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Visiting the Castro
Some places worth visiting in the Castro/Upper Market: |
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 Harvey Milk Plaza and Rainbow Flag (Castro and Market Streets) – Memorializing San Francisco politician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, this small plaza is a neighborhood gathering point for marches, demonstrations and voter drives. It also is the location of a giant rainbow pride flag (20 feet by 30 feet) that waves over the Castro.
On the evening of Harvey’s and Mayor George Moscone’s assassinations on November 27, 1978, thousands of Castro residents and other grieving San Franciscans gathered at the plaza. With tears, candles and flowers, they somberly marched down Market Street to City Hall in memory the slain leaders. The plaza, renamed for Harvey in 1985, serves as the starting point for his memorial candlelight march every year on November 27th. The lower level of the plaza, which also provides access to the southern entrance of Muni Metro’s Castro Street station, has a small display of photos from Harvey’s life and a plaque giving a brief history of his accomplishments.
On the upper level of the plaza, a 70-foot flagpole flies the huge rainbow flag, visible for miles around. At its base a plaque commemorates San Francisco's lesbian and gay state and local elected officials. The LGBT rainbow flag was first designed and created in San Francisco by Gilbert Baker, a young gay fabric artist who in 1978 was challenged by his friend, Harvey Milk, to sew a symbol of pride for the gay community.
Inspired, Baker dyed and stitched together eight fabric strips of brilliant color. The first few rainbow flags appeared at the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade to positive acclaim. The flag was reduced to six stripes to make production easier (hot pink and indigo were eliminated) and by 1979 rainbow banners were lining the parade route. The flag quickly was adopted by the LGBT community around the world as a symbol of pride and diversity.
In the Castro and Upper Market area, rainbow flags can be seen everywhere: attached to light poles as banners, posted in bars, on merchandise in shop windows, and hanging from the front of people’s homes. The large flag at Harvey Milk Plaza and the rainbow banners on street poles throughout the district are paid for and maintained by monies contributed yearly by the Castro Street Fair and the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro (MUMC).
17th Street Plaza Renovated and Re-Dedicated in May 2010
The one year anniversary of the Castro's successful 17th Street mini-plaza was celebrated in May with an upgrade of the plaza's planters and furnishings, and a lively rededication ceremony on May 22. Located at Castro and Market Streets, the plaza was revamped by city workers and local volunteers in April and May with improvements including new concrete planter boxes filled with shrubs and flowers, dozens of large glazed jars filled with green plants, new tables and chairs, and special surfacing of the plaza area.
The urban community space was launched as a pilot "Pavement to Parks" project in May 2009 and has become a popular gathering spot for neighbors in and visitors to the Castro/Upper Market area. The first of four new pedestrian plazas constructed in San Francisco last year, the 17th Street plaza has received national attention as part of a U.S. trend towards the creation of small urban parks.
At the rededication ceremony, the revamped park was praised as an excellent example of the successful greening of urban space by a variety of speakers including S.F. Supervisor Bevan Dufty, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, and Andrea Aiello, Executive Director of the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefits District. The S.F. Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band and Cheer S.F. provided music and entertainment preceding the festivities to a crowd of about 200 spectators.
The majority of the plaza improvements were funded by a $56,500 Catalytic Commercial District Capital Grant received in 2009 from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. The Castro/Upper Market Community Benefits District (CBD), which oversees and pays for maintenance of the space, also contributed funds for new tables and chairs throughout the plaza.
The community space was originally launched as a pilot and many of its fixtures, such as the planter boxes, were not built to be permanent. Seth Boor of Boor Bridges Architecture contributed his services pro bono to redesign the plaza as a permanent space, contributing the technical drawings and overseeing the work.
New plants were purchased at a discount from Flora Grubb Gardens. Planting days were held in April and May, with over 50 volunteers helping from local groups such as the CBD, Friends of the Urban Forest, and the S.F. Great Streets Project. The finishing touches on the upgrade, including a new gate on the Castro Street side of the plaza, should be complete by the end of June.
San Francisco's four new pedestrian plazas were noted in a May 9th article in Parade Magazine that reported more cities, including New York and Atlanta, were encouraging 'loitering' by creating outdoor seating areas, mini-parks, and plazas. The article stated, according to research by New York non-profit Transportation Alternatives, that outdoor seating areas "boost foot traffic by 20%, leading to 10% more retail sales," and increasing property values by 7%.
Read more about Harvey Milk Plaza Beautification Project |
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The Castro Theatre (429 Castro) – The huge, 1930s neon sign reading “CASTRO” started out as advertising for this neighborhood movie palace but in the 1970s the flamboyant sign became the symbol of the area’s emergence as gay Mecca. Tourists who only pause long enough to have their picture taken in front of The Castro’s sign and campy Mexican cathedral façade are making a big mistake: the interior is even more fabulous! Designed by architect Timothy Pfleuger, the inside is done in ornate 1922 Spanish Revival style, with colorful Italianate murals and an art deco Moorish fantasy chandelier and ceiling. The Castro was built and continues to be run by the Nasser family, who opened their first Castro theatre, a Nickelodeon, in 1907. One of the U.S.’s few remaining 1920s movie palaces in operation, the theatre is renown not only for its retro style but its innovative programming of old and new movies, and special events (film festivals, concerts by the Gay Men’s Chorus, live interviews of aging movie stars, etc.). Each evening before the main attraction is shown, the house organist plays the theatre’s mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ, closing the mini-concert with a lively version of “San Francisco.” All this for the price of a movie ticket! For a program list, upcoming special events, history and other information, see www.castrotheatre.com. (Information and Photo Copyright © 2005-2008 The Castro Theatre - All Rights Reserved.) |
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Harvey Milk Mural & Former Location of Harvey’s "Castro Camera" Store (575 Castro) – Harvey Milk (1930-1978), the first openly gay elected official of any large city in the U.S., lived and worked in the Castro neighborhood, and was instrumental in the rise of gays as a political force.
 Originally from New York state, he spent his twenties as an investment banker on Wall Street and in his thirties as an assistant director in the New York city theatre community. In 1972, Harvey moved to San Francisco where he was free to indulge his hippie sensibilities and live openly as a gay man. He and his lover, Scott Smith, opened Castro Camera shop, which soon became the hub of Harvey’s community activism.
Living in the apartment above his store, the outgoing and witty Harvey quickly became friends with local merchants, his customers and neighbors. Harvey spent so much time talking to area residents and trying to solve their problems that his jesting, self-proclaimed title as the unofficial “Mayor of Castro Street” soon became reality. When he discovered that the local merchant association wouldn’t let in gay members, Harvey organized the rival Castro Village Association, which sponsored the first Castro Street Fair in 1974, drawing 5000 attendees. He also helped found a political club for gay Democrats.
Frustrated by city bureaucracy, the pony-tailed, openly-gay Harvey ran for S.F.’s Board of Supervisors in 1973, using Castro Camera as his campaign headquarters. He lost the election but kept campaigning in the Castro, telling the community they needed gays in office and that the struggle for gay rights is "the fight to preserve your democracy." Cutting off his ponytail, he ran again for supervisor in 1975 and for state assembly in 1976, losing both elections but gaining followers.
 His tenacious community organizing, Castro voter registration drives, and coalition building finally paid off in 1977 when he was elected to the S.F. Board of Supervisors, the first openly gay candidate to be endorsed by local firefighters, construction workers and Teamsters. The celebration at Castro Camera on election night was jubilant, blocking the sidewalk and flowing out into the street. Barely a year later, Harvey’s political career as an advocate for human rights was cut short by an assassin’s bullet.
In 1998, twenty years after Harvey’s death, city officials and his friends dedicated a small mural of Harvey on the wall above his old shop. It shows Harvey leaning out a window with his usual big smile, wearing a t-shirt inscribed with one of his favorite admonitions: "You gotta give ‘em hope!" A bronze memorial plaque, describing Harvey’s accomplishments, is inserted in the sidewalk in front of the location. |
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 Pink Triangle Park and Memorial (Intersection of Castro, Market and 17th Streets, across the street from Harvey Milk Plaza) – This triangular shaped mini-park is the first permanent, free-standing memorial in America to the thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people sent to Nazi death-camps in World War II.
The park’s centerpiece is an arrangement of 15 sierra-white granite pylons, each inlaid at the top with a pink triangle. Together, the pylons form a larger triangle set in pink gravel, with flowers and shrubbery surrounding it. During the Nazi era (1933-1945), an estimated 15,000 gay men and women were sent to concentration camps, where many of them suffered torture and death. Each pylon in the park represents 1000 lives.
The triangle theme recalls the Nazis forcing gay men to wear pink triangles sewn to their clothes as an identifier and badge of shame. Lesbians, as well as prostitutes and women who refused to bear children, were forced to wear black triangles.
Pink Triangle Park was created in 2003 by the Eureka Valley Promotion Association, a neighborhood group that says the park serves as "a physical reminder of how the persecution of any individual or single group of people damages all humanity." For more information, see www.pinktrianglepark.net. |
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Transportation/Streetcars |
 | Historic Streetcars (Castro end of the line is located at the intersection of Castro, Market and 17th Streets) – The brightly painted vintage streetcars moving along Upper Market and 17th to stop at Castro Street are a daily reminder that public transit has long played an important part in this neighborhood. When the Castro Street segment of the Market Street Cable Railway was completed in 1887, the area then known as Eureka Valley still had farms and dairy cows on the hillsides. With downtown just minutes away by cable car, immigrant families poured in to build and buy the Victorian houses which still grace the neighborhood today. In 1914, the city began constructing at Castro and Market a streetcar tunnel to connect the western half of the city. By the time the Twin Peaks tunnel opened in 1917, bustling Castro Street had become known as "Little Downtown." | | From the 1920s through the 40s, four side-by-side streetcar tracks ran up Market, from the Ferry Building to Castro Street. The noise from the streetcars clattering along them was referred to by locals as “The Roar of the Four.” The four tracks were reduced to two by the 1950s and plans were laid in the 1960s to upgrade Market Street by moving the streetcar tracks underground. The Muni’s light rail subway was completed in the early 1980s and it appeared that streetcar rails would soon disappear from Market Street. Before that happened, a Historic Trolley Festival was held during the summer of 1983, with old street cars from around the world running up Market to Duboce Street and back. The festival was slated to be a temporary stand-in while the city’s beloved but aging cable car system was shut down for an 18 month overhaul. However, it proved so popular with both tourists and locals, who enjoyed commuting on the classic streetcars, that the festival was extended for five summers and the city approved a permanent F-Line, to run up Market Street to Castro. In 1995, the new F-Line officially opened, and in 2000, the city completed an extension of the line, running it from Market to Fisherman’s Wharf. Drawing 20,000 plus riders per day, the F-Line is the most successful vintage rail line ever opened. For a description of sights along the F-Line route, a history of the streetcars and more, see http://www.streetcar.org/mim/streetcars/index.html Public Transportation The Castro/Upper Market neighborhood is accessible by: - Muni Metro (Underground) - MUNI Metro lines K, L, & M
- Streetcar – F Market streetcar line
- Bus Lines – MUNI bus numbers 33, 35, 37 and 24
- BART – BART does not go directly to the Castro/Upper Market so riders need to transfer to MUNI Metro or streetcar at these stations: Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell, or Civic Center.
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Walking Tours of the Castro
"Crusin' the Castro" is an approximately two-hour historical and cultural walking tour of the Castro neighborhood that is offered for a fee on Saturday mornings . This popular tour has been introducing tourists, both gay and straight, to the charms of the Castro for about 20 years. For more information (time, place, cost, making reservations, etc.), go to the following website: http://www.cruisinthecastro.com/
"Castro: Tales of the Village" is a free, two-hour historical walking tour of the Castro neighborhood that is offered each Sunday morning by SF City Guides. This non-profit group has been offering all kinds of interesting, free walking tours of San Francisco for about 25 years. Also, for a modest donation, you can arrange a private tour for a group. To get more information about the City Guide's Casto tour, as well as other San Francisco guided walks, go to the following website: http://www.sfcityguides.org/index.html |
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"Nobby" Clarke’s Mansion (250 Douglass Street) – There are many ornate Victorian houses in the Castro but the hands-down winner of the “Most Baroque” title is the huge, eccentric mansion at the corner of Douglass and Caselli Streets, known in its day as "Nobby Clarke's Folly."
Built in 1892, the four-story, multi-towered house has an eclectic architectural style that has been described as "Baroque-Queen Anne." It boasts a magnificent entrance, with stained and etched glass panels in the doors, and has an interesting exterior shingle pattern, where bands of plain shingles alternate with scalloped shingles.
The mansion was built by Alfred "Nobby" Clarke, an Irish sailor who came to San Francisco in 1850 and sought his fortune in the California gold fields. He didn’t strike it rich, however, until 1856, when he joined the S.F. Police Department. Retiring from the department 31 years later with an alleged $200,000 in savings, Clarke purchased 17 acres in rural Eureka Valley (now known as The Castro) and used $100,000 to construct his ornately shingled mansion.
Alas, Mrs. Clarke refused to live there: some locals say she was embarrassed by the house’s ostentatious style, while others maintain she objected not to the mansion but its unfashionable location. By 1904, the building had become the "elegant and commodious" California General Hospital. At later date it was turned into a rooming house for Standard Oil employees, and finally became what it is today: the most unique apartment house in the Castro. |
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Cliff’s Variety and Cliff’s Annex (471 and 479 Castro Street) – One of the oldest and most beloved stores in the neighborhood, Cliff’s Variety has built a devoted customer base by providing great service, stocking over 65,000 items, and giving back to the community. The DeBaca family, which still runs Cliff’s, opened their first small store on Castro in 1936, selling magazines, cigars, notions, and candy. During the next 35 years, they moved twice to bigger Castro St. stores as the business flourished and their stock of merchandise expanded to include hardware, home improvement materials, housewares, art and craft supplies, toys, Halloween costumes and more. The store’s annual Halloween costume contest and children’s parade, held from 1946 to 1979, is remembered warmly by older Castro residents. In 1971, the DeBaca’s moved to their current building, which was erected in 1910 as the Castro Theatre. As the 1970s gay transformation of the Castro occurred, they added products their new customers wanted, such as supplies for restoring Victorian houses and feathered boas and tiaras for drag costumes. The Cliff’s Annex, next to the main store, opened in the late -80’s, offering fabric, linens, bedding and bath accessories. Cliff’s has a long tradition of elaborate and eyecatching window displays, especially at Halloween and Christmas. For more information, see www.cliffsvariety.com. |
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Eureka Valley / Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library and José Sarria Court (1 José Sarria Court at 16th and Market Streets) - In 1981 the S.F. Library Commission officially changed the name of the Castro neighborhood’s branch library to the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library to honor the slain Supervisor and gay activist. The library houses a special collection of Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) materials, which includes lesbian fiction, gay men's fiction, books about/for gay teens, nonfiction, periodicals, newspapers and videos. Across the street (facing the library, on the back wall of the Bagdad Café) is a huge mural featuring images from the neighborhood’s gay history including the Gay Freedom Day march, a rainbow flag, and the AIDs crisis.
In 2006, the plaza in front of the library and the adjacent block of 16th St. were named José Sarria Court in honor the S.F. drag performer and gay activist who from the late 1940s on vigorously fought police harassment of homosexuals. Dressed in full drag during a period when female impersonation was a crime, José sang, performed and hosted shows at the Black Cat, a popular S.F. gay bar. From the 1940s through early ‘60s, the Black Cat was regularly raided by the police but José defiantly kept performing. He closed each show by leading the patrons in a rousing chorus of "God Save Us Nelly Queens!” sung to the tune of “God Save the Queen."
In 1961, José ran for the city’s Board of Supervisors, losing the election but collecting an amazing 5,600 votes. In the 1960s, he created a flamboyant drag character he called “The Widow Norton, Empress of San Francisco.” The Widow Norton, also affectionately known as “Mama José,” helped establish the drag Imperial Court System, which raises money for charity by electing yearly a drag empress of San Francisco and hosting drag events. The Imperial Court now has chapters throughout the United States, and in Mexico and Canada. In the 1970s, when some gay and lesbian leaders warned Harvey Milk that his campaigns for supervisor as an openly gay man would antagonize the community’s straight political allies, José encouraged Harvey to run and gave his public endorsement. The library and José Sarria Court are currently closed for a $5.4 million renovation and will reopen in late 2009. For more information, http://sfpl.lib.ca.us |
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