How Did the Castro Become a Gay Neighborhood?

In honor of Pride Month, here’s something I want to explore: How did the Castro become a gay neighborhood?

Today the Castro is a world famous LGBTQ neighborhood, replete with massive pride flags waving year round, bold rainbows adorning the crosswalks, and so many handsome men holding hands you’ll wonder if you’re seeing double. 

But it wasn’t always a gayborhood. The Castro wasn’t even called that! Most knew it as Eureka Valley. It was a largely family-centered place, with heteronormative couplings and children galore. The Castro Theater showed kids’ movies and the mostly Irish, Scandinavian, and German heads of household had working-class jobs. 

Did the change happen overnight? Did the meanie gay folks push out working class families? Did the first few gay neighbors face discrimination? It all sort of depends on who you ask. 

A lot of the families in cities nationwide started moving out into more suburban climes during the postwar period. Not only did this open up housing, but it also meant closed businesses and reduced economic capacity in the neighborhood.

This coincided with the spread of San Francisco’s reputation as a counterculture heaven, where you could just be yourself. The 1970s were a new era if you were LGBTQ. Suddenly it was (sort of) ok to be gay. 

Couple this with the fact that Eureka Valley was half empty and cheap, and you can see why so many queer people moved in. 

According to documentaries like the one above, there was some trouble. An older gentleman laughs about his son beating up a gay man, something called queer-bashing, in the clip. These moments of tension and discrimination are an important part of the story of The Castro’s birth. 

All too often, we take queer spaces for granted. But keep in mind that while the first openly gay supervisor was elected in this neighborhood, he was also assassinated. 

Not only was there strife between gay people and homophobes, but there were also other issues. As the documentary above explains, even today there aren’t many people of color who call The Castro home. And there are ongoing questions about racism and classism. For example, when the news resurfaced about The Mix and other gay bars using video surveillance, some comments made note of Toad Hall’s allegedly sketchy policies and practices around drag performers and African American patrons. 

Demographically, The Castro is full of gay and queer couples and households. It’s got a longer and more nuanced history than people give it credit for, and it’s worth a second look.