What was once home
Day 15
Neighborhoods Covered: Castro, Mission
Streets Completed: Ford, Hartford, Hancock, Dorland, Oakwood, Linda, Lapidge, Bird, Dearborn, Camp, Albion, Rosa Parks
For my first six years in San Francisco, I lived in the Castro, in a flat on Sanchez shared with three other housemates. (I actually passed my first few months here in a house on Cesar Chavez with my friend Kristen from Vassar and her two housemates, until one of said housemates--the polyamorous hydrocolon therapist--decided she "didn't like [my] energy" and essentially requested that I make myself scarce. By that point, I was happy to comply.) For a long time, things were good.
The Castro was, for me, perhaps the best possible neighborhood in which to come into my own in my adopted city. As a woman, I found it utterly non-threatening; having been catcalled repeatedly in the Mission (which I neither expected nor knew quite what to do with), it was a relief to be in a place where I was almost certainly of zero sexual interest to a huge percentage of the population. I also loved the sense of community, the fact that the heart of the neighborhood was clustered around a few streets, and, pat as it may sound, how everything always seemed to be sprouting with color and vibrancy. I even grudgingly loved the chaos of Halloween there (before things went seriously downhill).
Yesterday I walked through a bit of the Castro, and for all that's much the same (the Sausage Factory--a pizzeria [surely no double entendre intended]--still seems to be going strong, as do many of the bars that have been there for years) there's just as much that's changing. Castro Video had signs posted in its windows noting that, although it had been around since the dawn of Betamax, it was closing its doors. Other storefronts on Castro and along 18th had been ripped out and were in the process of being renovated. And, of course, there's the Diesel store on the corner of Castro and Market. It used to be a bank.
All of this made me wonder what it would be like to be a gay man who'd lived in the Castro since it was a relative enclave of safety back in the 60s and 70s. Would I welcome the changes, or would it seem like too many unrecoverable things were being lost? (It's entirely possible, of course, that much of what made the Castro what it once was has long since been lost, and that the appearance of another new Rolo doesn't cause much of a ripple anymore.) There's no question that the Castro is still, in many ways, the heart of many subsections of gay culture in the city, but I'd be curious to know whether, to those who've lived there for years, the neighborhood feels like it's drifted from what it once was--and, if so, whether that's good or bad.
I left 460 Sanchez for the sanctuary of my own place in Hayes Valley in 2003, having grown impossibly fed up with the frustrations of communal living and with the landlord's blatant desire for us all to move out and free up the rent controlled lease. (Subtle hint that he wasn't exactly concerned with what happened to us: when a chunk of my housemate Abby's ceiling fell down onto her bed, his first response was a half-joking, half-serious, "Well, tell her she probably shouldn't sleep in that spot.")
I don't know how much longer the others held on, but I do recall hearing a few years back that the landlord had finally got his wish and promptly set about making a bevy of improvements. When I looked up at the flat yesterday, I could see some of them: a new window in the bathroom, a skylight (!) and a new light fixture in the kitchen, repaired front steps. (They were so bad at one point that the Post Office stopped delivering our mail, saying that our mail carrier, who was pregnant at the time, couldn't risk injury by trying to navigate them.)
So much has changed.
Neighborhoods Covered: Castro, Mission
Streets Completed: Ford, Hartford, Hancock, Dorland, Oakwood, Linda, Lapidge, Bird, Dearborn, Camp, Albion, Rosa Parks
For my first six years in San Francisco, I lived in the Castro, in a flat on Sanchez shared with three other housemates. (I actually passed my first few months here in a house on Cesar Chavez with my friend Kristen from Vassar and her two housemates, until one of said housemates--the polyamorous hydrocolon therapist--decided she "didn't like [my] energy" and essentially requested that I make myself scarce. By that point, I was happy to comply.) For a long time, things were good.
The Castro was, for me, perhaps the best possible neighborhood in which to come into my own in my adopted city. As a woman, I found it utterly non-threatening; having been catcalled repeatedly in the Mission (which I neither expected nor knew quite what to do with), it was a relief to be in a place where I was almost certainly of zero sexual interest to a huge percentage of the population. I also loved the sense of community, the fact that the heart of the neighborhood was clustered around a few streets, and, pat as it may sound, how everything always seemed to be sprouting with color and vibrancy. I even grudgingly loved the chaos of Halloween there (before things went seriously downhill).
Yesterday I walked through a bit of the Castro, and for all that's much the same (the Sausage Factory--a pizzeria [surely no double entendre intended]--still seems to be going strong, as do many of the bars that have been there for years) there's just as much that's changing. Castro Video had signs posted in its windows noting that, although it had been around since the dawn of Betamax, it was closing its doors. Other storefronts on Castro and along 18th had been ripped out and were in the process of being renovated. And, of course, there's the Diesel store on the corner of Castro and Market. It used to be a bank.
All of this made me wonder what it would be like to be a gay man who'd lived in the Castro since it was a relative enclave of safety back in the 60s and 70s. Would I welcome the changes, or would it seem like too many unrecoverable things were being lost? (It's entirely possible, of course, that much of what made the Castro what it once was has long since been lost, and that the appearance of another new Rolo doesn't cause much of a ripple anymore.) There's no question that the Castro is still, in many ways, the heart of many subsections of gay culture in the city, but I'd be curious to know whether, to those who've lived there for years, the neighborhood feels like it's drifted from what it once was--and, if so, whether that's good or bad.
I left 460 Sanchez for the sanctuary of my own place in Hayes Valley in 2003, having grown impossibly fed up with the frustrations of communal living and with the landlord's blatant desire for us all to move out and free up the rent controlled lease. (Subtle hint that he wasn't exactly concerned with what happened to us: when a chunk of my housemate Abby's ceiling fell down onto her bed, his first response was a half-joking, half-serious, "Well, tell her she probably shouldn't sleep in that spot.")
I don't know how much longer the others held on, but I do recall hearing a few years back that the landlord had finally got his wish and promptly set about making a bevy of improvements. When I looked up at the flat yesterday, I could see some of them: a new window in the bathroom, a skylight (!) and a new light fixture in the kitchen, repaired front steps. (They were so bad at one point that the Post Office stopped delivering our mail, saying that our mail carrier, who was pregnant at the time, couldn't risk injury by trying to navigate them.)
So much has changed.
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