisms erupted into a full-fledged war that night as a group of Broadway transsexuals ventured south to Market Street to buy drugs. "Oh, one queen was supposedly messing with the boyfriend of another, and that's what they say started it, but really it was just the jealousy," reports Murray, who learned of the battle later that night. "After that, everyone had a knife or a blade, and the white queens [whose public work is usually along Broadway or in downtown bars] were scared enough to clear out."

Murray claims that the fight and subsequent arrests prompted a police crackdown, which, combined with regular police sweeps of the area south of Broadway, is keeping many transsexuals off the street. "We're the first ones to go when they [the cops] start pulling people in," says Murray.