At the stroke of midnight uniformed cops burst into the bar, billy clubs swinging. Sixteen patrons were arrested inside the Black Cat, and police chased two more men into New Faces, another gay bar nearby. 12 2348 Market Street - Location of The Castro's first gay bar ( 1963 ).
Unlike most San Francisco bars catering to LGBT clientele, Twin Peaks Tavern decided that the time for hiding away was over and made the radical decision to have large plate glass windows looking out to (and in from) the street. In 1972, Harvey Milk, an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office, opened Castro Camera at 575 Castro Street (in between 18th and 19th Streets) and lived above the store with his partner.
31, 1963, a dozen plainclothes policemen observed the New Year’s festivities inside the Black Cat, a gay bar in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood. Another mainstay since the founding days of the city’s gay scene, Twin Peaks Tavern opened in 1972. The San Francisco Human Rights Campaign Action Center and Store is located at 575 Castro Street in San Francisco. Its owner, Sol Stoumen, refused to pay off the police for protection against harassment, and his bar was routinely raided and fined from the 1940s through the early 1960s. All the poets went there.” At a time when homophile organizations like the Mattachine Society were largely conciliatory to the police and to city officials, the Black Cat was noteworthy as a site of resistance. Harvey took office on Januand his new role on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was not without controversy. Not only was this promotion a feat for Milk and his career, but for the gay community as well. The oldest gay bar is the Gangway in the. The bar began to thrive as people within the community embraced their sexuality. They are mostly located in the Castro and the Folsom neighborhoods. The poet Allen Ginsburg, who knew it in the ’50s, described it as an enormous bar with a honky-tonk piano that “everyone” went to: “All the gay screaming queens would come, the heterosexual gray flannel suit types, longshoremen. There are many gay bars in San Francisco. The hub of San Francisco gay nightlife is in the Castro district where some of the more popular bars and clubs are located, including the Bar, Caf. It wasn’t until after World War II, when gay men and lesbians swarmed San Francisco after service in the Pacific, that the Black Cat assumed a “gayer” personality.