Neighbour...

San Francisco has becomethe world's gay capitala new Mecca in our age of
individual libera tion where homosexuals migrate for a few hours or for many years to find
themselves and to learn a language of freedom, sexuality, solidarity, and life - to 'come out' and
to become gay. Numbers are significant but not crucial. An estimated 115,000 gay men and
women, about 17 per cent of the city's population," they represent a much less important
number than the large concentration of gay people in New York or Los Angeles. Furthermore,
the modern gay liberation movement was triggered by the Stonewall Revolt in New York, on 27
June 1969." Although the gay experience of New York has been more radical and militant, San
Francisco vhas been the city where gays have uniquely succeeded in building up a powerful,
though complex, independent community at spatial, economic, cultural, and political levels. And,
on such a basis, gay people, particularly gay men, have been able to achieve a certain amount
of power within the institutional system Because of their age, level of education, and militancy,
gays represent about 25 per cent of registered voters, and in decisive elections, their high turn
out may approach 30 per cent of the voters. Since 1977 San Francisco has elected a supervisor
who publicly ran as a gay candidate and no mayor can afford to risk openly opposing gays in
the election. Also, they have come to have some influence through public appointments - the
police department, for example, now recruits gay men and lesbians in informal consultation with
the gay community. However striking these developments may be in the context of our
homophobic culture", it is only the expression of a deeper and more significant social
process/the emergence of a social movement and its transformation into a political force
through the spatial organization of a self-defined cultural community.1) fofp for Spatial
concentration, as the basis of a search for self-reliance, is a fundamental characteris (ic of the
gay liberation movement in San Francisco, which makes it more than a human rights movement
trying to end legal discrimination on the basis of sexual preferences. (In our interviews with
Harry Britt the political leader of San Francisco's gay community, he went on record as saying
that, 'When gays are spatially scattered, they are not gay, because they are invisible'.) (The
crucial step for gay people was, as the movement said, to 'come out of the closet', to publicly
express their sexuality, and on the basis of such recognition (namely on the basis of a social
stigma), to reconstruct their socialization." But how is it possible to be openly gay in the middle
of a hostile and violent society increasingly insecure about its fundamental values concerning
virility and family? And how can one learn a new behaviour, a new code, and beyond that a new
culture, in a world where sexuality is implicit in everybody's presentation of self and where the
general assumption is heterosexuality? In order publicly to express themselves, gays have
always met together - in modern times in night bars and coded places. When they became
conscious enough and strong enough to 'come 14 Cultural Identity, Sexual Liberation and
Urban Structure: The Gay Community in San Francisco Introduction :ra to ay. 17 Scanned with
CamScanner The Gay Community

The Gay Community in San Francisco 139 Scanned with CamScanner 140 The San Francisco
Experience zhts out' collectively, they have earmarked places where they could be safe
together and could develop new life styles. But this time they selected cities, and within the
cities they traced boundaries and created their territory. These boundaries were to expand with
the increasing capacity gay people to defend themselves and to build up a series of
autonomous institutions." Levine has shown the systematic patterning of spatial concentrations
of gay people in the largest American cities." He, and others, consider such a culturally
significant cluster to fit the traditional sociological definition of a ghetto." But whatever
coincidence there may be between the characteristics of the ghetto, as defined by the Chicago
School and the gay experience of spatial organization, the argument is a purely formal one and,
in any event, misleading. Instead, gay leaders tend to speak of 'liberated zones', and there is a
major /theoretical difference between the two notions, the difference being that gay territories,
unlike ghettos, are deliberately constructed by gay people." Of course, they cannot choose the
urban space they want because of discrimination against them and because of the limited
income of many gays. But they do choose to live together as a cultural community settled in a
well defined territory. Two major consequences follow for the relationship between the gay
movement and the v city: The gay territory is not the consequence of forces usually dominating
the social and func tional patterning of space, particularly the urban land market. Although
constrained by eco nomic factors, the gay territory develops according to the relationship
berween the emerging movement and the counteracting forces, a relationship that reshapes the
whole urban fabric. Gays need a spatially defined community for a long period, where culture
and power can reformulated in a process of experimental social interaction and active political
mobilization. By virtue of an alternative life style in a spatial sub-set of the urban system, a.. city'
emerges within the city (not outside the existing city and not necessarily against other
communities) in a process that transforms established cultural values and existing spatial forms.
This is the process we want to understand as a major step in our intellectual journey across. the
web of connections between social movements and urban forms Why San Francisco? What
made this city so attractive to gay people and how did they manage to survive the repres sion in
a setting that was not always tolerant of them, until they established a relatively self protected
territory? What are the social and spatial profiles of this territory? What are the cultural themes
of the community, the forms of its social organization, the waving flags of its political battles?
And, above all, what are the effects of the process, as triggered by the gay liberation movement,
on the city's spatial forms, urban policies, cultural values, and political institutions? Is the gay
movement, as reflected by the experience in San Francisco, an agent of urban social change, or
on the contrary, does it exhaust itself behind the walls of an artificial paradise? What are the
elements favouring one direction or the other in such a drámatic dilemma? These are the
questions we are about to answer by using the results of the field wor we con ducted in San
Francisco, between 1980 and 1981 with the collaboration of the gay community, the
characteristics and methodology of which are presented and justified in the Appendix to this
chapter (pp. 355-62). Let us point out two major and deliberate limits of our analysis: We'do not
discuss the origins, evolution, organization or orientation of the gay movement as such.
Although we have obviously tried to understand it in order to be able to establish a significant
connection between gay liberation and urban change, it is this latter question that concerns us
in this book. Thus all our general understanding of gay culture as a social move ment is directed
towards the study of its relationship to the city as a social construction. 2 Our analysis colely
concerns gay men. The reason is a profoundly theoretical one. Lesbians, e gay men, tend not to
concentrate in a given territory, but establish social a Interpersonal networks,". On the whole
they are poorer than gay men and have less choice terms of work and location, and their politics
is less directed towards the established political system. For all these reasons lesbians do not
acquire a geographical basis for their political organization and are less likely to achieve local
power. And there is a major difference between men and women in their relationship to space.
Men have sought to dominate, and one . expression of this domination been spatial. (The same
desire for spatial superiority has aces driven male-dominated cultures to send astronauts to the
moon and to explore the galaxy.) Women have rarely had these territorial aspirations: their
world aftaches more importance to relationships and their networks are ones of solidarity and
affection. In this gay men behave first and foremost as men and lesbians as women. So when
gay men try to liberate themselves from cultural and sexual oppression, they need a physical
space from which to strike out. Lesbians on the other hand tend to create their own rich, inner
world and a political relationship with higher, societal levels. Thus they are 'placeless' and much
more radical in their struggle. For all these reasons, Teshians tend not to acquire a geographical
basis for their political organization and are less likely to achieve local power. As a consequence
of all these trends, we can hardly speak of lesbian territory in San Francisco as we can with gay
men, and there is little influence lesbians on the space of the city. The situation a fact, the
consequence of a more fundamental reason for not analysing the experiences of gay men and
lesbians as a similar social process. The man/woman distinction as a source foppression is
largely reproduced within the gay universe, and although male gay leaders are clearly sexist
and seek alliances with lesbians, the cultural, economic, and political status of gay men and
lesbians is clearly unequal, and results in paths of liberation specific to each situation. While
spatial communities and local power seem to be fundamental to gay mens' liberation, in San
Francisco at least, they are clearly not so for lesbians who are more concerned with the
revolution of values than with the control of institutional power. Since our research purpose
concerns the relationship between socio-cultural revolt and the city, we will deal only with the
experience of gay men in San Francisco. It is an experience with long standing historical roots
that must be recounted in order to understand the role of the city as a potential source of
personal freedom. Why San Francisco? The Historical Development of the Gay City An instant
city, a settlement for adventurers attracted by the gold fields, San Francisco was always a place
where people could indulge in personal fantasies and a place o easy moral standards The city's
waterfront and Barbary Coast were a meeting point Tor sailors, trayellers, transients, and lonely
people milieu of casual encounters and few social rules where the borderline between normal
and abnormal was blurred. San Francisco was a gateway city on the western limits of the
Western world, and in the marginal zones of a marginal city homosexuality flourished. But in the
1920's San Francisco decided to become respectable, t emerge as the moral and cultural
capital of the West, and to grow up gracefully, under the authoritative shadow of the Catholic
Church, fuelled by its Irish and Italian working class legions. So 'deviants' were repressed and
forced into-hiding. The reform movement reached Scanned with CamScanner The Gay
Community in San Francisco 141 eyes ranci o are not enough to explain its destiny as the
setting Pacific-front. An and women passed through the city: young, alone, suddenly evils Thus
the pioneer origins of for gay liberation. The major turning point seems to have been the Second
World War, San .

The Gay Community in San Francisco 141 : fCicr 4 emerge as the moral and cultural capital of
the West, and to authoritative shadow of the Catholic Church, fuelled by its Irish and Italian
working class legions. So 'deviants' were repressed and Torc hiding. The reform movement
reached the police in the 1930 and forced a crackdown on prostitution and homosexuality, the
twin evils in the eyes of puritan morality. Thus the pioneer origins of San Francisco are not
enough to explain its destiny as the setting for gay liberation. The major turning point seems to
have been the Second World War, San . The average ten per cent of homosexuals found Il
human populations found themselves more easily and rapidly in this context, a others
discovered their bisexuality. Many service men and women were discharged from military for
homosexuality. Many of them were serving in the Pacific area and were ordered to disembark in
San Francisco. Since they did not wish to return home bearing what society deemed to be the
stigma of homosexuality, they stayed in the city, and were joined at the end of the war by many
others who had discovered their sexual and cultural identity. They met in bars, particularly in the
Tenderloin area. Bars were then the focal points of social life for gay people; d networks were
constructed to around these bars: a specific form of culture and ideology began to emerge. One
particular bar has become a legend in San Francisco -The Black Car)situed on Montgomery
Street). It played a major cole in the early stages of the gay movement, because of the initiative,
courage, and imagination of its entertainer/Jose Sarria, a famous drag que and a living symbol
of the gay movement. Jose Sarria was bori in San Francisco. His mother, a Nicaraguan, was a
descendant of the Counts of Sattia, from Barcelona, Spain. He worked as a waiter in The Black
Cat, a bohemian bar owned by a straight Jewish man. One night he played Francisco' was the
main port of embarkation and disembarkation-for-the-Pacific-front. An estimated 1-6 million men
and women passed through city: young, alone, suddenly uprooted, living on the edge of death a
I suffering, and living with people of their own sex. 'Carmen' for a few minutes, with some
variations e theme. In his rendition, Carmen appeared as a drag queen hiding from the police in
the bushes of Union Square (the main, homosexual rights, after which they would end the show
by joining hands and singing 'God Save the Nelly Queens' However remote such an image
might seem from a liberation movement, the bars and the fashionable public square in
downtown San Francisco). The performance was very successful and Sarria was hired to
perform his show on Sunday afternoons because this was the quiet time of the week. For 15
years, each Sunday afternoon, 250 people would pack themselves into The Black Cat to watch
Sarria dressed Madam Butterfly, and listen to his 'sermon' about drag queens were fundamental
to the creation of networks, making gay people visible, and stating their right to gather in public
places. The Black Cat was, in fact, under continual threat from the police and had to defend its
existence through many lawsuits which were finally settled in 1951 when the Cafifornia
Supreme Court declared that it was illegal to close down a simply because homosexuals were
the usual customers. The first right to a public space bar been won. However, after continual
harrassment from the Alcoholic Beverage Commission, The Black Cat was finally closed in
1963 but not before it had established a tradition, a network, and a fundamental dimension of
the gay culture - fun and humour, (This is something that many hardline gay militants seem to
be ashamed of, but both Jose Bla C Sarria and Harry Britt consider it a crucial aspect of the
cultural transformation still to be undertaken. They relish the capacity to enjoy life, turn
oppression into creation, and subvert established values by emphasizing their ridiculous
aspects. Bars, feasts, and celebrations should be, they believe, the nest of gay culture, as they
are one of the primary sources of a vibrant city life.) The crifical mament, nevertheless, was the
transition from the bars to the strects, from nightlife to daytime, from 'sexual deviance' to an-
eiternative life style. Gays were able to negotiate this change on the basis of another specifically
San Franciscan experience: the Scanned with CamScanner 142 The San Francisco Experience
Beatnik culture and the literary networks through which it expressed itself in the 1950s. Allen
cezGinsberg's 'Howl provoked a legal action in 1957 against City Lights, the most famous 'beat'
bookstore, accused of selling 'obscene' publications. Kerouac's On the Road won an
international audience, and the Black Mountain poets were becoming well-known to the literary
critics. A beat culture emerged as a reaction-against several things: McCarthyism, the Institution
of the lamily, and suburbanism. This culture concentrated spatially in the old Italian North Beach
arca near the red light tourist zone of Broadway, and gays were accepted In this tolerant,
experimental ambiance, and were able to find common interests in a alternative milieu that was
concerned with broader issues than sexual differences and boundaries. When the media
focused its attention on the San Francisco beatniks, it pinpointed tolerance of homosexuals as
evidence of their deviance. In so doing, the media reinforced the attraction to the city for
thousands of isolated gays all over the country On the basis of the bar networks and of the
counter-cultural movement, the human rights orightated, respectable associations, with an
interest in legal rights, found a favourable environment in San Franciscd The conservative, well-
to-do Mattachine socicty moved its headquarters from Los Angeles o San Erancisco in 1955,
and some time later began to publish The Advocate which became the only gay magazine with
a national audience. Also in 1955 the first openly lesbian organization, The Daughters of Bilitis,
was founded in San Francisco, and started Ladder Magazine. These open expressions of the
taboo subjects of sexuality and homosexuality, coinciding as they did with the ideological
rebellion of the beatniks, caused much consternation among the conservative sectors of San
Francisco. In the 1959 mayoral race, conservative candidate v The newly acquired fame of their
growing community gave the gay bar owners the resolu- Russell Wolden, accused the
incumbent, Mayor George Christopher, of allowing the city to become . the national
headquarters of organized homosexuals in America.' But the estab lishment and local press
criticized Wolden for harming the image of the city and he was a defeated. tion to challenge
poliee-harassment by publicizing some cases of corruption and intimidation , to which they had
been subjected. After minor sanctions, the police responded during 1961 with more repression,
including massive raids against gay bars and the revoking of licenses for 12 of the city's 30 gay
bars, including that of The Black Cat. But the movement was already strong enough to develop
its own autonomous organization, reinforced not long afterwards by e anti-war and counter-
cultural movements. In 1962, in order to protect themselves against police harassment, the
owners of the gay and Bohemian bars organized the Tavern Guild which became one of the
basic financial and political supporters of all gay activities in San Francisco, and had well over
100 members in 1980. To protect gay rights in law, the same network of bar owners and some
prominent gay figures such as Jose Sarria and Jim Foster founded, in 1964, the Society for
Individual Rights. This organization soon had over 1,000 members. The hippy culture of the
1960s, which was particularly strong in the Bay Area, was also a sympathetic milieu for gays
and influenced their developing cultural identity. The single event, however, that marked the
development of a gay liberation movement in San Francisco, as it did in the rest of the country,
was the Stonewall Rexolt of 27 June 1969. On that day the police raided, with customary
vinlence, the Stonewall, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. The gays resisted, fighting
the police in a three day battle. The entire gay network reacted across the nation. In 1969 there
were only 50 gay organizations; in 1973, there were over 800. In San Francisco the movement
grew even faster because of the existing foundations. From the Circle of Loving Companions,
created in 1966 as a spin-off of the hippy movement, many organizations evolved into more
militant forms, such as the Pink Panthers, the Gay Liberation Front, and the Gay Activist
Alliance. In 1971, the an effort to connect with the extremely powerful current of lesbian
liberation, the major mo theme of the movement was to overcome-"invisibility' by 'coming out'.
The objective was to force society to revise standards on sexuality and individuaEbehaviour:
homosexuality not only had to be tolerated by a liheral culture, but also accepted as normal and
legitimate and accef behaviour by a society that was already questioning fundamental values
and institutes such as the family, heterosexuality, and patriarchal authority. Superseding the
human rights movement represented by the traditional homophile organizations, gays were
asking for their identity to be recognized, and for dominant societal values to change, rather
than being forced to adapt to such values. The more radical wing of the movement suffered the
same crisis as the political movement of which it was a part. Confronted, after the Cambodian
Spring, with stern repression from President Nixon's administration, and divided and weakened
by in fighting and dogmatic ideologies, the student-based organizations ceased. The gay
movement, however, continued, and made an exception of itself on the basis of spatial
concentration and social networks, building up its own institutions, and discovering its own
collective identity as well as the consciousness of its individuals (The gay movement realized
that between liberation and politics it first had to establish a community in a series of spatial
settings and through a network of economic, social, and cultural institutions. It also discovered
that sucha community could not be built up as a new Utopian phalanstery. Some gays tried to
start a new society in a rural environment by buying property in Alpine County in the California
Sierra area. They quickly abandoned the project after several homes were destroyed by arson.
Major metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Seattle and the Bay Area
became places of freedom that other cities could not equal. Yet Sán Erancisco was tradi-S
fionally the most liberal environment where years of struggle by labour minorities, students and
counter-culture movements, as well as a concentration of gay people, had created theV
conditions for a gay community. So they created a gay community by living in certain neigh
bourhoods, by operating businesses, by meeting in bars (numbers jumped from 58 in 1969 to
234 in 1980), by inventing feasts and celebrations; in short by organizing socially, culturally and
politically. It was against this background that Harvey Milk decided in-1973 to express the
political strength of gay people by running for supervisor. A graduate of New York State
University at Albany, he was not able to teach because of his discharge in 1956 from the Navy
for homosexuality. Like many other gays, he migrated in 1969 to San Francisco. After leaving
his job as a financial analyst, he opened a photography business, Castro Camera, on Castro
Street which soon became the unofficial headquarters for the new political force growing up in e
San Francisco. When Jose Sarria ran for supervisor in 1961 in his drag queen dress, he
( obtained 7,000 votes. The goal for Sarria was not to win, but to show that gays were citizens.
For Haryey Milk, however, the point was more than self-affirmation. His plan was to go from
community, to business, to power. He called for 'gays to buy gay', so that Castro would not 1975
just be a cruising place, as Greenwich Village in New York, but a space owned by gays, lived in
by gays, and enjoyed by gays. If gays could 'buy gay' and 'live gay', they would also vote gay.
And they did. In his first election race, in 1973, Harvey Milk attracted 17,000 votes and came
eleventh in a field of 33 candidates. Although it was an excellent showing, it was, at the same
time, a sign that he also had to address a broader liberal constituency. In his second electoral
attempt, in 1975, while he was still a gay candidate, he also dealt with the more general issues,
particularly emphasizing the need to control real estate speculation. He assumed a 'straight
image', and his support jumped to 53,000 votes, but he still lost. In spite of these loses, it was
nevertheless clear that the gay vote had become decisive in the. city. In the 1975 mayoral
election, liberal California Senator George Moscone was elected in was strong enough in
California to organize a march on Sacramento in defense of gay rights. favour of his
conservative opponent by the very narrow margin of 3,000 votes. Moscone, who was politically
astute, appointed Harvey Milk to an important city hall post as a member of the Le ceBoard of
Permit Appeals. For the first time an openly gay leader became a public official At the same
time the Neighbourhood Movement, boosted by the new progressive coalition emerging around
Moscone, was attempting a major drive to make local government more democratic. In 1975,
over 50 neighbourhood groups, including representatives of the gay community, met in a San
Francisco Community Congress, to promote a programme of social change for the city. A major
objective was to make it politically possible to effect urban and social reforms advocated by the
grassroots, and to establish an electoral system ensuring accountability of supervisors to local
constituencies. A campaign was initiated for district elec tions which were approved in two
referendums (in 1976 and 1977), in spite of the multi million dollar campaign that the Chamber
of Commerce launched against the neighbourhoods' initiative. Then, on the basis of the territory
that the gay community had organized in the Castro area, Harvey Milk was elected supervisor in
the 1977 election as a representative of District 5. It was just in time. The homophobic backlash
was gaining momentum all over America. campaign orchestrated by fundamentalist
conservatives and publicized by Anita Bryant (an ex-Miss America and a Florida-based singer
who appeared in orange-juice advertisements) sexuals in Miami. Other cities followed suit.
Other people expressed their homophobia in a different way. In June 1977 Bob Hillsborough
was murdered in San Francisco by a gang of youths who stabbed him repeatedly, shouting
'Faggot. Faggot.' Even in California the con servatives believed the moment had come to regain
control over public morality. In June 1978 Senator Briggs put on the state ballot a proposition
banning homosexuals from teaching public schools. The gay movement mobilized all its support
and Harvey Milk became a major political figure due to his success with the media in this
campaign With the help of liberal. /Democrats, left wing militants, and neighbourhood activitists,
gays won a major victory against conservative forces. In November 1978 Briggs' proposition
was rejected by 58 per cent of the Californian voters and by 75 per cent of San Franciscan
electors (the proposition being defeated in almost all precincts of the city). The local political
culture had thoroughly supported the cause of gay rights. In April 1978 the board of supervisors
approved a very liberal Gay Rights Ordinance. At the same time, two lesbian leaders, Del Martin
and Phyllis Lyon, holding city hall posts, received from the city of San Francisco a certificate of
honour for their civic services - including support lesbians - and for their 25 years of living had
succeeded in winning a popular referendum to retain legal discrimination against homo
together. The beginnings in The Black Cat seemed far away: the gays had come a long way,
demonstration ever seen in San Francisco: 20,000 people marched with candles, in silence,
after listening to speakers who called on the movement to pursue the struggle in the way shown
by Harvey Milk. from bar culture to political power. But such power proved precarious. On 27
November 1978, a conservative supervisor, Dan White, an ex-policeman who had campaigned
against the, tolerance towards 'sexual deviants", shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and
Supervisor Harvey Milk in their offices at city hall. He later surrendered to his former colleagues
in the police department. The mourning of Moscone and Milk was the most impressive political
The new mayor, Diane Feinstein, appointed enother gay leader, Harry Britt, a socialist, to
replace Harvey Milk, following instructions Milk had left recorded on a cassette in case he was
murdered.t A few months later, on 21 May 1979, a jury sentenced Dan White to seven years in
prison, the lowest possible penalty. As Playboy reporter Nora Gallagher wrote: 'What the jury
stands for, in this unfolding drama, are the people who, like White in San Francisco'." Gay
visibility had made 'invisible' the open will to repress sexuality and life-styles not centred on the
family. The sectors representing conservative moral values had cause to be alarmed and when
the dominant forces in a system become frightened, violence is their most likely response. But,
as in New York ten years before, the gays reacted with rage, and after a public meeting front of
city hall to condemn the verdict, they smashed the building's windows, burned police cars, and
there followed violent clashes with the police. A new stage of the gay movement had begun.
Society was responding to the threat posed by gay values to the fundamental institutiogs of our
civilization, such as family life and sexual repressiop And so, in turn, the gay territory could not
remain a cultural, Utopian community; either walls had to be elevated around the free city or the
entire political system had to be reformed. This dilemma was still facing gays at the time of our
research. a The gays' power was apparently most uncertain but nonetheless they possessed it,
based on spatial, cultural community whose profile and formation, and relationship to the
political -process, we will now examine The Social Making of a Gay Territory Space is a
fundamental dimension for the gay community."" Social prejudice, legal repression, and political
violence have forced homosexuals throughout history to be invisible. Such invis ibility is a major
obstacle to finding sexual partners, discovering friends and leading unharassed, open life. To
overcome this obstacle, gays have always tended to establish their assumption of common
sexual and cul own space where encounters would be possible on the tural values. Bars were
usually where gay social networks developed, the bars themselves being located in certain
urban areas where police zoning would implicitly allow some 'deviant entertainment' under close
surveillance. During the cultural revolts of the 1960s, when certain traditional values began to
break down, the gays of San Francisco took advantage of the greater latitude to broaden their
space. From bars and strect-cruising, their spatial organiza tion shifted to specific
neighbourhoods, and from there to larger areas of the city that became, in the mid-1970s, gay
free communes. The urban residential structure was profoundly altered. The gay territory
expanded accord ing to a logic the understanding of which will be a key element for estahlishing
the retationship between cultural transformation and urban form. To proceed with this analysis
we had to determine the spatial areas of gay residences and activities in San Francisco at
different points in time. Such information was not reported and no empirical research had been
done on this matter, so we were forced to find out for ourselves. The Methodological Appendix
carefully describes this particular research (pp. 355-57). Let us at this point say what the data
bases is and on which ones the following observations and analyses are based. Given that we
could not rely on a single source of information, we established five different t means of
determining the areas where gays were concentrated in San Francisco: A map drawn by a team
of key informants from the gay community on the basis of their expeřience as pollsters for gay
electoral campaigns (Map 14-1). The map was established according to the sequential
development of gay residence at different points in time. A map representing the proportion of
multiple male households on the resident population in the area, (Map 14-2) in 1977. (The
census does not have such information, so we obtained it from the San Francisco Voter
Registration Files. Therefore, the adequate description of the Scanned with CamScanner 146
The San Francisco Experience 1950:1960 Early 1970s Mid 1970s 1970s Map 14.1 Gay
residential areas. (Source: Gay Community Informants.) indicator is the proportion of registered
voters living in multiple male households, by pre cincts (see Methodological Appendix (pp. 357-
59).) Remember that in San Francisco, a high proportion of gays are registered voters.
Obviously the assumption was not that all such house holds are formed by gays or that all gays
lived in such a way. But the assumption is that t spatial distribution of adult males living together
should follow the spatial distribution of gay residences. The fact that Map 14-2 closely follows
Map 14-1 in its basic trends rather confirms our hypothesis. Thus, we only kept Map 14-2 as a
reasonable quantitative indicator of the gay territory, after it had been reinforced by cross-
checking from our additional sources of information. A map representing the gay bars and other
gay social gathering places (Map 14-3). A map representing self-defined gay businesses, stores
and professional offices (Map 14-4). The Gay Community in San Francisco 147
0-1.9% 2.0-2.9% 3.0-3.9% 4.0-5.9% 6.0-9.9% 10.0-13.9% Voter registration household median
= 3% 1970 census nonrelative households citywide 3.6% Map 14.2 Gay residential areas as
indicated by the proportion of multiple male households over the total of registered voters in
each census tract, 1977. (Source: 1977 Voter registration tape/computer programme prepared
by Doug De Young.) A map representing the highest concentration of votes for Harvey Milk, the
gay candidate in the 1975 supervisorial election (Map 14-5). 5 Observation of these maps leads
to two conclusions: The general spatial pattern tends to evolve along the same lines in all five
maps obtained from five different sources, so there is reciprocal reinforcement as to the value of
each indicator. While each one by itself would be doubtful as an expression of gay residential
areas, e similar spatial distribution in the five maps strongly supports the validity of the
residential profile we have obtained. Rank correlation coefficients confirm the covariation
between the different indicators of the spatial distribution of gays as shown by Maps 14-1, 2,
and 5. (See Methodological Appendix.) Scanned with CamScanner 1964-66 1969-71 1973-75 A
1980 Map 14.3 Places where gays gather, 1964-1980 (including bars and social clubs) showing
a sequential a (Source: Bob Damron's address book. The map is based on series of maps by
Michael Kennedy.) If 1 is accepted, then there is a gay territory that includes residences, social
places, business activities, as well as the ground for potiticat organizing We are now able to
define the spatial boundaries of San Francisco's male gay community as of 1980. Also, given
the verification as to the accuracy of our key informants, we may, unless contrary evidence is
provided, consider the spatial sequence described by the boundaries over time Having
established the spatial profile of the gay community, we are also able to relate it to the social
and urban characteristics distributed across the city, so that we may understand the factors
fostering or counteracting thè patterns of settlement inspired by gay culture. On the basis of the
1970 US Census and of the 1974 US Bureau of Census' Urban Atlas,2 we selected Scanned
with CamScanner The Gay Community in San Francisco 149

[17/11, 4:56 pm] Senorita: Map 14.4 Golden Gate Business Association members, 1979.
(Source: GGBA Buyers' Guide/Directory, Autumn 1979-Autumn 80.) 11 variables considered to
be relevant to our analysis (see Table 14-1, page 152). Yet we must keep in mind that all we
have is a series of converging indicators of gay location and that the only thing this particular
data basis tells us about gayness is where gays are or tend to be. We do not have any indicator
of gayness and we are therefore unable to infer anything about gay individuals. In sum, we can
only analyse gay versus non-gay spatial units and to proceed in such a way we have carried out
two different analyses: On the basis of our key informants map (Map 14-1) we have divided the
city into two categories of spatial areas: those with gay presence and those without. For each
selected vari able we have calculated the mean value of its distribution in the census tracts
corresponding to each the two categories of space. The T test provides the statistical
significance of the differences observed for the mean value of each variable in each one of the
two categories of spatial units. The extent and direction of such differences will provide the clue
for the social and urban specificity of the gay territory. Scanned with CamScanner Map 14.5
Gay voting pattern thai indicates two top ranking precincts in support of Harvey Milk in the 1975
supervisorial race. (Source: Harvey Milk Campaign Office.) 2 We have tried to establish some
measures of correlation between the spatial distribution of the gay community and the spatial
distribution of selected social and urban variables. Since we looking for correspondence
between spatial organization in relationship to two series of criteria (rather than co-variation of
characteristics across space), the usual regression analysis is inadequate for our purpose.
Instead we have proceeded to calculate rank-correlation,coef ficients (Spearman test) between,
on the one hand, the distribution of all census tracts in a six level scale of 'gay space',
constructed on the basis of the proportion of multiple male house holds; and, on the other hand,
the distribution of all census tracts in a series of six-level scales on the basis of selected
variables. Only variables that the first step of the analysis (as described 1) showed to be
discriminatory were considered in the construction of the scales of social and urban
differentiation in San Francisco. Furthermore, one of the findings of our analysis is that these
selected variables are likely to effect gay location patterns jointly, instead of having individual
effects, since their spatial distribution does not overlap. To test our analysis we Scanned with
CamScanner
[17/11, 4:56 pm] Senorita: Gay Neighbour... Scanned with anner The Gay Community in San
Francisco 151 presented in Maps 14-1-5. All converge towards a largely similar territorial tionat
spectat scate, ciassy into its criteria the three variables considered to have some effect on gay
location. The Spearman coefficient between the ranks obtained by the census tracts units in this
scale and the ranks they obtained in the multiple male households scale, provided the final test
for our tentative interpretation of the social roots of gay location patterns. The most important
result of this study is the definition of the spatial organization of the gay community boundary.
Thus, the first finding is that there is a gay territory. Furthermore, it is not only a residential
space but also a space for social interaction, for business activities of all kinds, for leisure and
pleasure, for feasts and politics. It was on this spatial basis that the gay community succeeded
in electing both Harvey Milk and Harry Britt with the largest and best organized single voting
block, using the decentralized electoral system by Districts that existed in San Francisco
between 1976 and 1980. What were the characteristics of this space? Table 14-1 provides a
tentative answer accord ing to the ntethodology just described. Of the 11 selected variables
examined only two appear strongly negatively associated with the presence of gays: the
proportion of owner occupied housing units and the proportion of the resident population under
18 years, In other words, y and family were the major protecting the 'straight universe' against
the gay inlluence, It is our hypothesis that fundamental to this relationship was the
culturalxlimension of the rejection and the capacity of a given neighbourhood to oppose gay
immigration either because of the control over real estate property or because of the local
organization of a family-orientated community. The latter has been the case, for example, in the
Latino Mission District and in the black Bayview Hunter's Point areas - they have remained
outside gay's location patterns. Variables housing value, family income, or blue collar
occupation have not differentiated gay and non gay areas. Neither gay location nor gay rejection
have directly appeared as economic processes: these seem to have come basically from
cultural distances. Fwo other variables w show some significant differences between the city
and the gay cityxgay areas have tended to carry a concentration of more educated population;
and non-gay areas have tended towards higher rents. It should be remembered that San
Francisco's housing stock was 65 per cent rental and that the areas of highest social status
included the likes of Pacific Heights where the proportion of owner-occupied housing was below
the average. Thus a new barrier was estab lished in areas exclusive enough to keep gays out
through high rents. the second method we have used to measure our observa These findings
are reinforced by tions. Table 14-2 shows that, as expected, the rank-correlation between the
spatial distribu tions of our indicator of gay residence and each one of those for the four
variables obtained by previous analysis is very weak. A simple observation of Map 14-6
provides the reason for such a result: gays have not resided in the western zone of the city
because of the nature of the property; in the eastern side because of the predominance of the
family-orientated community; and in the northern hills because of the high rents. Only when we
combine the effects of the three variables in one scale (property, family, and high rents) do we
obtain a significant -0-38 rank-correlation between this scale and the scale constructed on the
basis of the indicator of gay residence. To provide a clearer expression of these results we have
constructed Map 14-6 where the three variables and the proportion of multiple male households
(indicator of gay residence) are mapped together according to the description in the map's
caption. Map 14-6 shows a striking autonomy between the territories defined by the four
variables, with only limited overlapping. Scanned with CamScanner Table 14.1 Statistical
difference in the valucs of selected variables for spatial areas with significant a residence and
without significant gay residence, San Francisco, circa 1970. Cultural Pooled Variance Estimat
Degrees of Mean Standard Deviation Value 2-Tail Probability Non-Gay 22-8 10-56 4-25 146 0-
000 8-43 15.9 40-54 31-51 4-41 146 0-000 Non-Gay Gay Non-Gay 20-93 57-21 18-02 20-05 -1-
55 145 0-123 61-73 13-08 44-36 1-37 144 0-174 Variable Family % of the resident population
under 18 Property % of housing units owner occupied among residents aged 25 and over
Education % of high school graduates Housing Rents Median contract rent, dollars, 1970
Housing Value Median housing value, dollars, 1970 Non-Gay Gay Non-Gay -0-26 122-5 0-795
Gay Non-Gay 135-04 126-16 29-76 26,886 12,003 27,384 9,360 9,858 3,989 0-82 144 0-415
3.804 Non-Gay 9,322 22-73 0-54 146 0-588 Non-Gay 21-72 16-17 1-10 146 0-273 11-96 17-98
9-51 0-15 146 0-879 Non-Gay 14-66 Ga Non-Gay 7-68 18-09 -0-39 145 0-695 8-75 13-81 Gav
Non-Gay 7-66 18-45 10-89 17-60 07 145 0-288 Sources: Median family income, dollars, 1970
Blue Collar % of blue collar employed among residents Black Population Blacks as % of total
population over 65. Elderly % of total population Housing Dilapidation % of housing units lacking
some or all plumbing Housing Decay % of housing units lacking kitchen facilities Nore: Basic
criterion for the statistical significance of the observed differences between mean values of each
variable has been the 2-tail probability threshold as provided by the T test. p<.000 has been
considered significant. p values between< .1000 and< .200 have been considered moderately
significant. p values > 2000 have been considered randomly produced, although they do exist ar
trends of the urban reality of San Francisco. US Census, 1970, San Francisco. Gay and non-
gay areas have been defined by classifying in two separate categories all census tracts,
according to information provided by key informants of the gay community, and checked with
other sources as described in the Methodological Appendix (pp. 357-58). Our own calculations.
indica Scanned with CamScanner The Gay Community in San Francisco 153 1977, and five of
Table 14.2 Spearman correlation co-eflicients between the rank of census tracts of San
Francisco ordered in a six levels, scale according to the proportion of multiple male households
among registered voters residents in
[17/11, 4:57 pm] Senorita: The Gay Community in San Francisco 153 Table 14.2 Spearman
correlation co-efficients between the rank of census tracts of San Francisco ordered in a six
levels, scale according to the proportion of multiple male households among registered voters
residents in 1977, and five other scales as indicated Spearman R -0-11 -0-16 -0-18 -0-17 (p <0-
001) 1 Scale according to the proportion of residents under 18 in 1970 (FAMILY) (6 levels) 2
Scale according to the proportion of owner-occupied housing units in 1970 (PROPERTY) 1970
(EDUCATION) (6 levels) (6 levels) 3 Scale according to the proportion of high-school graduates
among residents over 25, in 4 Scale according to the median contract rent, in dollars, in 1970 (6
levels) (HIGH RENT) 5 Scale of FAMILY, PROPERTY and HIGH RENT (Scale in 6 level
constructed by combination of scores of census tracts in scales number 1, 2, and 4. It reads as
follows: level in scale 5 top level in scale 1 or in scale 2 or in scale 4, and so on throughout all
the levels of the scale) The ranking for education has been inversed in order and in relationship
to the other scales, to be consistent with hypothesis of a direct correlation with gay presence.
Source: Our own calculations on the basis of scales constructed by us; See the Methodological
Appendix, pp. 357-59. We are in the presence of four spaces: property land, family land, rich
land (defined by the proportion of high-rent housing), and gay land. Gay settlement was
opposed by property, family, and high class: the old triumvirate of social conservatism. Map 14-
7 provides confirmation of this conclusion. Our informants (the accuracy of whose information
was established through cross-checking with four other sources) forecasted the expansion of
the gay community throughout the 1980s in the areas presented in Map 14-7, without any pre
vious knowledge of our analysis. They are precisely the zones that appear to be contiguous to
the gay territory and where the three variables proposed as deterrents to gay location score
relatively low values. Before proceeding towards any further elaboration of these results, we
need to introduce a historical perspective into the analysis. The spatial setting of the gay
community in San Francisco has developed along a series of progressions whose dynamics are
the clearest way to understand the connection between alternative culture and spatial form. We
have two sources, expressed in Maps 14-2 and 14-3, to study the sequence of expansion of the
gay territory after the Second World War: on the one hand, the areas established for each
period by the same team of informants whose information appeared accurate when contrasted
to other indicators; and on the other hand the sequence of expansion of gay bars at four points
in time on the basis of our reliable source, as cited in the Methodological Appendix. From the
observation of these maps, and on the basis of the knowledge of the characteristics of the city
as expressed in the US Census Urban Atlas and the CORO Foundation Districts' Handbook",
we can propose the following spatial history of San Francisco's gay community. The spatial
history of San Francisco's gay community At the 'beginning', in the 1940s, gays still had to be
invisible, and for the most part met in bars, Scanned with CamScanner 154 The San Francisco
Experience Top rank in the proportion of multiple male households (indicator High proportion of
population under 18 (family) High level of high rent in rental housing (high rent) High proportion
of house ownership (property) Overlap of property and high Map 14.6 Family, property, high
rents, and gay residential areas. (Source: Our study on the basis of US Census data and the
voter registrar.) particularly concentrated in the Tenderloin area, a red light zone adjacent to
downtown. So gays were forced to be a part of the (relatively) tolerated milieu of individual
'deviant' behaviour. There were networks, but no community-places, but no territory. In the
1950s an alternative life style and culture flourished in the cafes and bookshops of North Beach,
that of the beatniks. Gays found there a receptive, tolerant atmosphere and they became a part
of the rebel residential community that established itself in that area. Without developing a com
[17/11, 4:57 pm] Senorita: basemap, gay residential expansion areas (1980s). (Source: Key
informants mapping, February 1980.) munity themselves, gays enjoyed relative freedom a sub-
set of a highly intellectual, fashionable counter-culture. In the 1960s gays' network expanded
and took advantage of the atmosphere of liberalism imposed by the anti-war and civil rights
movements. In addition to Tenderloin and North Beach, bars flourished around a new axis, Polk
and Van Ness, that were more integrated into the city. For the first time, an independent gay
residential area developed. around the meeting places opened on Polk Street. The adjacent
ghetto of the Western Addition was designated for redevelopment and some gay households
started buying property in the renewed area in the late 1960s. The gay liberation movement was
given a dramatic impetus by New York's Stonewall Revolt of June 1969. Gays 'came out', and
many of them migrated from all over the country to the cities where they could express
themselves, especially New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The new militants were not
content just to be close to social places where there were sexual networks, but tried to develop,
symbolically and politically, a Scanned with CamScanner 156 The San Prancist xper life style
defined as gay. They tried to establish a community. Others joined the effort in a a somewhat
confused frame of mind, to be socialized in a new culture more suitable to their needs and
behaviour, a culture that they needed to feel part of by being, physically, in a given
neighbourhood, for only then would they be able to rub their old classroom slates clean and
learn for the first time about themselves in their rightful surroundings. So a collective move
ment, informally organized, began [Link] over a well-defined area (the Castro Valley in the f)
geographical centre of San Francisco), an area characterized by two_main features: it was
traditionally a beautiful Victorian neighbourhood partly vacated by its Irish working class
dwellers moving to the suburbs; and it was a very middle-level area in terms of income and
education with much affordable housing toxent, Gays purposely started businesses and shops
the area, in the area and neighbourhood associations that forced other businesses particularly
banks, to collaborate with them. Bars and social places followed the residential concentration,
so reversing the usual sequence. At the same time, in the 1970s, two very different trends were
expressing other spatial and social orientations-of gay people, trends that attracted less
attention than the garish lights of the Castro territory. While sharing the aspirations to a self-
controlled 'private territory', many gays could not afford the high rents that landlords were
forcing them to pay if they were to have that kind of freedom. So they started another
colonization in the much harsher area, South of Market, where transient hotels, warehouses,
and slums waited for redevelopment. Their marginality to the gay community was not only
spatial, but social: they tended to reject the politicization and positive counter-culture of the new
liberation movement. Instead, they emphasized the sexual aspects of gay life, and the more the
gay community strove for legitimacy the more an individualistic minority, who were generally
poorer and less-educated, evolved new sexual codes, many of them joining the sado-masochist
networks. The South of Market area became the headquarters of the leather culture." A growing
proportion of middle class gays, however, rejected the militant stands of the liberation
movement and ridiculed the idea of setting up in a ghetto. They believed it was necessary to
obtain personal freedom and legal rights without challenging a system that was otherwise highly
favourable to their sex, class, and race) This orientation, which we will examine as one of the
main debates within the community, has also a distinct spatial expres sion. Since the early
1970s, according to our informants, some middle class gays had wanted to live in a friendly gay
neighbourhood, but not in the Castro ghetto, and they began to locate themselves, in a very
pointed move, in the lower sections of the fashionable Pacific Heights, literally on the threshold
of San Francisco's elite. In the mid-1970s, two major spatial developments characterized the
gay community: 1 The Castro ghetto grew and expanded dramatically in all adjacent-eress. A
very dense gay network of bars, health clubs, stores, businesses, and activities developed on
the basis of a growing population. Immigration from the rest of the country accelerated the rate
that gay households bought property in the neighbourhood, taking advantage of the conversion
of rented buildings into condominiums. They moved westward to more affluent sections. The
expansion also reached the Dolores Corridor on the border with the Latino Mission District.
Friction developed and there was some anti-gay violence from the Latino youth. 2 /in a different
development, gay households (particularly lesbian) developed in the workin lass areas of Bernal
Heights and Potrero Hill, within what we have called 'familyland", takin advantage of relatively
sound, cheap housing. The major reason for the tolerance showr towards the households was
the existence in those areas of very large counter-cultural com munities established by young
white students and professionals who maintained a good rela Scanned with
[17/11, 5:01 pm] Senorita: Source: Key informants mapping, February 1980.) munity
themselves, gays enjoyed relative freedom as a sub-set of a highly intellectual, fashionable
counter-culture. In the 1960s gays' network expanded and took advantage of the atmosphere of
liberalism imposed by the anti-war and civil rights movements. In addition to Tenderloin and
North Beach, bars flourished around a new axis, Polk and Van Ness, that were more integrated
into the city. For the first time, an independent gay residential area developed. around the
meeting places opened on Polk Street. The adjacent ghetto of the Western Addition was
designated for redevelopment and some gay households started buying property in the renewed
area in the late 1960s. The gay liberation movement was given a dramatic impetus by New
York's Stonewall Revolt of June 1969. Gays 'came out', and many of them migrated from all
over the country to the cities where they could express themselves, especially New York, Los
Angeles, and San Francisco. The new militants were not content just to be close to social
places where there were sexual networks, but tried to develop, symbolically and politically,
Scanned with CamScanner The San Prancist Experence life style defined as gay. They tried to
establish a community. Others joined the effort in a somewhat confused frame of mind, to be
socialized in a new culture more suitable to their needs and behaviour, a culture that they
needed to feel part of by being, physically, in a given neighbourhood, for only then would they
be able to rub their old classroom slates clean and learn for the first time about themselves in
their rightful surroundings. So a collective move ement, informally organized, began [Link] over
a well-defined area (the Castro Valley in the f geographical centre of San Francisco), an area
characterized by two main features: it was traditionally a beautiful Victorian neighhourhond
partly vacated by its Irish working class dwellers moving to the suburbs; and it a very middle-
level area in terms of income and education with much affordable housing totent, Gays
purposely started businesses and shops in the area and neighbourhood associations that forced
other businesses in the area. particularly banks, to collaborate with them. Bars and social
places followed the residential concentration, so reversing the usual sequence. At the same
time, in the 1970s, two-very different trends were expressing other spatial and social
orientations-of gay people, trends that attracted less attention than the garish lights of the
Castro territory. While sharing the aspirations to a self-controlled 'private territory', many gays
could not afford the high rents that landlords were forcing them to pay if they were to have that
kind of freedom. they started another colonization in the much harsher area, South of Market,
where transient hotels, warehouses, and slums waited for redevelopment. Their marginality to
the gay community was not only spatial, but social: they tended to reject the politicization and
positive counter-culture of the-new liberation movement. Instead, they emphasized the sexual
aspects of gay life, and the more the gay community strove for legitimacy the more an
individualistic minority, who were generally poorer and less-educated, evolved new sexual
codes, many of them joining the sado-masochist networks. The South of Market area became
the headquarters of the leather culture."4 A growing proportion of middle class gays, however,
rejected the militant stands of the liberation movement and ridiculed the idea of setting up in a
ghetto. They believed it was necessary to obtain personal freedom and legal rights without
challenging a system that was otherwise highly favourable to their sex, class, and race) This
orientation, which we will examine as one of the main debates within the community, has also a
distinct spatial expres sion. Since the early 1970s, according to our informants, some middle
class gays had wanted to live in a friendly gay neighbourhood, but not in the Castro ghetto, and
they began to locate themselves, in a very pointed move, in the lower sections of the
fashionable Pacific Heights, literally on the threshold of San Francisco's elite. In the mid-1970s,
two major spatial developments characterized the gay community: 1 The Castro ghetto grew
and expanded dramatically in all adjacent-eress. A very dense gay network of bars, health
clubs, stores, businesses, and activities developed on the basis of a growing population.
Immigration from the rest of the country accelerated the rate that gay households bought
property in the neighbourhood, taking advantage of the conversion of rented buildings into
condominiums. They moved westward to more affluent sections. The expansion also reached
the Dolores Corridor on the border with the Latino Mission District. Friction developed and there
was some anti-gay violence from the Latino youth. 2 in a different development, gay houscholds
(particularly lesbian) developed in the working lass areas of Bernal Heights and Potrero Hill,
within what we have called 'familyland', taking advantage of relatively sound, cheap housing.
The major reason for the tolerance show towards the households was the existence in those
areas of very large counter-cultural com munities established by young white students and
professionals who maintained a good rela
[17/11, 5:07 pm] Senorita: tionship with working class families - their common ground being the
strength of feeling about the neighbourhood. Gay men and lesbians were generally welcomed
into this milieu of 1960s rebels, with which they had associated from the outset. In the late
1970s, on the basis of the newly acquired (though uncertain) protection through political power,
a new expansion of gay residences took place on the borders of the middle class areas such as
Inner Riehmond and Inner Sunset in the western part of the city, where home ownership was
generally required While still preserving their basic territory, gays had started to dismantle the
last barriers to their spatial presence The contradiction implicit this move was that either gays
would lose their identity to adapt to prevailing patterns behaviour, or they would have to obtain
from the entire city a degree of tolerance that would have demanded society to change its
fundamental values with respect to the family and sexual repression - demands that were
unlikely to be met without fundamental social change. For the moment we can only point to this
question since will have to introduce additional analytical elements to answer it. But suffice to
say now that it is significant that a historical overview of the expansion of gay territory should
introduce this debate. The evolution and characteristics of gay residential space cannot answer
the basic research questions we have asked about the relationship between alternative cultures
and the produc tion of urban forms. But because [Link] do show the trace of social
processes we are able to introduce some of the basic themes of our analysis on the basis of the
results presented here. The gay community expressed (and continues to express) a diversity of
interests and social situatiofs that always overlapped in reality and that we are only able to
separate analytically. At the same time it represented a sexual orientation, a cultural revolt, and
a political 'party'. In the case of San Francisco,/young professionals and small businessmen
who emigrated to the city because of its cultural tolerance and character as a headquarters of
an advanced service 7 economy comprise a very important sector of gay people. In fact all
these aspects were present When the gay identity had to be reduced to its hard core because of
fierce social repression, sexually orientated networks were the basic instrument of
communication and solidarity. "But gayness is more than a sexual preference: it is an alternative
way of life, characterized by the domination of expressiveness over instrumentalism and by
human contact over impersonal competition. Such values were very close to the beatnik and
hippy cultures of the 1950s and in the spatial history of the gay community but with different
weights for each period. 1960s, and this is why gays moved into the territories of these
alternative life styles. But gays were different and represented more than a counter-culture. Not
only did they have a sexual network to preserve, they had also to win their right to exist as
citizens, they had to engage in political battles, change laws, fight the police, and influence
government. But how couldthey y organize within the political institutions only on the basis of
bars and of the marginal counter cultures To be a society within a society, they had to organize
themselves spatially to trans form thetr oppression into the organizational setting of political
power. This is why the building of the Castro ghetto was inseparable from the development of
the gay community social movement. It brought together sexual identity, cultural self-definition,
and a political project in a form organized around the control of a given territory. This is why
those who tions, to obtain enough power to live in the city instead of having to seek self-
protection within rejected the idea of a social movement left the 'commune', either to rejoin
conventional society in exchange for some tolerance, or to cut all communication and attempt
instead to affirm the potency of individualistic sexual pleasure. The ghetto preceeded the
movement towards insti tutionalization and provided the basis, particularly through the
decentralized District elec Scanned with CamScanner 158 The San Francisco Experience a
community. But as long as gays are beaten and killed because of whom they love, even in a city
where they share institutional power, they will need the ghetto. The territorial boundaries of a
cultural community are required for the same reasons that Jewish people in Europe, black
people in America, and oppressed ethnic minorities all over the world have always needed
them- for everyday survival. The Renovation of Housing and Urban Space by the Gay
Residential Communities"s Every incoming urban group has an impact on its housing and
physical space. The gays of San Francisco definitely improved the quality of housing through
repairs, remodetting, and excellent maintenance. Most gay households established themselves
by renting or buying houses in middle-level neighbourhoods, worked on them, and upgraded
both the buildings ecand the surrounding environment. The process of urban renovation in San
Francisco has been elargely, although not exclusively, triggered by gay people. As a result,
property values in gay residential areas have been considerably improved, far above the
already impressive average for the entire city. Commercial and business development has
spread effortlessly through the gay residential arcas. The aesthetic quality of most houses
renovated by gays has greatly helped San Francisco to preserve its historical heritage of
beautiful old Victorian buildings, many of which had been condemned during the 1960s by the
technocratic San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA). The gay community opposed the
renewal strategies pre saged by the SFRA's bulldozers during the period of the pro-growth
coalition with an alter native model - that of rehabilitating the existing city - in which housing
stock was to be reused and valuable architectural structures remodelled.! In fact, the
spectacular urban renovation in San Francisco during the 1970s, with the new gay households
as the driving force, was the result of a more complex pattern (as is clearly shown by the
typology of renova tion agents established by Don Lee on the basis of his study of gay realtors).
Three differ Went types of interventions appear to have contributeds Affluent gay professionals,
desiring to move into the gay territory, hired skilled renovators Wte do the job for them once
they had bought the inexpensive houses, the basic structure of zhich was sound and whose old
Victorian shape offered a great potential for architectural peau Gay realtors and interior
decorators discovered the possibilities of a new housing market I deeided to use it as a way to
earn a living. Using their commercial and artistic skills, they bought property in low-cost areas,
and repaired and renovated the buildings in order to sell tham for a high profit. (This,
incidentally, is the process that accounts for some of the renova tion taking place in the
predominantly black area of the Western Addition.) It would be sim plistic to label this activity as
'real estate speculation'. What in fact happened was that gays, discriminated against in the
labour market, discovered the hard way how to survive the tough San Francisco housing
market, and then decided to use their newly lesrned skills as a means of earning a living. A few
of them became realtors and greatly contributed to urban rehabilitation and gentrification, most
of them taking part as hired, skilled workers, carpenters, decorators and painters. Don Lee
estimates that '... the gay community provides 90 per cent of labour in renovation and
restoration in central San Francisco neighbourhoods. Some of the most prominent restoration
enterprises such as the San Francisco Victoriana and the San Francisco Renaissance are spin-
offs of initiatives by gays. Scanned with CamScanner
[17/11, 5:08 pm] Senorita: The Gay Community in San Francisco 3 At the same time, the
majority of the gay community could not afford to buy a house in San Francisco. So they formed
collectives to either rent or buy inexpensive buildings, and fixed them up themselves. This
practice was not only an expression of an economic need but a tradi tion initiated by the
counter-cultural collectives of the 1960s, in an attempt to supersede the role of the family in the
traditional household structure. These collectives have probably accounted for a large
proportion of San Francisco's housing rehabilitation and maintenance in recent years, 122
Photo 108678 7549 3360097 2307 Plate 14.1 An example of the renovation carried out by gays
on Victorian houses in Castro Street, San Francisco. Photograph: F. Sabbah.) Scanned with
CamScanner 160 The San Francisco Experience The impact of the gay community on the
urban space went far beyond the walls of the restored [Link] adjacent streets burgeoned
with stores, bars, public places and mis cellaneous business's from clinics to launderettes. The
monograph by Don Lee, Castro Street Confmercial Distric has clearly established the decisive
commercial, physical, and aesthetic improvement of a neighbourhood that was being
abandoned by its Irish working class who were moving to the suburbs. To be sure, Castro
Valley was - and still is - the core of the gay community and has therefore had much higher
chances of urban improvement because of the high expectations in terms of real estate. But this
is precisely the argument: unlike other . oppressed communities ay people have raised the
physical standards and economic value of the space they have occhpict. Are we then in the
presence of typical gentrification? Were gay people the middle class vanguard pushing urban
poor and minorities out of a newly discovered space picked out by the well-to-do the so-called
'back to the city' movement?2s This has been the accepted wisdom. Analysts, including Don
Lee, have tried to dissociate the gay com munity from the renovation process, saying that
renovation was going on independently of the gays and they took their opportunity.
Furthermore, the reference to the contribution by gays to the aesthetics of renovation is rejected
as a 'sexist prejudice' on account of the supposed 'femininity' of gays. Reality is more complex,
but the issue must be discussed because it is fundamental for our research purposes Has there
been a contribution by the gay community to the quality of their urban space or has it been a
more general gentrification and a 'back to the city' movement by the middle class, part of which
happened, in San Francisco, to be gay? Have gays been improving the city or gentrifying the
working class neighbourhoods? Our answers to these questions contain several findings. Firstly
it is a fact that gays improved the quality of housing and urban space, mainly through
Tenovation and maintenance, 12s Secondly, it is clear that Most neighbourhoods that are now
residential areas for gays were in a declining condition. Gay location in those neighbourhoods
(particularly in the Western Addition, Haight Ashbury, Potrero Hill, Bernal Heights, Castro) was a
decisive element in improving the housing stock and the neighbourhoods' commercial vitality.
Thirdly? it is not true that all gay, or even a majority of them, were high-income, mitddle
classeprofessionals. In addition there were poor gay people who lived in the marginal areas,
particularly in the South of Market and Tenderloin areas (San Francisco's skid row). Many gays
were able to live in their neighbourhoods because they organized collective households and
they were willing to make enormous economic sacrifices to be able to live f autonomously and
safely as gays. Besides, many gays were more likely to be able to choose their space because
they were single men, did not have to sustain a family, were young, and connected to a
relatively prosperous service economy. All of these characteristics together made it easier for
them to find a house in a tight housing market. What the gays have had in commion with some
non-family heterosexual groups is an alternative life style that had close ties with gay culture - a
middle class movement that. preferred residence in San Francisco, not because they were
predominantly middle class, bu because they valued personal experience and an active, social
street life. this sense, ga appear to have been a cultural vanguard for these people. Other
groups and institurions starte upgrading their neighbourhoods as a result of the renovation
initiated by gays. In this contex the new policy from the banks located in the Castro area was
particularly significant: not only did they lend money to would-be private renovators but they
remodelled their own buildings to improve the physical image of the street. The decision of the
Surf Theatre Chain to renovate the Castro Theatre building, the main cinema in the gay territory,
was the mos Scanned with CamScanner
[17/11, 5:09 pm] Senorita: symbolic at the time; a very old-fashioned structure in the Hollywood-
Babylon tradition, the theatre was declared a Registered Landmark in the city after its
renovation in July 1977. Urban renovation in San Francisco reached proportions far above
those of any other American city. Unlike other cities, thechack to the city movement has not just
been the wealthy people inhabiting the central city on the basis of new profitable trends in the
housing market.2 Most renovators have been gay people who have come to San Francisco in
the last decade. They have intentionally located themselves, individually or collectively, to build
up a new community at a financial and social cost that only 'moral refugees' are ready to pay.
They have paid for their identity, and in doing so have most cerrainly gentrified their areas. They
have also survived and learnt to live their real life. At the same time, they have revived the
colours of the painted facades, repaired the shaken foundations of the buildings, lit up the
tempo of the street and helped to make the city beautiful and alive, all in an age that has been
grim for most of urban America. Gay Society and the Urban Cultuial mear When we use the
phraseZgay community) we are implying something more than a gay terri Tavern Guild, came
from the bar networks, mainly as a defensive reaction against harassment, violence and legal
intimidation. During the 1970s, when gays felt relatiyely safe in their space and in their city as a
result of the political influence they had acquired, they founded a whole range of gay
organizations. Many of these were artistic expressions of a culture struggling to emerge: the
Gay Freedom Marching Band, The Lavender Harmony Band, the Lesbiah Chorus, the
Chrysanthemum Ragtime Band, the Quattro Quartet, and a whole series of dancing groups,
orchestras, poetry clubs, and art galleries, most of which were co-ordinated tory and an open
gay life style. We are referring to a deliberate effort by gay people to set up their own
organizations and institutions in all spheres of life."" The first efforts, such as the and supported
by an umbrella organization, the Gölden Gate Performing Arts Inc. At another The most visible
and sometimes most controversial of the attempts to rebuild the society on lével, counselling
clinics and institutions were started, offering psychological support. Opera tion Concern tried to
provide the necessary milieu people to adapt to their new social milieu, particularly for the young
gays who had just arrived in the city. Gay groups were also placed in different Churches
according to their beliefs. There was even an openly gay Church, the inter-denominational
Metropolitan Community Church, started by a former Pentecostal pastor. Even with spiritual
experiences, such as EST,1 gays organized their own circle with the support of/The Advocate
the major national gay magazine. the basis of gay institutions was and remains the Golden Gate
Business Association (GGBA), a federated network of more than 500 businesses (in 1980), only
five years after its foundation.12 Since it was able to mobilize some financial support for gay
activities and celebrations, as well as for political campaigns, the GGBA has become the target
of gay radicals who see it as the symbol of a desire by the more affluent gays to win acceptanee
within the established capitalist order, instead of furthering the transformation of that order's
fundamental values. In fact, a look at the membership reveals that a great majority are small
firms and individual businesses such as lawyers, business consultants, realtors, small
merchants, bars, financial consultants, decorators, advertising specialists, photographers,
tourist agents, entertainment organizets, and so on. This in no way represents the world of San
Francisco's financial establishment. The real business elite is, and will continue to be,
profoundly homophobic, while a few individuals are tolerated as homosexuals they will not be
accepted as gay, 9810867818 9871975493 7838360 Scanned with CamScanner 162 The San
Francisco Experience namely, as involved in the promotion of an alternative life style. The
GGBA has very little possibility, therefore, of allowing the takeover of the gay movement by
capitalist forces, and, in fact, expresses the profound desire for individual autonomy and
personal freedom that gays feel are the basis of their own development. Such autonomy in
American society relies on the ability to earn a living by being self-employed, and there is a real
chance for the more educated gays of finding such positions in the changing margins of San
Francisco's characteristic service economy. They tend to specialize in providing services for the
growing middle class of the city, and in taking intellectually demanding jobs for the government
and private corporations. They work also in the expanding market of the gay community. Thus
we are in a merchant world and in a world of urban freedom, in a world of autonomy, exchange,
interac tion, and cultural experimentation. We are almost in the world of the Renaissance city
where political freedom, economic exchange, and cultural innovation, as well as open sexuality,
developed together in a self-reinforcing process on the basis of a common space won by
citizens struggling for their freedom. To push this image even further, we are also in a world of
merchant fairs and street feasts. The gay community is one of the main organizers of popular
celebrations in San Francisco, some of which come from the merchants' interests that provide
the economic support for the community, such as the Annual Castro Street Fair, initiated in
1972 by Harvey Milk, and which attracts over 100,000 people each year to exhibitions, songs,
eating, drinking, playing, and meetings to debate politics. Other feasts are, gay versions of
traditional customs like Christmas carolling, the Beaux Arts Ball, and Halloween. Halloween in
particular has bec a major festival where straight and gay people Share their fantasies of
'crossing over', dr as in a contest of imagination, aesthetics and humour, and parading along
Polk and 25/33 streets in a night of joy, drinking, laughing and dancing in the streets under the
outrage of a nervous police force that must trust the gay community's autonomous security serv.
take care of its own people. Costumes and witchcraft are precisely what people need to walk
happily on the uncertain edge of blurred identities. But the interesting phenomenon is not only
the appropriation by gays of a tradition usually associated with children, but the joy and pleasure
of tens of thousands of Bay Area residents who participate in the event in the Castro area,
happy to celebrate the gay's sense of humour and life by joining in the fun, dressing in drag or
just enjoying the spectacle. Other major gay celebrations are new, created by the tradition of the
movement itself and established to commemorate major social struggles, one of the most
important of which is the Gay Freedom Day Parade, a week-long programme of activities to
celebrate the anniversary of the Stonewall Riot of 27 June 1969. Initiated by a spontaneous
demonstration in 1970, it has become an institution, the major social event for the gay
community, when all cultural and political tendencies meet to express the power, joy, and
contradictions of an increasingly liberated community. But the colour, imagination, and verve of
the celebration are so strong that many people from San Francisco, as well as from other parts
of the world, come to join the gays in what has become the major popular event in San
Francisco. (In recent years, between 200,000 and 300,000 people have attended the parade.)
Other commemorations have another dimension, such as the yearly Memorial March for Harvey
Milk and George Moscone, when thousands of mourners march, carrying candles; or the
Harvey Milk Birthday Party celebrated in Castro Street since 1979. The gay community has
done more through these increasingly diverse array of events than project its values or have
fun: it has shown the city that streets are for people, that urban culture means gathering
together to play in public places, and that music, politics and games can intertwine in a
revitalizing way, creating a new media for messages and establishing new networks of
communication. At the Columbus
[17/11, 5:10 pm] Senorita: Parade (a non-gay celebration) the Gay Marching Bank and Twirling
Corps appear to be the most cheered performers. This is not only because there are many gays
in the city or because of the truly exceptional quality of their performance; it is also because
there is a vague y consciousness that gats have greatly reinforced the San Francisco tradition
of urban life, largely missing in most American cities, such as feasts in the streets and public
celebrations - the feeling that a city is not just a combination of capitalist functions and empty
streets patrolled by police cars. Of course, the recognition of this fundamental contribution stops
short of the acknowledge ment that life could be better if lived their way. But there is the
beginning of a connection j between gay values and a more general cultural transformation. To
consider gay society as a shoft-sighted, separatist idcology would be misleading. The building of
a gay community with its own' institutions in the midst of a heavily heterosexual, central city is
itself a major transformation, and is highlighted by the fact the gay celebrations have become
San Francisco's most popular and brilliant events. But such feasts do not come only from the
free expression of a rich culture. They are, as their origins shows, symbols of political battles
and demonstrations of the strength and militancy of the gay community in its own territory. This
is the other side of the parade. Each time there is a major defeat of gay rights in the voting polls
of middle America, gays take to the streets in San Francisco chanting 'Civil Rights or Civil War'.
The streets of San Francisco continue to be public places, unlike most American urban streets,
partly because of the impact of the gay culture. But for public places to be public, political rights
have to be heightened The gay culture has been able to enrich the urban culture because it has
been able to substantially modify the political system. Gay culture is inseparable from gay
politics. Gay Power? The Transformation of the Local Political System by the Gay Community
On a warm spring evening of 1980, middle America was shocked to learn through a CBS
nátion-wide special report that gays were about to seize power in San Francisco, . everybody's
favourite city'." It is true that a disciplined and mobilized block of about 20 to 25 per cent of the
city's registered voters2 was making a difference in the local political system. But the process of
power-building was far more complex than just adding gay immigrants to San Francisco's
declining population. To understand this process may also explain the profound impact that
gays had on city politics and the fragility of that power. The first apparent connection between
the emerging gay community and the political system came in 1972, when George McGovern's
presidential campaign opened the way for the expression in an election of many of the social
issues arising from the movements of the 1960s. Gay rights were among them. In the drive to
obtain support for McGovern in California, a group of gay, liberal organizers of the homophilic
Society for Individual Rights, under the leadership of Jim Foster, founded a to the Democratic
Party, the Alice B. Toklas gay-orientated political organization-affiliated Democratic Club." It was
a very effective campaign organization: the club was rapidly recog nized as the responsible gay
connection to democratic politics, and prominent straight San Francisco Democrats such as
John Burton and the black leader, Willie Brown, joined it. Using the club's influence, Willie
Brown-sponsored, and obtained approval for, a bill in 1975 that legalized homosexuality in-
Galifornia: The basic political understanding was that the Galifornia Democrats would protect
the gay community from discrimination and repression in exchange for its votes, channelled
through the Democratic Party. This was not, as it Phote 810867 Scanned with CamScanner 164
The San Francisco Experience transpired, how the majority of the gay community behaved
politically in San Francisco. In a parallel effort, Harvey Milk had initiated his own campaign to
establish an autonomous political platform for gays, Coming from the anti-war movement, he
was distrustful of the national political parties, and was anyway orientated towards grassroots
support from the community as the only way of insuring the political accountability of
representatives. Taking his Castro Village as a base and using the tactics of a ward politician,
Milk attended neighbour hood meetings, shook hands at the bus stops, and spent hours in the
local bars. His Castro Camera store became the political meeting place for the local gay
community. He obtained 17,000 votes in the 1973 supervisorial election, and 53,000 in 1975.
The first major confronta tion with the Democratic Party, supported by the Alice B. Toklas
Democratic Club, came in 1976. Harvey Milk, a registered Democrat, ran for a State Assembly
seat against the official Democratic candidate; he lost the election having received only 45 per
cent of the votes cast but carried District 5 which was his territory. In the midst of this
confrontation, the most militant wing of the Alice B. Toklas club seceded to form a new Gay
Democratic Club, where explicit gayness became the symbol of their manifesto. The club
stressed the importance of gays organizing themselves within the political system and the
Democratic Party. In 1979, the club became the Harvey Milk Gay Democratic Club; with a
membership of over 1,400 and a militant core of over 200 it was the largest and most active
single political organization in San Francisco. But the key to Harvey-Milk'[Link] success in
1977, and with him an autonomous gay community, was the connections he established with
the emerging political system. On the o ehrand, he could only be elected because of the new
District-based electoral procedure, itself the expression of the growing influence of
neighhourhood associations and grassroots politicse of which the gay community was a
significant component. On the other hand, he exercised some influence. (and so the gay
community could win some respect) in the local governing coalition, since it was being
reorganized around Mayor Moscone. To replace declining labour presence in the city and to
confront pro-growth conservative policies from business, middlo class progressive
neighbourhoods and blacks needed the support of the gay community which leant politically to
the left. Several supervisors elected in the period from 1975 to 1980 (Carol Silver was one)
relied on the gay vote as did Moscone himsél Thus the rise of gay influence represented a total
recomposition of local power provoked by grassroots pressure, including the gay community, in
which the gay community would be a significant member of the new. local alliance, relying on its
territorial and cultural constituency.. Harvey Milk's political testament, tape recorded ten days
after his election, was a clea expression of the continuing conflict between gay politics as an
expression of the local com munity and gay politics as a subordinate wing of the Democratic
Party. He clearly designatec the names of four persons who could replace him as supervisor in
the event of his murder They were, in order of priority: Frank Robinson, a writer and, a close
friend; Ann Kronenberg, a lesbian militant; Bob Ross, publisher of the BAR and 1978's Emperor
of Saw Francisco; and Harry Britt. Of even greater importance was his naming of the people
whe should not be nominated to his post. All of them were prominent, established Democrats
wh would be the most likely appointees of a moderate Democratic mayor such as Diane
Feinstein. Harry Britt, who was the more politically experienced of the four, was appointed. A
declared socialist, close to the left of the Democratic Party, Harry Britt became one of the most
active supervisors on a variety of progressive issues, always trying to establish his plat form on
a broader base. Although highly respected by the gay community and clearly repre senting
gays, Britt did not have the charisma of Harvey Milk which was the crucial
[17/11, 5:11 pm] Senorita: the political self-definition of the community since the Harvey Milk
Club was supported by the bar culture and the Tavern Guild. The club's systematic support and
endorsement ällowed Britt to be easily elected in 1979 and re-elected in 1980." In spite of his
presence on the board of supervisors, the influence of gays in the political system did not
correspond to its political strength, as measured by the number of appointees nominated by the
major to city hall posts. Their main influence was in terms of the threat of their opposition. In the
1979 mayoral race, the incumbent, Diane Feinstein, was forced into a run-off against her con
servative opponent because of the presence of a gay candidate, and she was elected only
when gay leaders called in their votes for her in exchange for a series of promises, noticeably to
give them some influence in the recruiting within the police department. This cautious attitude
was symptomatic of the unstable political situation in San Francisco following the assassinations
in 1978 of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. The incipient new coalition disappeared at the
same time that a right wing current was sweeping the national political scene. A new coalition of
neighbourhood groups, ethnic minorities, women's organizations, gays, and public employees
unions was formed, under the name of Action for Accountable Government (AAG). Although
influential through its contacts with varlous com munities as well as with Democratic Party
leaders, AAG could not control the mayor nor field a new political candidate. So San Francisco
became an example of coalition politics, with Mliances between different groups forming and
disappearing according to the political issues of the moment fn this situation, the initiatives of
the gay representatives were consistently progressive, defending social programmes and
neighbourhood conservation against the pro posals of the downtown business sector and fiscal
conservatives. The importance of the gay's contribution to the formation of progressive urban
policies in San Francisco is demonstrated by the series of proposals presented by Harvey Milk
and Harry Britt to the board of supervisors including the suggestions to favour rent control fight
real estate speculation, oppose high-rise developments, and defend the city's urban quality.
(See the list of these initiatives presented in the Methodological Appendix p. 360-2.)
Significantly enough, Dan White, Harvey Milk's murderer, was the strongest advocate of
redevelopment programmes, and a defender of the controversial and speculative development
for tourists known as Pier 39 1s In this sense, gay leadership sought to establish a broader
political legitimacy by embracing the defence of popular interests in-urban development,
sometimes at the expense of a significant gay real estate sector which was opposed to rent
control. We can therefore say that gay political influence in San Francisco has been a major
factor since 1975 in undermining the control of business interests over city politics.
Nevertheless, the inability of the various components of this alternative political scheme to
establish one platform and a common leadership led to a succession of ad hoc alliances and
compromises between interests that were not always easy to reconcile when very narrowly
defined. For instance, the neighbourhood opposition to high-rise development was criticized by
labour unions looking for jobs, both in the construction process and in future office buildings.
Gays' desire for urban restoration was viewed by blacks as a threat of intensified gentrification.
Police control of anti-gay violence was often considered as a potential source for crackdown on
Latino youth. The protection of family-orientated public services was often met with indifference
by the predominantly single gay population, and so on. Thus, in spite of conscious efforts by the
leadership to establish strategic alliances, the reduction of the groups' interests to the logic of
interest groups led to an indreasing fragmentation and to the weakening of the emerging urban
popular alliance at a time when it had to face up to à powerful offensive from business interests.
The difficulty that the gay community has had in articulating its interests to a heterosexual 867
ame 8719754 Scanned with CamScanner 28-29/33 166 The San Francisco Experience society
pinpoints the fragility of gay power, even in a city that so clearly wears its political imprint. The
Transformation of the City by the Gay Community and the Limits of Gay Self-determination The
development of a gay community, in support of a politieal movement to defend civil rights and to
foster an alternative life style, has been a major factor of urban change in San Francisco during
the 1970s. Most of the changes triggered by the expansion of gay culture have been major
contributions to the improvement of the city's quality of life. New gay house holds account for a
significant propertion of the tenovation of old buildings, for the repair and maintenance of many
sections of the city, for the upgrading of property values, and for the dynamism of the real estate
market. Although gay people have operated in a very attractive urban environment, they have
also been pioneers in taking unusual risks to live in detaying areas, as well as making
innovations in collective co-habitation, enabling an intensive residen tial use of the city that has
resulted in a definite improvement in housing maintenance. Although some of this action took
place within the broader context of middle class, childless professionals desiring to live in the
city, a very significant proportion of housing renovation and neighbourhood improvement seems
to have been the result of moderate - income gays making a special effort to invest their own
work and time to share a limited dwelling space in exchange for the feeling of freedom,
protection, and self-expression provided by a gay territory. Furthermore, the artistic talents of
many gays has accounted for one of the most beautiful urban renovations known in American
cities. The effects on urban aesthetics have gone beyond the careful painting of the original
Victorian facades. Apart from the impressive interior decoration of the imaginatively remodelled
flats the impact can be seen in the well designed treatment of semi-public spaces - between the
front door and the pavement for example; in all, a very unusual architectural improvement in the
highly individualis f American cities. Some gays have denounced this evaluation of their talent
as renovators and o' urban dwellers, perceiving in it a typical prejudice of heterosexual culture.
It is that gay culture has this particular talent, a talent that constitutes an invaluable re.
preservation of urban beauty. Besides which, there is nothing wrong with recogniz... ability, as
long as the judgment is not used to maintain a social stigma associated with that image. There
is, in fact, a theoretical social explanation for such a talent. Gay men are in the midst of two
processes of socialization, each one leading to a specific set of values. On the one hand, ( they
grow up as men, and therefore are taught to believe in the values of power, conquest, and self-
affirmation, values that in American society tend to be expressed through money or, in other
words, through the dominance of exchange value. At the same time, because of the feelings
that many have had to hide for years, and some for their entire life, they develop a pecial
sensitiveness, a desire for communication, a high esteem of solidarity and tenderness that
brings them closer to women'sculture. This is not, however, because gays are 'Teminine', but,
like women, their oppression and discrimination creates a distance from the values conquest
and domination which they are supposed to share as men. Thus, they tend consider-the use
value of their personal lives as important, or worth more than the exchange value that could be
acquired without even obtaining the greatest reward of all - to i
[17/11, 5:12 pm] Senorita: themselves. And yet power and money still matter for mane 2 7 men.
The spatial expression wfthis two fold desire-for-exchange value and use value is, in our
opinion, housing renovation. On the one hand they occupy a building, and make it distinctive
and valuable. On the other hand, there is something else going on in the restored building: it
has beauty, comfort, and sensuality, and it is saying something-to the city while expressing
something to its own dwellers. And when a space becomes meaningful, exchange value is no
longer the dominant issue. This is perhaps the most important contribution of the gay
community to the city: not only housing improvement but urban meaningfulness. As often
happens in the process of social change, groups inconvenienced by the progress of high rents
along the Dolores corridor because of real estate speculation from the increasing influx of gays.
These hardships have been at the root of the hostility of ethnic minorities against gay people, a
hostility often translated into violence. Class hate, ethnic rage, and fear of displacement by the
invaders have clearly held greater sway than prejudices from family another are not properly
recompensed. So there has been little urban improvement for the black families forced to move
out from the Hayes Valley, or help for the Latinos suffering traditions or machismo ideology.
This contradiction cannot be solved by contacts between the communities. There is too much
need on both sides and too much self-definition as interest groups to enable people to relate to
broader social perspectives. There have been exceptions. Willie Brown, a black political leader,
was the sponsor of the Gay Rights Bill in California. Harry Britt is one of the most active
defenders of low-income housing on the board of supervisors. But to really make the interests of
gays and ethnic minorities compatible a new urban policy would be needed, emphasizing the
use value of residential communities, impos ing the public interest before the profit of real estate
interests, as well as allowing the down town business provide non-skilled jobs through
construction work, services, and so on. Since ethnic minorities actually need these downtown
jobs and many gays are involved in real estate speculation, the limits of the alliance-are
inereasingly narrow, and the feeling of hostility increasingly bitter. The improvement of the urban
space by the gay community might therefore representa new form of residential displacement
and social inequality. There seems to be a parallel contradiction in the improvement by the gay
confmunity urban culture. We have pointed out how decisively street life, popular celebrations,
and joyful feasts have increased during the 1970s as a direct consequence of the gay presence.
Although the appreciation could be somewhat subjective, most urbanists seem to value public
life, street activity, and intense social interaction as one of the most distinctive positive
dimensions of city life Cities, all through history, have been spaces of diversity and
communication. When com munication ends, or when diversity is swallowed by social
segregation, as in the uniform back yards of Ameritan suburbs, the urban culture is endangered,
- the sign, perhaps, of a sick civilization.4 Thus the intensity of San Francisco's urban culture,
certainly highlighted by gays' sense of urban theatre, seems to be an effective antidote against
meaninglessness and broken communication. And yet this urban culture is incomprehensible to
the elderly people clv who feel like strangers in their own sedate neighbourhoods. For straight
San Franciscans, the a Castro ghetto, as well as many of the gay celebrations, seem to be from
another world with a distinctive dress code aimed to isolate and exclude the 'voyeur'. The
visibility that gays have created has had very positive consequences for the community,
including the defensive device of identifying almost immediately who is and who is not gay. But
what for gays increases their protection and communication creates for straights a major bafrier,
timiting the 'effects that gays may have on urban culture. If only gays benefit from the revival of
street life and urban happenings, San Francisco will become a functional and impersonal city
like most other American cities, the only difference being that in addition to Chinatown or the
being heard in a broader urban culture seems to be the necessary emphasis on sexual f
heterosexuality! So both sexuality and homosexuality have to affirmed against the vint
psychological frontier between 'normal' and 'abnormal', as well as against basic rules of social
interaction implicit in all organizations and institutions.) The daily contradiction is so untenable
that gays tend to live more and more within their own walls. But this limit, the need to
continuously reinforce relationships, the difficulty of learning new values, and their self discovery
make a fertile ground for the development of esoteric sub-cultures, severing ties with society to
explore alternative sources of meanings and feelings through a new sexual code, based on the
continual crossing of whatever borders become established. The sado masochist culture was
the most rapidly growing component of the gay community in 1981 and also the most
ideologically committed, attacking the gay leaders because they were trying to define norms that
were 'socially acceptable'. For the sado-masochists the journey had a limits. So violence,
humiliation, slave auctions, leather dress, Nazi uniforms, chains and whips were much more
than sexual stimulii or games. They were cultural expressions of the need to destroy whatever
moral values straight society had left them with since these values have traditionally been used
to exploit and repress homosexuality. Although it is true that S-M culture represents a tiny part
of the gay community and that most S-M practitioners are heterosexuals, the considerable
embarrassment that this issue causes to most aware, gay people is revealing, suggesting that
this is an important issue. Left to itself, in its cultural ghetto, the gay community is unlikely to
accomplish the sexual revolution which is, implicitly, its major social project. To make
homosexuality acceptable, society has first to accept its own sexuality, and such a cultural
transformation provokes panic most minds and institutions. This is why gay celebrations, no
matter how brilliant and humorous they are, can only be city celebrations in part. There is
always an underlying sexual dimension that is untenable for many people, not only because of
its homosexuality but its sexuality Unable to build bridges towards a broader and deeper cultural
transformation, the gay compunity is in danger of internal destruction by introspective forces that
might cause the mmunity to forget that human experience has to be a social experience if if is
going to last and grow. Between the transformation of the city's culture and the sado-
masochists' back rooms, the gay community still hesitates and confines itself within the spatial
limits of its free. village. It would appear that the hridges herween the gay community and social
change could be bult by the political movement. And we have observed how the power obtained
by the gay leadership through the community's capacity for electoral mobilization and social
organiza tion was used to contribute to and to support many politically progressive causes,
particularly in the field of urban policies. As Figure 14-1 shows, District 5 (the Castro area)
appears to have been by far the most liberal in terms of political attitudes and voting behaviour.
Gays were the backbone of left wing initiatives in San Francisco's political system. So the gay
community transformed the local political system, making it very difficult for conservatives to
control the city, and creating an alternative power base relying on neighbourhood
[17/11, 5:14 pm] Senorita: te Gay Community in San Francisco 169 associations, public
workers' unions, and oppressed ethnic communities. At the same time, as we have already
pointed out, the obstacle to such an alliance were conflicting immediate interests between
groups defined by very different social situations. DISTRICT SCORE -1.5 Ultra-conservative 0.5
Somewhat liberal Ultra-lib *District 5 is the predominantly gay district Figure 14.1 San Francisco
supervisorial districts ranked by Liberal/Conservative score. See Map 13.1, p. 107 for e location
of the supervisorial districts. (Source: Computronics Research, 1977.) In fact there were two
possible forms of political collaboration between these groups. One was the American custom of
coalitional politics in which interests are defined and everybody tries to benefit from the political
bargain. The experience of San Francisco made it almost impossible situation for the gay
community to reconcile its interests to those of all the other organizations and institutions. The
daily contradiction was also apparent within the other groups, producing the stalemate in local
politics that we have observed in 1979 and 80. On the other hand, a political alliance could have
been established on the basis of long-run political nterests, for instance based on the common
and essential concern of transforming a cultural economic structure which was at the same time
sexist, homophobic, sexually repressed, racist, ind capitalist. Only in such a long-term
perspective could gay men and Latinos, rinstance, aye common interests. But the gay
community in San Francisco has not proceeded in such a direction. Instead milding a new
hegemonic culture, including homosexuality, based on an ideologically and iolitically - led
transformation, it tried to develop autonomous power to negotiate its lemands within the
institutional and political system. This strategy could have been uccessful if the demands and
interests of the gays were compatible with the dominant imerican culture. They have not been
so because they implicitly attack a basic social-institu ion: the family. Only if gays are streng
enough to replece the family with another form uman organization would they be able to expand
at a social level. But to do so, they would eed to articulate their struggle to the only major social
movement that is oppressed by the Scanned with CamScanner 170 The San Francisco
Experience family and ready to replace it: the women's movement. And yet lesbians have
tended to be excluded from most positions of power within the gay community, and the
community has remained dominated by gay men's problems and perspectives. The reason is
not only that gay men are first of all men. It is also because lesbians tend to be politically much
more radical and willing to make the connection of personal issues to the transformation of
society, to be the marching wing of the women's liberation movement. Lesbians know that there
is no way they can accommodate this society. Gay men still have some illusions, particularly if
class and race join their sex as a potential source of privilege. Harry Britt, in the interview he
gave us, considered gay liberation as a 500 year process. So thinking, he clearly associated
himself with a process of social transformation, in which gay men would be play a major part.
But this is not the perspective of the community as a whole. The lack of any clear connection to
the women's movement as well as the secondary role that lesbians play within the community
are clear signs of a separatist male mentality that severs any link with the major agent of cultural
transformation in our society, the women's movement. Given these conditions self-destructive
tendencies have appeared in San Francisco's gay community, and a very sekjous homophobic
backlash is developing in the media and amongst the family orientated, popular sectors. The
improvement of San Francisco's urban quality by the gay community will last only if gays are
able to articulate their interests concerning social transformation instead of bargaining specific
issues within an incompatible scheme of interest groups. They will have to shift from the
coalition politics to strategic and historic alliances, particularly with lesbians and with the
women's movement, if they are to transform society. If they ignore these alliances they will
overcrowd a ghetto instead of enhancing a city. The last weeks of Harvey Milk's life were a dark
period for him. His friend, Jack Lira, committed suicide. His reasons were apparently not related
to Milk or to other people, but caused mainly by his own reflections on the gay universe. When
he decided to die, he left at his side the book that he had been obsessed with for months:
Holocaust. This was not Harvey Milk's message. His efforts, on the contrary, were based upon
hope - upon the capacity of gays to free themselves from oppression and while doing so, to free
society. This was the profound reason for his commitment to improve the city, The
transformation of the city into a space of freedom was a major element in the creation by the
gay community of social. hegemony. But gays can not forget that a free city is also everybody's
place. The survival of the gay community is closely tied to the overall process of social change