In 1987, activist Cleve Jones, a protégé of Harvey Milk, rented the storefront at 2362 Market Street with a sewing machine and an idea: panels of fabric, each three by six feet, the size of a grave, each carrying the name of someone lost to AIDS.
The NAMES Project workshop here became a round-the-clock operation. People walked in carrying their dead: a leather jacket, a wedding ring sewn to cloth, sequins, photographs. By October 1987 the AIDS Memorial Quilt covered the National Mall in Washington with 1,920 panels. It now holds about 50,000 panels honoring more than 110,000 people, and is described as the largest community art project in the world.
A plaque marks the building, two blocks up Market from Harvey Milk Plaza. The quilt itself is now stewarded from the National AIDS Memorial, whose grove in Golden Gate Park is a stop on our cross-park walk.
