The Black Cat Café, a queer sanctuary and cultural revolution in postwar San Francisco, was a bohemian salon, a civil rights battleground, and the stage on which one of America’s earliest drag queens dared to sing opera in a floor-length gown—in public.

Icons like Janis Joplin and Allen Ginsberg are fondly recalled in Lavender Tinted Glasses: A Groovy Gay Look At the Summer of Love, now on display through September 27 at the GLBT History Museum on 18th Street in the Castro. Love-ins at Golden Gate Park and tie-died T shirts worn by beautiful

It’s Springtime in San Francisco, which means it’s time to put your phone on silent for a while and step out into our fair city to sing, eat, and play with the wonderful people and programming on offer. Whether in the flesh or on a live stream, the journalists and

Friends, is this the San Francisco you dreamed of? The sparkling, golden dream of freewheeling political experiment, debate, and protest; colorful art, poetry, and music that fly completely free from rent-money and basic-bro anxiety; diverse culture, nightlife, and style that springs from pure expression rather than some lame-ass PowerPoint marketing plan?

Through sprawls of twisting novels, jolting poetry, and a touch of drugs, a clique of artists belonging to the late ‘50s crafted the Beat legacy. At the peak of their activity, general America viewed them as destructive, wicked, and super gay. Naturally, bookstores and classrooms now showcase their work around

Get your snapping fingers ready and your Jack Kerouac boners up (I know you have them): Author Bill Morgan is gonna take us across this great nation of ours as only the Beatniks saw it tonight at the San Francisco Public Library! I don’t understand the Allen Ginsberg phenomenon (read: