Castros gay bar nyc
The fact that ninety percent of our information about the place was gleaned from television including miniseries like, NBC’s The 60’s, or conjured up as one of our suburban teenage drug fantasies, hardly bothered us at all. The place represented the dream for my friends and I as we smoked weed in attics, sitting under black lights, listening to Pink Floyd, and hoping not to get caught. In the Haight-Ashbury, we could be hippies as I imagined them, pure and dedicated to the Earth and all her possibilities, not the burnt out mooches who tried to steal our beer at Phish shows. And where annoying things like homework or personal hygiene didn’t get in the way of getting stoned. Where we didn’t have to hide our pot pipes in the backyard so our moms didn’t find them. Where, unlike at our Catholic high school, we could grow our hair past ear-length or God forbid, attempt a beard. I knew this was a place where my friends and I could cast off the shackles of our middle-class, extremely homogenized lives. Did I mention that I thought I was straight at the time? Whether or not my fantasy had any basis in the truth didn’t matter. Warm sun on my face, strong acid on my tongue, and sandals upon my feet, I’d wile away the days in a blissful stupor. I imagined pretty hippie girls offering me joints as I strolled in an out of record stores and head shops. The fact that my parents weren’t cool enough to join what I thought was the rest of their generation and head out to the fabled neighborhood, also gave the place more cache in my mind. The Haight-Ashbury in the late 60’s, for me represented the spirit and fun of one of these concerts, perhaps even more so, because at least there, security didn’t force you to leave at the end. We’d get there early to tailgate and often have to be encouraged by security to leave hours after the show ended. These marathons of boozing and drugging, as my mother once angrily called them, were where some of the best moments of my life played out. But hey, what I’ll never forget was the atmosphere created at those concerts! A temporary community united in good will and shared experience, bound by an irrepressible love of life and of course, good music. I spent many a Steve Miller Band Concert or Phil Lesh and Friends Show either too fucked up on mushrooms or too passed out drunk in my car, to remember. My friends and I could loosely be considered northeast hippies- Jersey boys who loved top-40 and wore mall clothes, but would never pass up a jam band or classic rock concert at which we could get drunk and high. It wasn’t that the neighborhood, or San Francisco for that matter weren’t on my radar.
Further reveal that I’d also work there for almost a decade, and I would have laughed you out of the room. If you had told me, as a 16-year-old boy living in New Jersey that I’d one day call San Francisco’s famous Haight –Ashbury neighborhood my home, I would’ve said you were crazy. At least it has some more historic and human meanings and feelings.We asked an 8-year Haight Street bartender to tell us what it's like working at the best only best gay bar in the Upper Haight. The area is a little degraded, deteriorated and run down with many homeless people in the streets.Īnyway, in our opinion, The Castro is much more interesting than the overrated touristic site “Painted Ladies”. We liked the Rainbow Honor Walk which features bronze, sidewalk plaques that honor Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgende personalities like Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, Freddie Mercury, Keith Haring, American disco star Sylvester, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Wolf, America poet and writer James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, Frida Khalo, Allen Ginsberg and many more. We visited local restaurants in the area a couple of times. On both sides of the street you might see some pretty Edwardian-style, coloured buildings like those called ‘Painted Ladies’, but less well kept and ‘manicured’. There are also lots of straight people and kids here. Plenty of small cafes, restaurant, bars, some cosy and also some junkish and touristy shops.Ĭastro street is the center of this famous historic gay district. This area and some of the surrounding areas was known by the term ‘Little Scandinavia’, because of the large number of the residents in the area originating from Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish ancestry. It is a nice district of San Francisco and has a special flavour.
Rainbow colored sidewalks and crosswalks and.flags, all sizes flags.