Christine Tayleur was a trans woman who lived in Fremont, California in the East Bay Area. She was active in several trans organizations and participated in activism. According to this research paper, written by a student at San Francisco State in 1991, Tayleur didn’t know any other trans people until finding a support group in Berkeley in 1979, the year that Pacific Center moved to its location on Telegraph and became a permanent institution. It’s highly likely that this research paper is referencing the Pacific Center, especially given the document below that contains the name of the woman who ran the trans meetings there and the phone number for the establishment. Overall, this is a great story of how one woman traveled across America only to find community at the Pacific Center in the town of Berkeley, highlighting the uniqueness of the space.
A document from The Christine Tayleur Collection detailing surgery at Stanford’s Dysphoria Clinic with information about the Pacific Center. Lin Fraser was the woman who ran the trans support groups.
