The Castro, San Francisco, California
Encyclopedia
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
. The Castro is one of America's first and best-known gay neighborhood
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...
s, and it is currently its largest. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood through the 1960s and 1970s, the Castro remains a symbol and source of lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
, gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, bisexual, and transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
(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...
) activism and events.
Location
San Francisco's gay villageGay 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...
is mostly concentrated in the business district that is located on Castro Street from Market Street to 19th Street. It extends down Market Street toward Church Street and on both sides of the Castro neighborhood from Church Street to Eureka Street. Although the greater gay community was, and is, concentrated in the Castro, many gay people live in the surrounding residential areas bordered by Corona Heights
Corona Heights, San Francisco, California
Corona Heights is a neighborhood within San Francisco, California, located just North of Market Street and Eureka Valley. Corona Heights is often considered part of The Castro and Upper Market areas.-Location:...
, the Mission District, Noe Valley, Twin Peaks, and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods. Some consider it to include Duboce Triangle and Dolores Heights, which both have a strong 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...
presence.
Castro Street, which originates a few blocks north at the intersection of Divisadero and Waller Streets, runs south through Noe Valley, crossing the 24th Street business district and ending as a continuous street a few blocks farther south as it moves toward the Glen Park
Glen Park, San Francisco, California
Glen Park is a small neighborhood in San Francisco, California, named for the adjacent Glen Canyon Park.-Location:It is at the southern edge of the hills in the interior of the city, to the south of Diamond Heights and Noe Valley, west of Bernal Heights, and east of Glen Canyon Park...
neighborhood. It reappears in several discontinuous sections before ultimately terminating at Chenery Street, in the heart of Glen Park.
History
Castro Street was named for José Castro (1808–1860), a CalifornioCalifornio
Californio is a term used to identify a Spanish-speaking Catholic people, regardless of race, born in California before 1848...
leader of Mexican opposition to U.S. rule in California in the 19th century, and alcalde
Alcalde
Alcalde , or Alcalde ordinario, is the traditional Spanish municipal magistrate, who had both judicial and administrative functions. An alcalde was, in the absence of a corregidor, the presiding officer of the Castilian cabildo and judge of first instance of a town...
of Alta California
Alta California
Alta California was a province and territory in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and later a territory and department in independent Mexico. The territory was created in 1769 out of the northern part of the former province of Las Californias, and consisted of the modern American states of California,...
from 1835 to 1836. The neighborhood now known as the Castro was created in 1887 when the Market Street Railway Company
Market Street Railway Company
The Market Street Railway Company was a commercial streetcar and bus operator in San Francisco. The company was named after the famous Market Street of that city, which formed the core of its transportation network...
built a line linking Eureka Valley to downtown.
In 1891, Alfred E. Clarke built his mansion at the corner of Douglass and Caselli Avenue at 250 Douglass which is commonly referenced as the Caselli Mansion. It survived the 1906 earthquake and fire which destroyed a large portion of San Francisco.
From 1910 to 1920, the Castro was known as "Little Scandinavia" because of the number of people of Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, and Finnish
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
ancestry who lived there. A Finnish bathhouse (Finilla's) dating from this period was located behind the Café Flore on Market Street until 1986. The Cove on Castro diner used to be called The Norse Cove. The Scandinavian Seamen's Union was near 15th Street and Market, just around the corner from the Swedish-American Hall, which remains in the district. Scandinavian-style "half-timber"
Timber framing
Timber framing , or half-timbering, also called in North America "post-and-beam" construction, is the method of creating structures using heavy squared off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs . It is commonplace in large barns...
construction can still be seen in some of the buildings along Market Street between Castro and Church Streets.
The Castro became a working-class Irish neighborhood in the 1930s and remained so until the mid-1960s.
There was originally a cable car
San Francisco cable car system
The San Francisco cable car system is the world's last permanently operational manually operated cable car system, in the US sense of a tramway whose cars are pulled along by cables embedded in the street. It is an icon of San Francisco, California...
line with large double-ended cable cars that ran along Castro Street from Market Street to 29th St. until the tracks were dismantled in 1941 and it was replaced by the 24 bus.
The U.S. military offloaded thousands of gay servicemen in San Francisco during 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...
after they were discharged for their homosexuality. Many settled in the Castro, and thus began the influx of gays to the Castro neighborhood.
The Castro came of age as a gay center following the Summer of 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...
in the neighboring Haight-Ashbury district in 1967. The gathering brought tens of thousands of middle-class youth from all over the United States. The neighborhood, previously known as Eureka Valley, became known as the Castro, after the landmark theatre by that name
Castro Theatre
The Castro Theatre is a popular San Francisco movie palace which became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, in the Castro district, it was built in 1922 with a Spanish Colonial Baroque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window...
near the corner of Castro and Market Streets.
Many San Francisco gays also moved there after about 1970 from what had been the formerly most prominent gay neighborhood, Polk Gulch, because large Victorian house
Victorian house
In the United Kingdom, and former British colonies, a Victorian house generally means any house built during the reign of Queen Victoria...
s were available at low rents or available for purchase for low down payments when their former middle-class owners had fled to the suburbs.
By 1973, Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk
Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors...
, who would become the most famous resident of the neighborhood, opened a camera store, Castro Camera
Castro Camera
Castro Camera was a camera store in the Castro District of San Francisco, California, operated by Harvey Milk from 1972 until his assassination in 1978...
, and began political involvement as a gay activist, further contributing to the notion of the Castro as a gay destination. Some of the culture of the late 1970s included what was termed the "Castro clone", a mode of dress and personal grooming
Personal grooming
Personal grooming is the art of cleaning, grooming, and maintaining parts of the body. It is a species-typical behavior that is controlled by neural circuits in the brain.- In humans :...
-- tight denim jeans, black
Black
Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...
or desert sand
Desert sand (color)
Desert sand is a color which resembles the color of desert sand.It may be regarded as a deep shade of beige.In 1998, desert sand was made into a Crayola crayon color....
colored combat boots, tight T-shirt or, often, an Izod
Izod
Izod is a clothing company that produces dressy-casual clothing and sportswear for men and women, also including fragrances, and accessories. Similar to brands such as Gant U.S.A., Lacoste, and Polo Ralph Lauren, it is part of the Phillips-Van Heusen Company, headquartered at 200 Madison Ave., New...
crocodile shirt, possibly a red plaid flannel outer shirt, and usually sporting a mustache or full beard—in vogue with the gay male population at the time, and which gave rise to the nickname "Clone Canyon" for the stretch of Castro Street between 18th and Market Streets. There were numerous famous watering holes in the area contributing to the nightlife, including the Corner Grocery Bar, Toad Hall, the Pendulum, the Midnight Sun, Twin Peaks, and the Elephant Walk. A typical daytime street scene of the period is perhaps best illustrated by mentioning the male belly dancers who could be found holding forth in good weather at the corner of 18th and Castro on "Hibernia Beach," in front of the financial institution from which it drew its name. Then at night, after the bars closed at 2 AM, the men remaining at that hour often would line up along the sidewalk of 18th Street to indicate that they were still available to go home with someone (aka The Meat Rack).
The area was hit hard by the AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
/HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
crisis of the 1980s. Beginning in 1984, city officials began a crackdown on bathhouse
Bathhouse
Bathhouse may refer to* Public bathing, historical public baths* Gay bathhouse, a place where males, typically homosexuals, go to have sex with other customers...
s and launched initiatives that aimed to prevent the spread of AIDS. Kiosks lining Market Street and Castro Street now have posters promoting safe sex
Safe sex
Safe sex is sexual activity engaged in by people who have taken precautions to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS. It is also referred to as safer sex or protected sex, while unsafe or unprotected sex is sexual activity engaged in without precautions...
and testing right alongside those advertising online dating services.
Attractions
Castro Theatre
The Castro Theatre is a popular San Francisco movie palace which became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, in the Castro district, it was built in 1922 with a Spanish Colonial Baroque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window...
, a movie palace
Movie palace
A movie palace is a term used to refer to the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opened every year between 1925 and 1930.There are three building types in particular which can be subsumed...
built in 1922 and one of San Francisco's premier movie houses.
18th and Castro is a major intersection in the Castro, where many historic events, marches, protests have taken and continue to take place.
A major cultural destination in the neighborhood is The GLBT History Museum, which opened for previews on Dec. 10, 2010, at 4127 18th St. The first full-scale, stand-alone museum of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history in the United States (and only the second in the world after the Schwules Museum
Schwules Museum
The Schwules Museum is an LGBT museum in Berlin which opened in 1985.The impetus for the founding of the Schwules Museum was a successful exhibition on gay topics at the Berlin Museum in summer 1984, Eldorado. This was the first public exposition in Germany of recent research on gay life...
in Berlin), The GLBT History Museum is a project of the GLBT Historical Society
GLBT Historical Society
The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society maintains an extensive archive of materials relating to the history of LGBT people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California...
.
The F Market heritage streetcar line
F Market
The F Market & Wharves line is one of several light rail lines in San Francisco, California. Unlike the other lines, the F line is operated as a heritage streetcar service, using exclusively historic equipment both from San Francisco's retired fleet as well as from cities around the world...
turnaround at Market and 17th-streets at the Castro Street Station
Castro Street Station
Castro Street Station is a Muni Metro station at the intersection of Market Street, Castro Street, and 17th Street in The Castro district of San Francisco, California...
, a Muni Metro
Muni Metro
Muni Metro is a light rail system serving San Francisco, California, operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway , a division of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency...
subway station, attracts many tourists which was renamed Harvey Milk Plaza in honor of its most famous resident. His Camera Store and campaign headquarters on 575 Castro has a memorial plaque and mural.
Pink Triangle Park
Pink Triangle Park
Pink Triangle Park is a triangular shaped mini-park located in San Francisco, California. It is the first permanent, free-standing memorial in America to the thousands of persecuted homosexuals in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust...
- 17th Street at Market, a city park and monument named after the pink triangle
Pink triangle
The pink triangle was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify male prisoners who were sent there because of their homosexuality. Every prisoner had to wear a downward-pointing triangle on his or her jacket, the colour of which was to categorise him or her by "kind"...
s forcibly worn by gay prisoners persecuted by the Nazis
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
during 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...
.
Harvey's, formerly the Elephant Walk that was raided by police after the White Night Riots
White Night Riots
The White Night riots were a series of violent events sparked by an announcement of the lenient sentencing of Dan White, for the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. The events took place on the night of May 21, 1979 in San Francisco...
.
Twin Peaks, the first gay bar in the city, and possibly the United States, with plate glass windows to fully visibly expose patrons to the public is located at the intersection of Market and Castro.
The Hartford Street Zen Center
Hartford Street Zen Center
The Hartford Street Zen Center, temple name Issan-ji , is a Soto Zen practice-center located in the Castro district of San Francisco. Issan Dorsey brought the center from its early beginnings as The Gay Buddhist Club of 1980 to the modern-day Hartford Street Zen Center, becoming Abbot there in 1989...
is also located in the Castro. As well as the
Most Holy Redeemer parish
Most Holy Redeemer Church, San Francisco
Most Holy Redeemer Church in San Francisco, California, is a Roman Catholic parish situated in the Castro district, located at 100 Diamond Street...
, 100 Diamond Street.
Special events, parade and Steet fairs are held in the Castro include the Castro Street Fair
Castro Street Fair
The Castro Street Fair is a San Francisco LGBT street festival and fair usually held on the first Sunday in October in the Castro neighborhood, the main gay neighborhood and social center in the city. The fair features multiples stages with live entertainment, DJs, food vendors, community-group...
, the Dyke March
Dyke March
Dyke March is a mostly lesbian-led and inclusive gathering and protest march much like the original gay pride parades and marches. They usually occur the Friday or Saturday before LGBT pride parades and larger metropolitan areas have related events both before and after the event to further...
, the famed Halloween in the Castro
Halloween in the Castro
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...
which was discontinued in 2007 due to street violence; 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...
, and the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
Frameline Film Festival
Frameline is a nonprofit media arts organization that produces the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, the oldest film festival devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender programming currently in existence...
.