The Stud Alley Photos That The Media Left Out, And What It Tells Us

Imagine this: Stud Alley this year gets covered in tags speaking solidarity against police brutality, before being trampled by police. The photos of the police and the tags are published, and other communities who are also angry about police brutality see their own struggle happening to the San Francisco queer community. Black and immigrant influencers start making reaction posts pointing out similarities and calling for answers, accountability, and a unified response. Even amid critiques about appropriation, other community activist leaders grow a little more curious about mutual shared struggles and a little more skeptical of the politicians implicated in the fiasco.

The police brutality over Pride weekend got very limited news coverage, and this coverage only included certain photos of graffiti tags. But the tags that the controlled media left out gives us a clue about the intentions of city hall and state reps. They want trans people unrelatable and divided away, because the truth is a hazard: the trans community is not alone in facing police violence. They don't want all the other communities to realize our oppressions are more similar than different and then band together. They don't want the public to see that their willingness to apply cruelty has grown.

Most news outlets did not report, by any stretch of the term “balanced”, on the Pride weekend events. All major papers were heavily, fundamentally pro-Wiener. The few stories of Stud Alley only reported the most sensationally inflammatory scrawls, but they leave out the intersectional tags that calls others in. One of the few Local outlets that can generally claim unbiased reporting rebroadcasted on social media photos of political tags saying Fuck SFPD / Flock / ICE, but they left out tags recalling black victims of police brutality – Banko, Floyd, Oscar, Kohen, Black Lives Fucking Matter. They left out ACAB, “Delete Lurie”, a Free Gaza, a clear photo of “Assata”, “Every Alley is Stud Alley”. Photos on their website are similar.

Is this selection a result of routine editing, or is it intentional? It's hard to say, but if all those tags were published in media, it could spark solidarity, contextualize the Alley as a response to oppression and police overreach, and let sibling communities notice similarities to their own struggles. If they were included, a single-issue activist that fights against police brutality in the black community could see a message they can relate to. Regardless of the intention behind the photo choices, the effect is the same. The left-out tags could generate cross-community power against the political establishment.

Here's the idea. The extreme police response reveals city hall's motives: they don't want this weekend's events to invite anyone else to the party. They want to divide away Stud Alley. They want to divide away Trans March. The message they want the public to consume is: These people have nothing in common with you, and they were stormed for reasons that don't apply to you. Stud Alley is not the acceptable congregation, Trans Marchers are not the acceptable queer people, and unacceptability is now met with heavy policing. (Stud Alley attendees noticed that the SF police didn't issue a dispersion order, which is a new and unusual development.) Even if you think maybe your community's struggles overlap with the queer community's and you might mutually benefit from working together, don't associate with them. The photo choices promote that narrative. Instead, city hall replaces what was really said with a narrow narrative that's useful to them. For example, if it adds some tough-on-crime to Wiener's platform of Gay Zionism without jeopardizing a black or brown vote, it might benefit his US Senate race. It also gives them practice at using excessive force, but away from pre-established scrutiny.

What's scary is the amount of police terror and media manipulation they're willing to use to maintain division and pursue their ambitions. Too bad for them, cause it won't work. We see and reject their greed and brutality, and we refuse to expend our bodies to be their political pawns. We live with more courage than they believe is possible. We aren't paralyzed by fear. We don't stay quiet. We aren't going away. We are far from alone.

Benioff, it's time for round two. Get your CEO mayor in line. Until AI pops and the landscape shifts, quietly funding social services might be more effective at making the people less reactive than loudly funding the police.

fuck the 4th / acab / make racists afraid / fuck rainbow capitalism / from the river to the sea / long live the alley

Context for future readers: It's San Francisco Pride weekend, late June 2026. Billionaire-Mayor Lurie is pissed about the 2025 actions by activists against ICE (some of whom are queer), which ended up costing him face, credit with tech leaders, an estimated $1M under the table, and might factor into his boost in SF police, who are now overstaffed and bored. SF State Senator Wiener is frustrated about being branded a Zionist, and he has an important election fundraising date around Pride. When Wiener shows up alone at Trans March, attendees shout him out for his stance on Gaza, and a few hours later the police brutalize the marchers (with evidence that the police's actions were premeditated); meanwhile, the march coverage helps Wiener's fundraiser go splendidly. The next night, excessive police presence shuts down a queer street party. In all, about 25 queer/trans people have been arrested, many more were attacked by SF police, and some face charges coming from DA Jenkins' office, which has a notorious pattern of outrageous charges for arrests related to leftist politics.