Evolution of the SF Gay Bar (1911-2015)
The Gangway, 841 Larkin Street
Opening shortly after the 1906 earthquake demolished its Tenderloin neighborhood, The Gangway was one of the earliest underground gathering places for queer San Franciscans. It was also allegedly one of the first sites to be raided by the city’s police in 1911. Fifty years later, in 1962, the bar came out as openly gay. Its owner was a founding member of the Tavern Guild of pro-LGBT establishments that banded together against intimidation, raids and attacks. If you go: Sorry, you just missed it. The Gangway closed while we were researching this story. There are reports that the new owner is going to turn it into a kung-fu themed laundromat. |
Oak Room at the Hotel St. Francis, 335 Powell Street
Originally named “The Men’s Bar” (mmmkay) and advertised to have “an atmosphere designed for masculine comfort,” the Oak Room opened its doors in 1913. A a gorgeous meeting place for discreet gay cruisers back in the day, this elegant bar features wood-paneled walls, a hand-painted ceiling, and a white marble floor—which has unfortunately been covered in conference room carpet by recent hotel management. Despite basically opening a gay bar, the management of the 1950s—pressured by the police raids—quietly gave gay patrons a card in their seats that read, “The management of the Hotel St. Francis no longer desires your patronage.” Though hurtful in its message, this card is thought to have possibly been a kind gesture to warn patrons about raids. In 1952, José Sarria was arrested in the Oak Room for “indecent” activity. As a result, he was banned from becoming a school teacher, instead becoming the legendary Black Cat drag performer and first openly gay candidate to run for city office. His motto was, “United we stand. Divided they arrest us one by one.” If you go: The Oak Room is still in use for fancy tea parties. (No, that’s not a euphemism. They serve tea to families of all kinds.) Although the men’s room at the end of the hall looks like it’s locked, it is not. Be sure to stop by for the full Oak Room experience. If those stalls could talk. |
Li Po’s (or The Li Po Lounge), 916 Grant Avenue
As other WWII era gay bars were forced to close during the WWII raids of 1941-45, many men found a safe haven at this lantern-lit cocktail bar in Chinatown. “There was a buxom, blondish woman who played the piano,” gay archivist Jim Kepner said in his 1994 interview with Paul D. Cain. “Someday my prince will come,” Kepner sang to the interviewer, remembering the song from Snow White that he’d sing with his friends. “Fifteen or twenty of us, standing around the piano. Sort of arm-in-arm. Slightly more than half sailors. Back in the days when slender was in. And a fair sprinkling of Air Force men, and the other services. And some civilians. And very, very romantic.” If you go: Get a Mai Tai. Be careful on the stairs if you get two. Say hey to Jackie if she’s working. And don’t cause any trouble in the basement. |
The Black Cat Café, 710 Montgomery St
In a 1951 California Supreme Court case about arrests from another raid at The Black Cat, the justices ruled that “The fact that the Black Cat was reputed to be a ‘hangout’ for homosexuals indicates merely that it was a meeting place for such persons.” Translation: The gay men had a right to assemble. When the city’s ABC bureau suspended The Black Cat’s liquor license the night before the bar’s annual Halloween party in 1963, the party went on anyway with virgin drinks. The next year, the bar closed after enduring decades of harassment. If you go: A new Michelin-star restaurant named Nico moved into the space in 2018. Look for the plaque on the outside of the building that commemorates the site’s history in the fight for LGBT rights. |
Twin Peaks Tavern, 401 Castro Street
Lesbian friends and business partners Mary Ellen Cunha and Peggy Forster opened Twin Peaks Tavern in 1972. Known by their customers as “The Girls,” the women revolutionized the world’s gay culture. Where other bars had blackened walls for hiding who was inside, they installed full length glass windows. It was a gamble, but when The Girls hosted a soft opening the night before Thanksgiving and sold out of booze, it was clear that the open windows had struck a chord with the community. The bar’s successful application for a historic San Francisco landmark designation noted that “Twin Peaks Tavern is a living symbol of the liberties and rights gained by the LGBT community in the second half of the twentieth century.” If you go: Talk with someone at the bar. They won’t mind. Conversation and memories are what keeps people returning to this neighborhood staple. |
The Pendulum, 4146 18th Street
After serving black gay men and their allies since 1971, the Castro’s only African-American gay bar in history closed in 2005. The same year, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission ruled that the Pendulum’s owner at the time had been discriminating against black and Latino customers at his other gay bar (Badlands) across the street. Customers accused the bar of having a double standard about who could get into the club and get served drinks at the bar. After a century of police attacking LGBT patrons, the site marks a self-inflicted setback in the evolution of San Francisco’s gay bars and the gay movement as a whole. If you go: Today the bar has a new owner and has been renamed Toad Hall in honor of an early Castro gay bar once located on the Castro Street corner where the sparkle rainbow crosswalk takes you to Walgreens. The bar’s outdoor back patio, once a fixture of The Pendulum, is still open, but prepare to bathe in the fog rather than sunshine. |
The Elephant Walk, 500 Castro Street
Harvey Milk called The Elephant Walk, which was across the street from his house, “a place where the gay community could meet and feel safe and secure.” In 1979, a jury convicted Milk’s assassin (and former SF police officer and firefighter), Supervisor Dan White, of manslaughter. White was sentenced to just seven years in prison, resulting in a revolt against the city and its police by the Castro community. The SF police officers officers retaliated by going to The Elephant Walk, breaking its windows and beating up its patrons. The bar was rebuilt and is still serving patrons despite a separate fire in 1988 that closed it for years. If you go: When the bar reopened at last in 1996 after the fire, the owner renamed the place Harvey’s in tribute and displays photographs from the Castro during the 1970s on its walls. |
Mona’s 440 Club, 440 Broadway
Mona and her husband opened a bar for lesbians and trans men shortly after the end of prohibition. The waitresses wore tuxedos, and so did performers. Powerhouse singer Gladys Bentley of the Harlem Renaissance went on stage to belt the hits, flirt with women in the booths along the wall, and dedicate songs to her lesbian lover. In 1938, a San Francisco police sergeant paid the bar the ultimate compliment in his report about raiding Mona’s, saying that he couldn’t tell “which were the men and which were the women.” If you go: Today at 440 Broadway you’ll find a bar named The Cosmo. However, consider checking out the location across the street, at 473 Broadway, called Monroe. It’s where Mona moved her bar in 1948. |
Tommy’s Place, 12 William Saroyan Place
The same year that Mona’s crossed Broadway, Tommy Vasu and her girlfriend Jeanne Sullivan opened another gathering place for lesbians, where a piano player entertained upstairs while couples ate dinner downstairs in the restaurant. During a 1954 raid, it’s assumed that the San Francisco police taped a heroin pipe beneath the bar’s bathroom sink and put the owners on trial for harboring drugs. Although Tommy and Jeanne denied they were running a drug and prostitution ring, the headlines and California legislature hearings doomed the bar, and it closed just six years after opening. Its two bartenders were also arrested the night of the raid: Joyce Van de Veer who was acquitted and Grace Miller who served six months in county jail for serving alcohol to a minor. If you go: Today the space is home to dive bar Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Cafe, which opened in 1968 and hasn’t changed much since. |
Maud’s, 937 Cole Street
When Rikki Streicher opened the lesbian bar Maud’s in the Haight in 1966, she wasn’t legally allowed to even be a bartender unless she owned the bar (which she did). Women were banned from working behind the bar in California until 1971. The landmark bar closed in 1989 but in June 2016 several “Maudies” met for a 50th anniversary reunion in the place where they had once found their chosen family and felt safe. Days before their reunion, 49 people were shot dead at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. If you go: The bar is now Finnegan’s Wake, which underwent a remodel a couple years ago. Many of Maud’s fixtures are intentionally still in place, including opaque windows in the front for privacy. The open backyard with picnic tables is a new and nice addition when you want to drink a Bloody Mary in the sun. |
The Lexington Club, 3464 19th St
Dubbed the “last lesbian bar in San Francisco,” The Lex served its final round of drinks in the Mission in 2015. In her Facebook post announcing the bar’s closure, owner Lila Thirkield wrote: “Eighteen years ago I opened The Lex to create a space for the dykes, queers, artists, musicians and neighborhood folks who made up the community that surrounded it. Eighteen years later, I find myself struggling to run a neighborhood dyke bar in a neighborhood that has dramatically changed...Please know that if I thought The Lexington Club could be saved, I would not be writing this. I understand what a huge loss this is to the community. It is difficult and painful to lose our queer spaces. However, my faith in queer San Francisco still runs deep. It is the best place in the world and dykes and queers are still an integral part of this city. They always will be.” If you go: Today the bar is named Wildhawk and there are few remnants of The Lex left. If you go into the restroom, close your eyes and picture the now neatly painted walls covered in feminist graffiti. |