In the Castro, there’s a current plan by the Department of Public Works and the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District (CBD), to paint the district’s crosswalks in rainbow colors. The fear is that by marking a place as historic, its current inhabitants may get pushed out to make more room for all the memories. Yet, as local and national efforts try to determine the what and how of LGBT commemoration efforts, they run the risk of over-simplifying, or even putting a PG spin on episodes that are frankly R-rated.Īt a time when bars and other queer spaces are struggling to stay open, the approach some groups are taking to mark LGBT history also has the potential to forever alter, and possibly diminish, surviving spaces. For many, the vast array of sexual expression and experimentation should be a central part of any telling of queer history. The Sarria/Catacombs dichotomy highlights a key issue facing projects designed to publicly commemorate LGBT history. “This site had this dual usage, both significant, but that other one isn’t going to get remembered.” “It’s this historic fist-fucking place,” Boyd said. Yet, she said later, she felt keenly aware of one big omission-Sarria’s building also housed a notorious sex club called the Catacombs. Sarria was not only a pioneering drag queen, he was also a civil rights trailblazer. And she recalls that one guest nominated the Liberty Hill Victorian once occupied by José Sarria, the country’s first openly gay politician.īoyd agreed that the location is historically significant. Nan Alamilla Boyd, a professor at San Francisco State and author of Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 , attended the meeting.
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The Stonewall Inn in New York is currently the only LGBT National Historic Landmark. It was a kickoff meeting to launch a new study of LGBT history, with the goal of adding more LGBT-related sites to the nation’s registry of historic places and landmarks. National Parks Service recently invited historians to Washington, D.C., the topic on the table was a startling departure for the federal bureau: the history of LGBT people. If that sounds impossible, consider this: When the U.S. Park Ranger include this infamous gay hangout on walking tours and describe the bar’s importance in history? But is this the end of Esta Noche’s story? Might a U.S. Nowadays, Esta Noche is being gutted and built out into a brand new bar, with a decidedly less gay identity. It was San Francisco’s last Latino-owned gay bar-open from 1981 to 2014, featured on HBO’s Looking, the launching pad of countless drag queens’ careers, a safe haven for many.