Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In early 2008, the Castro received a
remarkable renovation as the Holly-
wood movie biography
Milk
filmed on
location here; for about a month, the 2-
block stretch of Castro from here to
Market Street was largely restored to
the way it looked in 1977. Stores' signs
were re-created exactly as they once
were, bars that had been closed for
nearly 30 years were re-marked in their
former locations with their old logos,
and the faded Castro Theatre was
restored to glory. Many longtime resi-
dents were deeply moved (and slightly
freaked out) by the transformation, as
you can imagine you'd be if you woke
up and your own neighborhood had
been turned back 30 years.
Return to 18th Street and cross it,
continuing up Castro back to Market
Street.
5
The Castro Theatre
The next block is full of survivors
from the old days.
A Different Light
(p. 185) is one of the last gay-oriented
bookshops in this city.
Cliff 's Variety
(p. 192), a general store on your right,
started in this neighborhood in 1936
and has been serving its changing popu-
lation ever since. Further on at no. 429
is the
Castro Theatre,
one of the many
surviving neighborhood single-screen
theaters in San Francisco, but one of the
only ones still in daily operation. While
the exterior is in Mexican/colonial style,
to honor Mission Dolores, inside its
decor is a mix of Spanish, Italian, and
an unspecific Asian, and it's remarkably
unchanged since the cinema's 1922
opening. The Castro attracts film buffs
from across the city, regardless of their
sexuality, and it's worth seeing an old
flick here and hearing its live organist
play; read more about its regular movie
programs on p. 199.
In the late 1970s, Armistead
Maupin, a local newspaper scribe,
wrote a serialized fiction column for the
San Francisco Chronicle
that was pep-
pered with topical references and com-
ically ripe with soap-opera bluster. The
columns were later published as the
Tales of the City
series of books. The sto-
ries touched on the landmarks and
institutions of the entire city, from
Grace Cathedral (p. 109) to the End
Up bar (p. 209), and many of its scenes
were set in a garden apartment complex
on Russian Hill, but probably because
its main character, Michael Tolliver,
was gay, Castro locals took the stories as
their own. The stories' depiction of that
lost decade has come to be synonymous
with life in San Francisco and with
modern gay history, covering the brief
celebratory period after the darkness of
sexual oppression and before the night-
mare of AIDS.
The Castro was decimated by the
disease. For a number of its early years,
sufferers were both misunderstood
and neglected, as scientists had no clue
what was going on (could you catch it
from a toilet seat?) or how to treat it
(many a poisonous drug hastened
patients' declines). Many, too, viewed
Washington in general and Reagan in
particular as indifferent to their plight,
and before the 1980s were done, count-
less were dead. In many circles, more
than half perished. The panic and fear
that gripped San Francisco then is diffi-
cult to imagine now, and unfortunately
for the progress of gay rights, many
politicians chose to approach the phe-
nomenon as a social issue rather than a
medical one, closing bathhouses and
bars rather than focusing on known
methods of prevention. Today, of course,
the disease (its prevention and its treat-
ment) is seen as a way of life rather than
an outright death sentence. But the
