The San Francisco Examiner has reported that local DJ, artist and LGBTQ activist Bubbles was shot and killed this past weekend in the early morning. According to the report, Bubbles, real name Anthony Torres, was killed “around 3 AM [on Saturday] outside a strip club, close to the RS94109 record store where she would often DJ.”
“This is a hate crime,” said Jim Reilly, Torres’s attorney. “For a transgender activist to be gunned down on their own street shouldn’t stand and won’t stand.”
Supervisor Jane Kim, who represents the Tenderloin on the Board of Supervisors, said that police do not yet have enough information to call the killing a hate crime but have surveillance footage and a person of interest.
“This homicide is a very unfortunate and tragic incident,” Kim said. “He was one of those San Francisco personalities.”
Police have yet to release suspect information.
Dark Entries label boss Josh Cheon, who operates out of RS94109, wrote about Torres in a Facebook post. “Anthony Brian Torres was shot and murdered last night on the same Tenderloin corner she would set up her portable DJ booth and perform outside RS94109,” he wrote.
“If you were lucky enough to meet Bubbles you would never forget her, a true artist in every meaning of the word,” Cheon added. “Not of this time or planet, she was always full of the most positive energy she would excitedly share stories about launching a new fashion line, discovering a Severed Heads B-side and throwing a party in an underground space all in the same conversation. San Francisco lost one [of] the best and will never be the same.”
