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. 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! 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. Perhaps even a “thing”.San Francisco is an iconic city for the queer community as a pioneer and battleground for LGBT rights.
How was he as a trick? Ummm, i’ll just say he was well dressed, which is not the savage put-down that it might seem, as i did have an “interest” in dressing. His response? “They’re selling like hotcakes”, which somehow so delighted me that i took him home. And then it came out that he owned Gazelle, and i mentioned that i’d bought a couple of his thongs. So one night i was out at the Brig and negotiating with this visitor from New York who seemed extraordinarily interested in me, which was a major turn-on even though he was not especially attractive or well built. Oh no, Gazelle’s were generous, with lots of room. And not those dinky little things that squished you down to as little as possible. I was writing about Gazelle, which i should go ahead and mention was in the early 1980’s the name of a line of men’s swim trunks, shorts, tee shirts, and ahem, intimate wear. Most of them you didn’t see all that often because you were too busy tricking, but still, the huge number of friends we all had was a major contributor to the solidarity we exhibited when the AIDS epidemic struck.īut i’ve digressed. Since the number of tricks you turned was so large, for most of us hundreds and for many, thousands, you ended up with a hundred friends. Well, if you had sufficient coinage in the form of looks, body, and personality to purchase a particular item.Īnd then if you both had a good time, you exchanged phone numbers and then sometimes had repeat tricks and then finally some of the tricks became friends. The bars were like splendid supermarkets in which you could buy anything you wanted. See, in those days, virtually all gay men went to the gay bars to cruise since that was overwhelmingly the best place to pick up tricks because almost everyone in the bar was there for that reason. That’s where i met almost all my gay friends.
So it’s no surprise that when it changed names to the Bolt in 1977-78, i kept going there, and when it became the Brig 1979-85, continued. And then, when i moved to San Francisco in the summer of 1975, it was my bar of choice. Umm, and “tricks” meant pick-up sex partners, whether singly or in groups.) And of course when i lived in San Francisco in the summer of 1974 while taking the intensive Spanish course at UC Berkeley, i dropped in on the No Name most nights. (For those unfamiliar with gay jargon of the seventies, to “cruise” meant to shop for tricks. I enjoyed it so much that when i took a couple of graduate courses at UC Berkeley in the summer of 1973, i drove frequently to San Francisco to cruise in this bar.
On my second visit to San Francisco in the summer of 1972 i discovered a new gay leather bar called the No Name, 1347 Folsom Dore Alley.