The Curve Foundation hosted its first annual Ultimate Lesbian Taco Eating Contest at Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar on Saturday, April 25. The event was part of a weeklong series celebrating Lesbian Visibility Week across the nation, featuring a lesbian history walk of Castro Street and a Lesbian Power Panel, concluding with a lighting ceremony at San Francisco City Hall.
Franco Stevens is the founding publisher of the lesbian lifestyle publication Curve Magazine, a quarterly publication of the event’s organizing Curve Foundation. Curve is a national nonprofit dedicated to building community events and programming for LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people. They were the main facilitator of Saturday’s taco-eating activities, a follow-up to an initial lesbian pie-eating contest fundraiser in November, which they described as wildly successful but “much messier.” After the pie-eating contest saw spectators lining up down the block, the taco-eating contest’s organizers decided to implement an online RSVP system to keep better track of ticketing and participants.
“If you look around now, the event is like all the events we do for The Curve Foundation — it’s intergenerational,” Stevens said. “There are people here in their teens, there are people here in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Across the board, we want to make sure that everybody feels included, and we can learn a lot from each other.”
This Saturday’s champion was Nicole Escobar, who held up her lime slice victoriously after cleaning her plate without the use of any hands or utensils. Part of her strategy was selecting the vegan tacos with eggplant filling, which would be easier to swallow than the chicken tacos. Having made the pilgrimage from Merced to participate in the Ultimate Lesbian Taco Eating Contest, Escobar cited the 81-year-old “Best Technique” winner of last year’s pie-eating contest as her main inspiration for deciding to participate this time around.
“I recorded a video for Babs, the 81-year-old participating,” Escobar said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I really want to be like that. I want to be out, I want to not be afraid when I’m older and just very confident,’ and I’m slowly building that journey.”
Escobar’s reward for finishing first was $100, a $20 gift certificate for Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar and a large gold medal. After the taco-eating contest concluded, she expressed her gratitude for spaces like Rikki’s, which is named after Rikki Streicher, a 1960s San Francisco activist who managed queer and lesbian bars in the city to provide safe spaces to LGBTQ+ community members.
“I’m from Central Valley, so I don’t have events like these,” Escobar said. “I volunteer with our local pride center, Central Valley Pride, and it’s good, but we have nothing that’s specifically lesbian, so that’s why I had to find my people. It’s very comforting that there’s queer spaces like these.”
Dana Piccoli, the program coordinator for Lesbian Visibility Week, says that although the taco eating contest went by faster than expected, with the fastest contestant taking around a minute, the event was still a joyous time for all. Piccoli, who won the Curve Award for Excellence in Lesbian Coverage in 2023 for her work in LGBTQ+ media, recounts that one of her first interactions with Lesbian Visibility Week was when she wrote journalistic articles for Curve Magazine.
“I think it really cultivates joy, and that’s what I’ve seen so much of this last week — just so many smiling faces,” Piccoli said. “It takes a lot of bravery to be visible, and I think that joy is a good root system for visibility. To me, lesbian visibility means that we’re here for each other, we support each other and that our community sees us and sees what we can do and realizes, ‘I want to support that too.’”
Stevens’ favorite part of the event was talking to the attendees and competitors, such as the winner of “Best Technique,” who traveled from Las Vegas to compete. To Stevens, events like the taco eating contest show the community’s excitement for queer activities. They emphasize the importance of supporting organizations like Curve through donations or participation.
“As The Curve Foundation hosts Lesbian Visibility Week for the entire U.S. and Canada, it means everything to me,” Stevens said. “It means that we won’t be erased. It means that our stories and our culture will be centered, not an afterthought.”
