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That created businesses, coffee shops, bookstores and more where people could support themselves outside big business. The other thing that really contributed to the growth of the gay neighborhoods was the severely limited employment opportunities for gay people. People had to make a major choice between coming out and losing the support and affection of parents and family. There was a lot of freedom but at the same time, it was also a more closeted world. Before the onset of HIV/AIDS, gay liberation in a lot of ways was sexual liberation. The city had a long history of bohemian excess and I fit right in. It was an amazing scene, extremely sexy, influenced by hippies and beatniks. I just knew I had to get the hell out of high school and come up here. There wasn’t so much information back then, but I’d read about the city as a tolerant place in Life magazine in 1971. How did you know San Francisco was the place to be for a young gay man like yourself? Gay bars were scattered around the city, with a lot in Haight-Ashbury, SoMa, and on Polk Street, which was actually considered the center of the community at the time. The Castro was really quiet, as straight people departed and gay people moved in, with just a few gay bars and about a dozen lesbian venues. Like a lot of cities, San Francisco’s population was actually declining, and it did not rebound until the 1990s. But this was the era of white flight, when people were leaving these small narrow drafty Victorians in the city for the 'burbs, where they could buy bigger houses with yards and better schools. When I arrived, it was a sleepy neighborhood populated by Irish and Scandinavians. I’ve lived at Castro and 18th Streets on and off for 40 years now. Ga圜ities talked to San Francisco's patron saint of the movement about his love for his hometown and where he plans to hang out this Pride season. He was portrayed by Emile Hirsh in Gus Van Sant’s Milk, which was partly shot in the Castro, and Guy Pearce in ABC’s miniseries adaptation of his autobiography, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement.ĭespite the accolades, Cleve can be seen hanging out at various spots in the Castro and around the city just like a regular gay guy. Having hitchhiked from Phoenix to the gay promised land of San Francisco in 1972, he witnessed the rise of the Castro as a worldwide destination, the life and death of his great friend, Harvey Milk, the decimation of HIV/AIDS, and the birth of marriage equality on the steps of city hall.Īnd the world has seen it through his eyes, too.