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In the subsequent years – bars, galleries, cultural establishments and social and cultural bonds were cemented to make San Franciso one of the homosexual epicenters of the world. The Stonewall Riots of 1969, while geographically distant, invoked a surge in organizations for the gay community. In fact, until the 1960s the area was predominantly populated with white, working-class, Irish immigrants. The emergence of the Castro district is much more modern than most people assume it to be.
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Its openness and inclusiveness are thought to date back to the 19th Century and the period of the Gold Rush. It’s fair to say that while San Francisco was becoming a beacon of hope for gay men and women around the world – the policy of the United States government and its treatment of LGBT citizens (particularly the stigma surrounding the HIV/AIDS crisis) was everything but supportive and welcoming to the community. San Francisco has long been synonymous with the gay community and the LGBT movement at large. Though it may be the most expensive city to live in in the US, it’s certainly at least worth a visit – though surely, you’ll want to stay!
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Nowadays, its gay population per capita is one of the highest in the world. Filled with queer history, free-spirited vibes and currently one of the top tech hotspots in the country, it welcomes a mix of travelers and dwellers that help create its diverse, come-as-you-are, laidback attitude. That map shows about 65 bars (not including the baths, which are also listed) at that time, primarily concentrated around Polk Street and the Tenderloin.San Francisco is an iconic city for the queer community as a pioneer and battleground for LGBT rights.
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You can also check out this great hand-drawn map from the mid-1970s created by pioneering Bay Area Reporter nightlife columnist Richard "Sweet Lips" Walters, who died in 2010. But because of the anecdotal nature of some of these, many addresses are missing, and we're still curious about places like The Question Mark (somewhere on Haight Street) and The Dash, which was said to be a Barbary Coast area bar opened in 1908.
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One culture that died in liberation, and another that died in revolution." As source material, he used ads from vintage gay magazines like Vector and After Dark, and there's also a PDF list that's been kept on the website of the Cinch Saloon, last revised in 1996, that has some 700 bar names on it, most of them with addresses. "A mixture of old queens and young bucks. See the map below, and as Stabile writes for the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, the hand-drawn ads and matchbooks from this other era of gay bar culture reflects two generations of gay men coexisting in San Francisco in the 1970s. But there are signs of hope, like the reopening of the Eagle, the replacement of Trigger in the Castro with the upcoming Beaux, and the possibility of new life later this year, after over a decade of darkness, at The Patio. Two gay bars have closed already this year, Marlena's and Kok (formerly My Place), and both are becoming mixed bars in the future, just in the interest of foot traffic. Ever heard of Campus, The Purple Pickle, or Nothing Special? Well, filmmaker and gay historian (and GayPornBlog-ger link NSFW) Mike Stabile has done us a solid and created a Google map covering any and every historic gay and lesbian bar he could find an address for. But back in the days before the internet and Grindr, there were two or three times more bars for the homosexual set scattered around town than there are now. Last month we brought you a roundup of ads from defunct gay bath houses in town, and about a year ago we showed you a semi-current map of the dozen gay bars that remain in the Castro.