Halloween in the Castro
Encyclopedia
The Halloween
celebration held in The Castro district of San Francisco began in the 1940s as a neighborhood costume contest. By the late 1970s, it had shifted from a children's event to a gay celebration that continued to grow into a massive annual street party until 2006 when a shooting wounded nine people and prompted the city to call off the event.
San Francisco's gay Halloween celebration in the early 1960s originally centered around the early gay bar
s in the Tenderloin
district. In the late 1960s, the celebration was centered on Grant Ave. in North Beach
. From 1970 to 1978, the Halloween celebration was held on Polk Street
in Polk Gulch. By 1979, the city's gay village
had moved to the Castro and "gay Mardi Gras" followed. The event became known as the leading Halloween celebration in the U.S., where costumes ranged from "the outrageous to the spectacular." By 2002, Halloween crowds had grown to the hundreds of thousands and became difficult to control.
revived Children's Halloween with an annual party held at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, including a costume contest and gifts from Cliff's.
culture of San Francisco and began in the 1950-1960s in the Tenderloin
/Polk street area
of the city where the mainstream gay bars were first centralized. The event traces its history to the ostracism of LGBT people in the first half of the 20th century from mainstream culture which led to community identity and using gay bar
s as a focal point for socializing, networking and organizing politically. After World War II
, in the 1940s, the San Francisco Bay Area
became a haven for LGBT military personnel who didn't want to go back to their old lives. In the 1950s, a group of gay bars in San Francisco's Tenderloin
area helped create a strip of venues for "sex, drugs and late night fun". There has also been a South-of-Market (SoMa)
leather subculture
and BDSM
bar scene with gay-focussed sex clubs sharing Folsom street, a tradition which is carried on with the annual Folsom Street Fair
. The nearby business- and tourist-oriented area, Union Square, was also popular for cruising for sex
and was open to gay men whereas the Tenderloin was where drag queen
s, t-girls and prostitutes of all orientations were known to congregate publicly in the city, because they were unwelcome in gay bar
s at that time.
Since the end of World War II
, the major port city of San Francisco had been home to a sizable number of LGBT
people expelled from the military who decided to stay rather than return to their hometowns and face ostracism. In addition to those outed militarily there were arguably many more who successfully remained closeted
, left voluntarily when able to or never entered the service in the first place. San Francisco's history as a more pluralistic
culture allowed for LGBT people to find employment and housing; being a tourism and entertainment destination also meant that more creative- and service-oriented work was available.
gay
entertainer José Sarria
had served in World War II
but afterwards when using the GI Bill to earn a degree he dropped out of college because he wouldn't be able to get work as a teacher. "People were living double lives and I didn't understand it. It was persecution. Why be ashamed of who you are?" At his main performing venue at the time, the Black Cat Bar
, he would encourage the customers to stick up for their rights. He exhorted the clientele, "There's nothing wrong with being gay–the crime is getting caught", and "United we stand, divided they catch us one by one". At closing time he would call upon patrons to join hands and sing "God Save Us Nelly Queens" to the tune of "God Save the Queen
". Sometimes he would bring the crowd outside to sing the final verse to the men across the street in jail, who had been arrested in raids earlier in the night. Speaking of this ritual in the film Word is Out
, gay journalist George Mendenhall said:
Sarria fought against police harassment, both of gays and of gay bar
s. Raids on gay bars were routine, with everyone inside the raided bar taken into custody and charged with such crimes as being "inmates in a disorderly house". Although the charges were routinely dropped, the arrested patrons' names, addresses and workplaces were printed in the newspapers. When charges were not dropped, the arrested men usually quietly pleaded guilty. Sarria encouraged men to plead not guilty and demand a jury trial
. Following Sarria's advice, more and more gay men began demanding jury trials, so many that court dockets were overloaded and judges began expecting that prosecutors have actual evidence against the accused before going to trial. One favored harassment technique, employed especially on Halloween
after midnight, was to arrest drag queens under an old city ordinance that made it illegal for a man to dress in women's clothing with an "intent to deceive". In consultation with attorney Melvin Belli
, Sarria countered this tactic by distributing labels to his fellow drag queens (hand-made, in the shape of a black cat's head) that read "I am a boy". If confronted, the queen would simply display the tag to prove that there was no intent to deceive. Sarria's actions helped bring an end to Halloween police raids.
Sarria ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1961, becoming the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States. Although Sarria never expected to win He almost won one of the five available seats until city officials realised only five candidates had registered. Sarria ended up getting 6,000 votes and finishing in ninth. However the voting stunned the political community who now saw the LGBT community as a voting block with power.
Along with Guy Strait, Sarria formed the League for Civil Education (LCE) in 1960 or 1961. The LCE ran educational programs on the topic of homosexuality and provided support for men being ostracized for being gay and for those caught in police raids. In 1962, Sarria along with bar owners and employees formed the Tavern Guild, the country's first gay business association. The Guild raised money for legal fees and bail for people arrested at gay bars and helped bar owners coordinate their response to the harassment of the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control
and the police. Sarria continued to perform and agitate at the Black Cat until, after some 15 years of unrelenting police pressure, the bar lost its liquor license in 1963.
With the demise of the Black Cat, Sarria helped found the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) in 1963. SIR grew out of a split between Sarria and Strait over the direction that LCE was heading; Sarria and his backers wanted to maintain focus on street-level organizing. SIR sponsored both social and political functions, including bowling leagues, bridge clubs, voter registration drives and "Candidates' Nights" and published its own magazine, Vector. In association with the Tavern Guild, SIR printed and distributed "Pocket Lawyers". These pocket-sized guides offered advice on what to do if arrested or harassed by police.
, on which there were many gay bars in the late 1960s between Broadway and Union. By 1969, San Francisco had more gay people per capita than any American city; when the National Institute of Mental Health
asked the Kinsey Institute to survey homosexuals, the Kinsey Institute chose San Francisco.Beginning in 1970, an annual Halloween celebration was held on Polk Street
in Polk Gulch, then still the most important gay neighborhood. By the mid-1970s, Polk Street was overwhelmed and closed to traffic – at least for a few hours - each Halloween to make room for the costumed revelry. In 1979, the adult gay Halloween party moved to Castro Street in The Castro, which by the early 1970s had replaced Polk Gulch as San Francisco's most important gay neighborhood.
, where Market
and Castro Streets intersect, had for decades been a blue-collar Irish Catholic neighborhood synonymous with the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Parish. Beginning in the 1960s, however, suburbs in Berkeley
and Oakland attracted young families with children, and the city's economic base eroded as factories moved to cheaper locations nearby. Mayor Joseph Alioto
, proud of his working-class background and supporters, based his political career on welcoming developers and attracting a Cardinal
to the city. Many of the blue collar workers–who were also Alioto's supporters–lost their jobs as large corporations with service industry positions replaced factory and dry dock jobs. San Francisco had been "a city of villages": a decentralized city with ethnic enclaves that each surrounded its own main street. As the downtown area developed, neighborhoods suffered, including Castro Street. The Most Holy Redeemer Parish shops shut down, and houses were abandoned and shuttered. In 1963, real estate prices plummeted when most of the working-class families tried to sell their houses quickly after a gay bar opened in the neighborhood. Hippies, attracted to the free love
ideals of the Haight-Ashbury area but repulsed by the crime rate, bought some of the cheap Victorian houses. In the 1970s, the LGBT community shifted to the Castro with a string of gay bars opening up and multitudes of gay men filing the sidewalks of the small business district. The Castro became the home of the Halloween event starting in 1979 amid concerns of gay bashing
at the Polk street event in the Tenderloin.
, Christopher Street in New York, Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood and the Castro in San Francisco have evolved from informal parades into Mardi Gras
-like events with "drinking and dancing and carrying on in the streets". San Francisco's Polk street Halloween developed in the 1970s as people came out and moved to Castro street in 1979. In addition to stereotypes
about why LGBT people are attracted to fashion, theatricality and dressing up there are cultural reasons why the events have become "the major holiday" for LGBT people. In addition to the holiday's pagan roots, which is attractive to those who have been shunned by mainstream religions, many LGBT people are able to be outrageous and flamboyant even if they remain closeted
.
According to Bruce Mailman, a gay events organizer, "public partying on Halloween fits into gay liberation
in general, being seen and heard" in a heteronormative society where media watchdog groups like GLAAD have had to campaign to ensure that LGBT people are portrayed and done so accurately without perpetuating negative stereotypes. In addition to visibility issues there is also escapism
components as the LGBT community dealt with the AIDS pandemic
and faced the generally negative domestic policy of the Reagan administration
towards LGBT people and the AIDS crisis that was impacting the gay male communities.
On Halloween night in 1989, two weeks after San Francisco was devastated by the 6.9 (Richter scale
) Loma Prieta
earthquake
, the Sisters performed street theater and used donation buckets to collect thousands of dollars for the mayor's Earthquake Relief Fund from the Halloween
crowds that poured into The Castro for the massive street party. The group formally added donation gates, a stage and structure to safely manage the event from 1990–1995, until "drunken gay-bashers out to get their kicks" convinced the group the event was unsafe without official city support. In 1995, the Sisters agreed to host a costume-mandatory dance, HallowQueen, in a SoMa gay nightclub – which raised over $6000 for charities – as their contribution to helping move the event out of the mostly residential neighborhood. In multi-year planning discussions on how to address the events challenges, New York City's Village Halloween Parade
, the United States' largest Halloween celebration, was often cited as an example of the potential for the event to attract tourists and benefit local businesses as well. Started by Greenwich Village
mask maker Ralph Lee
in 1973, the evening parade attracts over two million spectators and participants, as well as roughly four million television viewers annually. It is the largest participatory parade in the country if not the world, encouraging spectators to march in the parade. Barbara Ehrenreich
, in her book on collective joy
mentions this as an example of how Halloween is transitioning from a children's holiday to an adult holiday and compares it to Mardi Gras
. Halloween is now the United States' second most popular holiday (after Christmas) for decorating; the sale of candy and costumes are also extremely common during the holiday, which is marketed to children and adults alike.
A decade later, San Francisco still struggled to manage the event. The massive crowds quickly overwhelmed the streets, mass transit and due to the Castro's location along two major transport corridors, disrupting traffic flow well outside the neighborhood.
In 2002, 500,000 people celebrated Halloween in the Castro and four people were stabbed. In 2003 the city's Entertainment Commission took responsibility for organizing the event.
In 2006, nine people were wounded when a shooter opened fire at the celebration. Halloween in the Castro was canceled, and in the following years a heavy police presence kept the event from happening spontaneously. In 2007, 600 police were deployed in the Castro on Halloween, a practice that continued in 2009 according to a police press release that announced a "zero tolerance policy for public drinking and other crime." By 2010, the city had cracked down completely on Halloween in the Castro, directing celebrants to various balls and parties elsewhere.
In 2009, The Sisters, through their 2009 Pink Saturday Grants program, donated money to an opera
about Halloween in the Castro produced by the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of San Francisco. The opera ran in the Castro at MCC for two weeks, culminating in a final performance on Halloween night.
In hindsight, the Sisters were seen as a bargain of sorts, raising money every year for charity without city funds while keeping the chaos under control by providing entertainment and structure. They continue to stage and consult on large city events like Folsom Street Fair
and Pink Saturday
. The city, through the Entertainment Commission established in the early 2000s, is charged with addressing the ongoing issues of Halloween in the city with widespread agreement the Castro can no longer be the focus of a city-wide celebration.
As of 2011, the City of San Francisco's official site on the topic states:
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
celebration held in The Castro district of San Francisco began in the 1940s as a neighborhood costume contest. By the late 1970s, it had shifted from a children's event to a gay celebration that continued to grow into a massive annual street party until 2006 when a shooting wounded nine people and prompted the city to call off the event.
San Francisco's gay Halloween celebration in the early 1960s originally centered around the early gay bar
Gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
s in the Tenderloin
Tenderloin, San Francisco, California
The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, California, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, nestled between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest...
district. In the late 1960s, the celebration was centered on Grant Ave. in North Beach
North Beach
North Beach may refer to a number of places in the world:United States*North Beach, San Francisco*North Beach, Florida, a census-designated place in Indian River County*North Beach, Miami Beach, the northern section of the city of Miami Beach, Florida...
. From 1970 to 1978, the Halloween celebration was held on Polk Street
Polk Street
Polk Street is a street in San Francisco, California, that travels northward from Market Street to Beach Street and is one of the main thoroughfares of the Polk Gulch neighborhood traversing through the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, and Russian Hill neighborhoods. The street takes its name from former U.S....
in Polk Gulch. By 1979, the city's gay village
Gay village
A gay village is an urban geographic location with generally recognized boundaries where a large number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people live or frequent...
had moved to the Castro and "gay Mardi Gras" followed. The event became known as the leading Halloween celebration in the U.S., where costumes ranged from "the outrageous to the spectacular." By 2002, Halloween crowds had grown to the hundreds of thousands and became difficult to control.
Children's Halloween
In 1948, Cliff's Variety Store and Hardware began hosting a children's Halloween festival that featured a costume contest and ice cream-eating contest. By 1979, the Children's Halloween ended as the neighborhood's population shifted from families with children to more single men. But in the mid-90s, the Sisters of Perpetual IndulgenceSisters of Perpetual Indulgence
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence , also called Order of Perpetual Indulgence in Australia and elsewhere, is a charity, protest, and street performance organization that uses drag and Catholic imagery to call attention to sexual intolerance and satirize issues of gender and morality...
revived Children's Halloween with an annual party held at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, including a costume contest and gifts from Cliff's.
Rise of the LGBT population
Halloween in the Castro was tied to the LGBTLGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
culture of San Francisco and began in the 1950-1960s in the Tenderloin
Tenderloin, San Francisco, California
The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, California, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, nestled between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest...
/Polk street area
Polk Street
Polk Street is a street in San Francisco, California, that travels northward from Market Street to Beach Street and is one of the main thoroughfares of the Polk Gulch neighborhood traversing through the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, and Russian Hill neighborhoods. The street takes its name from former U.S....
of the city where the mainstream gay bars were first centralized. The event traces its history to the ostracism of LGBT people in the first half of the 20th century from mainstream culture which led to community identity and using gay bar
Gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
s as a focal point for socializing, networking and organizing politically. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, in the 1940s, the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
became a haven for LGBT military personnel who didn't want to go back to their old lives. In the 1950s, a group of gay bars in San Francisco's Tenderloin
Tenderloin
-Media:* Tenderloin , by Samuel Hopkins Adams* Tenderloin , a 1928 film* Tenderloin , a musical from 1960* "Tenderloin", a song by Rancid from Let's Go...
area helped create a strip of venues for "sex, drugs and late night fun". There has also been a South-of-Market (SoMa)
South of Market, San Francisco, California
South of Market is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, United States.-Name and location:Its boundaries are Market Street to the northwest, San Francisco Bay to the northeast, Mission Creek to the southeast, and Division Street, 13th Street and U.S. Route 101 to the southwest...
leather subculture
Leather subculture
The leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures...
and BDSM
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
bar scene with gay-focussed sex clubs sharing Folsom street, a tradition which is carried on with the annual Folsom Street Fair
Folsom Street Fair
The Folsom Street Fair is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair held on the last Sunday in September and caps San Francisco's "Leather Pride Week"...
. The nearby business- and tourist-oriented area, Union Square, was also popular for cruising for sex
Cruising for sex
Cruising for sex, or cruising is the act of walking or driving about a locality in search of a sex partner, usually of the anonymous, casual, one-time variety...
and was open to gay men whereas the Tenderloin was where drag queen
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...
s, t-girls and prostitutes of all orientations were known to congregate publicly in the city, because they were unwelcome in gay bar
Gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
s at that time.
Since the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the major port city of San Francisco had been home to a sizable number of LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
people expelled from the military who decided to stay rather than return to their hometowns and face ostracism. In addition to those outed militarily there were arguably many more who successfully remained closeted
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
, left voluntarily when able to or never entered the service in the first place. San Francisco's history as a more pluralistic
Cultural pluralism
Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, and their values and practices are accepted by the wider culture. Cultural pluralism is often confused with Multiculturalism...
culture allowed for LGBT people to find employment and housing; being a tourism and entertainment destination also meant that more creative- and service-oriented work was available.
José Sarria and political power
Activist and openlyCloseted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
entertainer José Sarria
José Sarria
José Julio Sarria is an American political activist from San Francisco, California. Known for his years of performing at the historic Black Cat Bar in that city from the 1950s and 1960s, Sarria entertained patrons with satirical versions of popular songs and operas while encouraging them to live...
had served in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
but afterwards when using the GI Bill to earn a degree he dropped out of college because he wouldn't be able to get work as a teacher. "People were living double lives and I didn't understand it. It was persecution. Why be ashamed of who you are?" At his main performing venue at the time, the Black Cat Bar
Black Cat Bar
The Black Cat Bar or Black Cat Café was a bar in San Francisco, California. It opened in 1906 and closed in 1921. The Black Cat re-opened in 1933 and operated for another 30 years...
, he would encourage the customers to stick up for their rights. He exhorted the clientele, "There's nothing wrong with being gay–the crime is getting caught", and "United we stand, divided they catch us one by one". At closing time he would call upon patrons to join hands and sing "God Save Us Nelly Queens" to the tune of "God Save the Queen
God Save the Queen
"God Save the Queen" is an anthem used in a number of Commonwealth realms and British Crown Dependencies. The words of the song, like its title, are adapted to the gender of the current monarch, with "King" replacing "Queen", "he" replacing "she", and so forth, when a king reigns...
". Sometimes he would bring the crowd outside to sing the final verse to the men across the street in jail, who had been arrested in raids earlier in the night. Speaking of this ritual in the film Word is Out
Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives is a 1977 documentary film featuring interviews with 26 gay men and women. It was directed by six people collectively known as the Mariposa Film Group. Peter Adair conceived and produced the film, and was one of the directors...
, gay journalist George Mendenhall said:
It sounds silly, but if you lived at that time and had the oppression coming down from the police department and from society, there was nowhere to turn ... and to be able to put your arms around other gay men and to be able to stand up and sing 'God Save Us Nelly Queens' ... we were really not saying 'God Save Us Nelly Queens.' We were saying 'We have our rights, too.'
Sarria fought against police harassment, both of gays and of gay bar
Gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
s. Raids on gay bars were routine, with everyone inside the raided bar taken into custody and charged with such crimes as being "inmates in a disorderly house". Although the charges were routinely dropped, the arrested patrons' names, addresses and workplaces were printed in the newspapers. When charges were not dropped, the arrested men usually quietly pleaded guilty. Sarria encouraged men to plead not guilty and demand a jury trial
Jury trial
A jury trial is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact which are then applied by a judge...
. Following Sarria's advice, more and more gay men began demanding jury trials, so many that court dockets were overloaded and judges began expecting that prosecutors have actual evidence against the accused before going to trial. One favored harassment technique, employed especially on Halloween
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
after midnight, was to arrest drag queens under an old city ordinance that made it illegal for a man to dress in women's clothing with an "intent to deceive". In consultation with attorney Melvin Belli
Melvin Belli
Melvin Mouron Belli was a prominent American lawyer known as "The King of Torts" and by detractors as 'Melvin Bellicose'. He had many celebrity clients, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Muhammad Ali, Sirhan Sirhan, the Rolling Stones, Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker, Martha...
, Sarria countered this tactic by distributing labels to his fellow drag queens (hand-made, in the shape of a black cat's head) that read "I am a boy". If confronted, the queen would simply display the tag to prove that there was no intent to deceive. Sarria's actions helped bring an end to Halloween police raids.
Sarria ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1961, becoming the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States. Although Sarria never expected to win He almost won one of the five available seats until city officials realised only five candidates had registered. Sarria ended up getting 6,000 votes and finishing in ninth. However the voting stunned the political community who now saw the LGBT community as a voting block with power.
Along with Guy Strait, Sarria formed the League for Civil Education (LCE) in 1960 or 1961. The LCE ran educational programs on the topic of homosexuality and provided support for men being ostracized for being gay and for those caught in police raids. In 1962, Sarria along with bar owners and employees formed the Tavern Guild, the country's first gay business association. The Guild raised money for legal fees and bail for people arrested at gay bars and helped bar owners coordinate their response to the harassment of the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control
California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control
The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is an agency of the government of the state of California charged with regulation of alcoholic beverages....
and the police. Sarria continued to perform and agitate at the Black Cat until, after some 15 years of unrelenting police pressure, the bar lost its liquor license in 1963.
With the demise of the Black Cat, Sarria helped found the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) in 1963. SIR grew out of a split between Sarria and Strait over the direction that LCE was heading; Sarria and his backers wanted to maintain focus on street-level organizing. SIR sponsored both social and political functions, including bowling leagues, bridge clubs, voter registration drives and "Candidates' Nights" and published its own magazine, Vector. In association with the Tavern Guild, SIR printed and distributed "Pocket Lawyers". These pocket-sized guides offered advice on what to do if arrested or harassed by police.
Halloween in the Tenderloin, North Beach, and on Polk Street
Halloween in the Tenderloin grew in the early 1960s with the growing LGBT community and welcomed tourists – who many of the prostitutes and hustlers relied upon for income. By the late 1960s, a major celebration area during Halloween was along Grant Avenue in North BeachNorth Beach
North Beach may refer to a number of places in the world:United States*North Beach, San Francisco*North Beach, Florida, a census-designated place in Indian River County*North Beach, Miami Beach, the northern section of the city of Miami Beach, Florida...
, on which there were many gay bars in the late 1960s between Broadway and Union. By 1969, San Francisco had more gay people per capita than any American city; when the National Institute of Mental Health
National Institute of Mental Health
The National Institute of Mental Health is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health...
asked the Kinsey Institute to survey homosexuals, the Kinsey Institute chose San Francisco.Beginning in 1970, an annual Halloween celebration was held on Polk Street
Polk Street
Polk Street is a street in San Francisco, California, that travels northward from Market Street to Beach Street and is one of the main thoroughfares of the Polk Gulch neighborhood traversing through the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, and Russian Hill neighborhoods. The street takes its name from former U.S....
in Polk Gulch, then still the most important gay neighborhood. By the mid-1970s, Polk Street was overwhelmed and closed to traffic – at least for a few hours - each Halloween to make room for the costumed revelry. In 1979, the adult gay Halloween party moved to Castro Street in The Castro, which by the early 1970s had replaced Polk Gulch as San Francisco's most important gay neighborhood.
The Castro becomes a gay community
The Eureka Valley of San FranciscoEureka Valley, San Francisco, California
Eureka Valley is a neighborhood in San Francisco, bounded by Market Street, Dolores Street, Sixteenth Street, and Noe Street.-History:In 1845 José de Jesús Noé was granted Rancho San Miguel, four thousand acres stretching from Twin Peaks into Noe and Eureka valleys. In 1854 John M...
, where Market
Market Street (San Francisco)
Market Street is an important thoroughfare in San Francisco, California. It begins at The Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building at the northeastern edge of the city and runs southwest through downtown, passing the Civic Center and the Castro District, to the intersection with Corbett Avenue in...
and Castro Streets intersect, had for decades been a blue-collar Irish Catholic neighborhood synonymous with the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Parish. Beginning in the 1960s, however, suburbs in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
and Oakland attracted young families with children, and the city's economic base eroded as factories moved to cheaper locations nearby. Mayor Joseph Alioto
Joseph Alioto
Joseph Lawrence Alioto was the 36th mayor of San Francisco, California, from 1968 to 1976.-Biography:...
, proud of his working-class background and supporters, based his political career on welcoming developers and attracting a Cardinal
Cardinal (Catholicism)
A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...
to the city. Many of the blue collar workers–who were also Alioto's supporters–lost their jobs as large corporations with service industry positions replaced factory and dry dock jobs. San Francisco had been "a city of villages": a decentralized city with ethnic enclaves that each surrounded its own main street. As the downtown area developed, neighborhoods suffered, including Castro Street. The Most Holy Redeemer Parish shops shut down, and houses were abandoned and shuttered. In 1963, real estate prices plummeted when most of the working-class families tried to sell their houses quickly after a gay bar opened in the neighborhood. Hippies, attracted to the free love
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...
ideals of the Haight-Ashbury area but repulsed by the crime rate, bought some of the cheap Victorian houses. In the 1970s, the LGBT community shifted to the Castro with a string of gay bars opening up and multitudes of gay men filing the sidewalks of the small business district. The Castro became the home of the Halloween event starting in 1979 amid concerns of gay bashing
Gay bashing
Gay bashing and gay bullying is verbal or physical abuse against a person who is perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender . Such abuse is used also to bully heterosexual persons and persons of non-specific or unknown sexual orientation.A "bashing" may be a specific incident, and one...
at the Polk street event in the Tenderloin.
Halloween as a "gay" holiday
There are differing and complementary ideas on why LGBT communities, and expressly, gay men, are attracted to the holiday. Throughout the 1980s, Halloween street events in gay villages Key West, FloridaKey West, Florida
Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...
, Christopher Street in New York, Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood and the Castro in San Francisco have evolved from informal parades into Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras
The terms "Mardi Gras" , "Mardi Gras season", and "Carnival season", in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday...
-like events with "drinking and dancing and carrying on in the streets". San Francisco's Polk street Halloween developed in the 1970s as people came out and moved to Castro street in 1979. In addition to stereotypes
LGBT stereotypes
Stereotypes about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are conventional, formulaic generalizations, opinions, or images about persons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Stereotypes and homophobia are a learned outlook, i.e...
about why LGBT people are attracted to fashion, theatricality and dressing up there are cultural reasons why the events have become "the major holiday" for LGBT people. In addition to the holiday's pagan roots, which is attractive to those who have been shunned by mainstream religions, many LGBT people are able to be outrageous and flamboyant even if they remain closeted
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
.
According to Bruce Mailman, a gay events organizer, "public partying on Halloween fits into gay liberation
Gay Liberation
Gay liberation is the name used to describe the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement of the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s in North America, Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand...
in general, being seen and heard" in a heteronormative society where media watchdog groups like GLAAD have had to campaign to ensure that LGBT people are portrayed and done so accurately without perpetuating negative stereotypes. In addition to visibility issues there is also escapism
Escapism
Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life...
components as the LGBT community dealt with the AIDS pandemic
AIDS pandemic
The acquired immune deficiency syndrome pandemic is a widespread disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus .Since AIDS was first recognized in 1981, it has led to the deaths of more than 25 million people, making it one of the most destructive diseases in recorded history.Despite recent...
and faced the generally negative domestic policy of the Reagan administration
Domestic policy of the Reagan administration
The Domestic policy of the Ronald Reagan administration was the domestic policy in the United States from 1981 to 1989 under President Ronald Reagan. It retained conservative values economically, beginning with the president's implementation of his supply-side economic policies, dubbed Reaganomics...
towards LGBT people and the AIDS crisis that was impacting the gay male communities.
SPI
Richter magnitude scale
The expression Richter magnitude scale refers to a number of ways to assign a single number to quantify the energy contained in an earthquake....
) Loma Prieta
Loma Prieta
Loma Prieta is a Northern California mountain located in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The peak is located on private property, about west of Morgan Hill and within the boundaries of Santa Clara County...
earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
, the Sisters performed street theater and used donation buckets to collect thousands of dollars for the mayor's Earthquake Relief Fund from the Halloween
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
crowds that poured into The Castro for the massive street party. The group formally added donation gates, a stage and structure to safely manage the event from 1990–1995, until "drunken gay-bashers out to get their kicks" convinced the group the event was unsafe without official city support. In 1995, the Sisters agreed to host a costume-mandatory dance, HallowQueen, in a SoMa gay nightclub – which raised over $6000 for charities – as their contribution to helping move the event out of the mostly residential neighborhood. In multi-year planning discussions on how to address the events challenges, New York City's Village Halloween Parade
New York's Village Halloween Parade
New York's Village Halloween Parade is an annual holiday parade and street pageant presented the night of every Halloween in New York City’s Greenwich Village...
, the United States' largest Halloween celebration, was often cited as an example of the potential for the event to attract tourists and benefit local businesses as well. Started by Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
mask maker Ralph Lee
Ralph Lee
Ralph Lee makes work centered on the mask, both its design and use in theatrical performance. Most of the theater events he creates take place outside traditional performance venues. These include parades, pageants, seasonal celebrations and outdoor theatrical performances. Masks and giant puppets...
in 1973, the evening parade attracts over two million spectators and participants, as well as roughly four million television viewers annually. It is the largest participatory parade in the country if not the world, encouraging spectators to march in the parade. Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich
-Early life:Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town."...
, in her book on collective joy
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy is a book authored by Barbara Ehrenreich.The author coins the term "collective joy" to describe group events which involve music, synchronized movement, costumes, and a feeling of loss of self...
mentions this as an example of how Halloween is transitioning from a children's holiday to an adult holiday and compares it to Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras
The terms "Mardi Gras" , "Mardi Gras season", and "Carnival season", in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday...
. Halloween is now the United States' second most popular holiday (after Christmas) for decorating; the sale of candy and costumes are also extremely common during the holiday, which is marketed to children and adults alike.
2000 to Present
In 2002, 500,000 people celebrated Halloween in the Castro and four people were stabbed. In 2003 the city's Entertainment Commission took responsibility for organizing the event.
In 2006, nine people were wounded when a shooter opened fire at the celebration. Halloween in the Castro was canceled, and in the following years a heavy police presence kept the event from happening spontaneously. In 2007, 600 police were deployed in the Castro on Halloween, a practice that continued in 2009 according to a police press release that announced a "zero tolerance policy for public drinking and other crime." By 2010, the city had cracked down completely on Halloween in the Castro, directing celebrants to various balls and parties elsewhere.
In 2009, The Sisters, through their 2009 Pink Saturday Grants program, donated money to an opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
about Halloween in the Castro produced by the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of San Francisco. The opera ran in the Castro at MCC for two weeks, culminating in a final performance on Halloween night.
In hindsight, the Sisters were seen as a bargain of sorts, raising money every year for charity without city funds while keeping the chaos under control by providing entertainment and structure. They continue to stage and consult on large city events like Folsom Street Fair
Folsom Street Fair
The Folsom Street Fair is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair held on the last Sunday in September and caps San Francisco's "Leather Pride Week"...
and Pink Saturday
Pink Saturday
Pink Saturday is a street party held the Saturday night before San Francisco Pride in San Francisco's Castro district. It coincides with the annual Dyke March.Attendees are asked to donate money at the gate...
. The city, through the Entertainment Commission established in the early 2000s, is charged with addressing the ongoing issues of Halloween in the city with widespread agreement the Castro can no longer be the focus of a city-wide celebration.
As of 2011, the City of San Francisco's official site on the topic states:
"Halloween belongs to all of us. Following last year’s successful campaign to keep everyone safe and maintain the Castro’s tranquility, we’re continuing and expanding the Home for Halloween campaign. Like last year there is no party or special event in the Castro. However, there are lots of events and celebrations around San Francisco, throughout the Bay Area and right in your own “home” neighborhood!
This October 31st, bars and restaurants in the Castro will be open for business. However, as was the case last year the streets will not be closed to traffic. As in every other community in the City, there will be zero tolerance for behavior which doesn’t respect the celebrated diversity of our communities. And again like last year, there will be zero tolerance for individuals and businesses that do not obey alcohol consumption and distribution regulations. The Home For Halloween website will help promote your events so please let us know about what you have planned in your community.
The Castro is not appropriate for a party with 100,000 people. So, the Home For Halloween campaign enters its second year of celebrating Halloween throughout the Bay Area and encouraging people to respect everyone’s home, including the Castro. With your support, we can indeed make Halloween a “home” for celebrations that are fun, festive and respectful. Halloween is for everyone."
External links
- San Francisco GLBT Neighborhood Guide, Gay & Lesbian News, MyCastro.com
- Halloween In The Castro – San Francisco city official event website archived version from 2008 with press releases and news updates.