In the 1930s, gay neighborhoods sprouted up across San Francisco, and rumors of the city as a queer haven began to spread. Young countercultural queer communities set roots in the Castro, Bernal Heights and North Beach. At bars, bookstores and protests, queer people built lives in the city.
Nearly a century later, young LGBTQ+ San Franciscans are still here, seeking out the same spaces. Sure, Oakland is cheaper and, as a result, it has a growing young queer community, but San Francisco retains its allure, particularly for queer people elsewhere in the country seeking safety.
Lila Goehring started thinking about leaving Ohio when she was 11.
“I wanted to go where the gay people were,” Goehring said. “Where it was normal.”
Through summer visits to her grandmother’s, San Francisco quickly became the aim. That is true for Goehring and many other younger gay residents who will gather this weekend to celebrate Pride with the generation of baby boomers who first made San Francisco’s queer scene the dream.
Goehring, now 25 and working at a local LGBTQ+ non-profit, said San Francisco is still a city people come to for protection. Beyond California, New York and a few other states, hostility toward queer residents, legal and otherwise, remains in much of the United States. This year alone, 39 anti-queer bills have been passed into law, and 110 more have been advanced and are being processed, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
To be sure, housing costs have created a particular subset of queer youth lured into San Francisco. Nearly half of all unhoused people under 25 identify as LGBTQ, according to the San Francisco LGBT Center. Community-based organizations like LYRIC and the LGBT Center focus their work on providing mental-health, housing, and drop-in services for this section of the population.
Still, the young come. Shirley Piper-Goldberg, 31, who grew up in SoMa, said that, though San Francisco has changed drastically, the city’s reputation for being a safe space for queer people holds up.
Nico Fain, a local DJ who also works doors at several local queer bars, said they’ve checked many IDs from people coming in from other states and countries.
“People are coming specifically for these spaces,” they said.
Nora Linnane, 22, who moved to San Francisco after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, this spring, said the city’s rich queer history played a role in her decision to move. Bartending at Bar 49, a new gay bar and restaurant in the Castro, she said there has been a lot of enthusiasm from the local queer community.
“There still is that drive to gather together and in person,” Linnane said. “It’s really cool to see whole communities and whole neighborhoods, like the Castro, offer these spaces that people are still seeking.”
In 2019, Greggor Mattson, an Oberlin College sociology professor, found that 37 percent of gay bars in the United States shuttered between 2007 and 2019. San Francisco has seen its fair share of closures with Harvey’s abrupt end in 2023 and the Lexington Club’s closure in 2014.
But the post-pandemic period marked a resurgence of queer spaces and queer arts, 29-year-old local musician LBXX said.
In early 2023, Mother, a new lesbian bar, opened in the Mission District near 16th and Valencia streets. For many younger queer people, its opening has made ripples.
“It’s so special to start a lesbian bar in an era when so many of them have gone away,” Goehring said.
Beyond just being a bar space, Mother offers events, Fain said. From regular “Drink and Draw” nights to the queer dodgeball league’s social events.
LBXX, who initially moved to San Francisco seven years ago to work in education, said he stayed in the city for the “one-of-a-kind” community he found in the queer art scene.
“Out of the pandemic, it felt like there was this energy that could not be contained by everybody in the city, especially the queer community,” he said. “People wanting to be in space and in community with each other.”
This reemergence of art and music spaces for the queer community described can be seen in numerous new DJ collectives, including LBXX’s MakeRoom.
Despite the ubiquity of queerness in the city, LBXX said it takes more work for members of the Black queer community to find spaces that feel like home. His collective, MakeRoom, aims to battle gatekeeping in the city’s queer spaces, while also protecting and serving the Black queer community at large.
“I feel like I’m seeing a whole community re-falling in love with themselves,” he said.
El Rio, Oasis, and The Mix also offer particularly inclusive nightlife environments.
“They give us so much love, as far as allowing queer people to just exist naturally,” LBXX said.
The Castro remains a place to go, even for those under 30.
“The drinks are strong. The drinks are cheap,” LBXX said, describing the neighborhood’s bar scene. “For queer people new to the nightlife, who don’t know where to find themselves, the Castro is their first stop.”
For Piper-Goldberg and Linnane, nightlife hasn’t been the best way to meet new queer people in the city. Instead, queer recreational sports leagues have been the answer. Piper-Goldberg first tried out queer kickball and soccer before discovering the San Francisco Gay Softball League.
“There’s, like, this real sense of camaraderie you get,” she said, describing the team as a third space. “You’re just there to play and have a good time together.”
On a sunny day off, LBXX said he’ll relax with friends at the highest peak of Dolores Park, called the “fruit shelf” or “gay beach.”
Piper-Goldberg also said the 17th Street Athletic Club, a lesbian-owned gym in the Mission, has offered her another queer space in the city. She also emphasized that there are alternatives to sports that bring the same sense of community, such as queer book clubs and queer crocheting circles.
“Anything that involves a consistent group and hobby, I feel like it’s a recipe for a good time,” she said.
Fain said their friend also hosts a popular event, called Queer Bowling, at Mission Bowling every third Monday with drag shows and a special menu.
And, yes, there’s the internet, but any city has dating apps. San Francisco has spaces, and Linnane said she doesn’t feel like queer spaces require much of a search. To her, queerness exists everywhere — on the sidewalks, and in random conversations with strangers.
And all of that is here, but Goehring and LBXX note that Oakland’s growing LGBTQ+ community attracted a younger and more diverse community compared to San Francisco.
“The queer Black community in Oakland is pumping,” he said. “It’s vibrant. It’s alive.”
LBXX said that he often mulls over packing up and moving across the bay, but his community and his budding career are rooted in the city.
“It’s a shame that it’s so unaffordable because, that’s how you keep the city the way that it is,” Goehring said. “By making it accessible.”
“To be sure, housing costs have created a particular subset of queer youth lured into San Francisco” is quite an understatement! Can’t stay if you’re not a techie or don’t like being in credit card debt, and the social scene follows neatly from that.