- Well good morning, I'm Trevor, good morning and welcome to the Castro.

I'm delighted you're here.

The first thing I might tell you, that where you stand as I speak, happens to be the heart of San Francisco.

Geographically, this is the center.

So I find it quite poetic that the gay community houses the heart of the city.

(soft gentle music) - [Narrator] More than a quarter century ago, gay men and women began leaving closets all across America and coming to Castro Street.

They came in fear and defiance, and they came with hope to find a promised land, to get a job, to meet a lover.

Most of all, they came to find a home.

- Lesbian and gay people are the only people on Earth who have to find their tribe.

We aren't born into it.

You have to have a place to go to find the tribe, and so you will start with the most obvious place.

Now, you may not end up living in the Castro forever, but you will go to the Castro at one point or another.

- I just came my own to San Francisco because, you know, I knew so many gay people here.

Somebody had to help me and somebody had to like, you know.

- I love my gay ghetto, I feel safe here.

I like, it's small, it's like growing up, it's like a small town.

- You can walk around and smooch your girl or whatever, you know, and- - Nothing would- - It would be no thing, you know?

Holding hands, kiss, whatever, you know, whatever you wanna do.

- Hey Annie, how are you?

- Fine.

- Good to see you.

So how you been?

Good to see you.

- Today we use the term a gay neighborhood, and everybody knows what that means.

Back then, the concept of a gay neighborhood was just brand new.

- [Narrator] What happened in the Castro did not happen easily.

In the space of a few years, a quiet neighborhood of European immigrants became the cornerstone of a movement.

(soft gentle music) It arrived with an openness the world had never seen, and didn't always like.

There were heroes, and martyrs, a struggle, a plague.

(soft bright music) (bell clanging) The Castro is still a magnet.

Something about this place and what has happened here keeps drawing people into this little valley in the heart of San Francisco.

- In Hawaiian history, there's a place called Pu'uhonua, and it was an island, which was called the City of Refuge.

And if you were declared a criminal for any reason, which we still are in so many states, if you were declared a criminal, you were given a headstart.

And if you got to the City of Refuge alive, you are allowed to live in it, and if you didn't make it there, you were killed.

And getting to the Castro, getting here for many lesbian and gay people, that is still a reality.

(soft thoughtful music) (traffic whooshing) (bell clanging) - [Narrator] Long before there was a Castro district, when that neighborhood was still known as Eureka Valley, there were homosexuals in San Francisco, it was just harder to see them.

- I often tell young people, we weren't just in closets, we were under rocks, it was that bad.

You were really like a non-person, in spite of your own personality, your own intelligence.

I don't know how to even describe it.

It was just kind of an odd feeling that you were out of it, that you didn't really belong in the world.

- [Del] We were certainly in the closet to start with.

- Because that that was not a really big time to be open, you know?

People were were getting, I mean, McCarthy was still around and people were losing jobs, and people were losing friends and family, and- - And people were committing suicide, and being arrested for being in gay bars, and it was a very scary time.

(soft thoughtful music) - In the 1950s, society had shut tight the closet door on homosexuals.

In California, it was illegal for them to gather in public places or to be served a drink.

There were fierce laws prescribing jail terms of up to 10 years for committing a homosexual act, so they had to learn to disguise themselves, to pass.

But they were there, even in the straight world's institutions.

(soft thoughtful music continues) - You know the old expression, it takes one to know one?

Which is an expression that must go way, way back in gay life.

I had heard that San Francisco was friendly to a lotta different kinds of people, including gay people.

So when I was transferred to the West Coast, I decided, "Well, I'll go to San Francisco and take a look."

- [Narrator] The Second World War had brought tens of thousands of young men and women to the Bay Area, and before long, an underground gay nightlife took root in the freewheeling area known as North Beach.

The threat of arrest was always there, but people came.

♪ So hello, hello everybody ♪ ♪ We all welcome you ♪ ♪ The Black Cat welcomes you ♪ ♪ We are glad that you're here ♪ (audience applauding) - [Narrator] Among the visitors was a gay couple from New York.

Douglas Cross and George Cory were a songwriting team, charmed by San Francisco's gay world.

They later composed a valentine to the city they had left behind.

(gentle sentimental music) For most of the 20th century, homosexuals and their friends lived lives the tourists couldn't see.

It was a world of private parties, of unguarded moments far from the city.

(gentle sentimental music continues) In town, from the posh apartments of Knob Hill to the shabby Tenderloin, homosexuals made for themselves not neighborhoods, but places to gather, always after dark.

- There was a separation between the gay world and the straight world, and gay people didn't want to offend the straight world, and there wasn't a sense of personal rights or civil rights.

It was an accommodation.

(gentle sentimental music continues) (lively upbeat music) - It was really an Irish neighborhood, working class Irish, filled with kids.

The Holy Redeemer, which is the parish, the Catholic parish here, was just overflowing with kids.

- [Narrator] People didn't write songs about Eureka Valley, but to the generations who grew up here, it was the city's best-kept little secret.

- This was the greatest neighborhood in the world to grow up in.

You're very proud to be Irish, even though I wasn't totally Irish.

(chuckling) - Irish.

- Johnson.

- Irish?

- Irish, yeah.

The only kind.

- Irish German.

- Oh he, we don't know what Frank is.

- German Italian.

- English and Seboyan.

- Irish.

- [Neighbor] Well, that tells you the whole story.

- [Narrator] Eureka Valley couldn't have been more different from the hidden world of homosexuals.

Here what connected neighbor to neighbor was visible in broad daylight, on every block, in every face.

- Everybody I knew went to Holy Redeemer, and Holy Redeemer would have picnics and everybody would go to that.

I mean, going on the train for the picnics, what could be better than that?

And you were with all of the people who your parents worked with, you went to school with, your parents had gone to school with.

It wasn't just what lived in your house was your family, it was everybody around you was family.

(guests chattering) (glass clinking) - [Narrator] In a suburban bar and restaurant, a men's club calling itself the Eureka Valley Alumni Association still meets a few times a year to renew ties made in the old neighborhood.

- God bless all here.

- Thank you.

- Good to see all you guys.

You know, we've got over 3000 years of friendship in this room.

So remember, don't ever forget the Eureka Valley.

It's great to see so many of the younger group here today.

Younger, that's anybody under 70.

(group laughing) - And we had the most bars of any neighborhood in the city.

We had nine bars within two blocks.

- [Attendee] That keeps coming up.

(gentle thoughtful music) - [Narrator] They had come to Eureka Valley from all over in the 1880s, Irish, German, and Scandinavian families homesteading on the sunny slopes of Twin Peaks.

Farms and dairies that had once belonged to Mexican land barons like Jose Castro were now a short street car ride from downtown San Francisco.

It was every working man's dream to buy a cheap piece of land and build a stately Victorian, big enough for several generations of the family.

(gentle thoughtful music continues) Scattered houses soon yielded to whole city blocks.

A bustling commercial strip sprang up at 18th and Castro, where the stream used to run.

By the 1920s, Eureka Valley was a tight little neighborhood, promoting itself as the sunny heart of San Francisco.

- The Castro Theater was the babysitter for the neighborhood.

Every kid would come here, and go to the little candy shop next door to buy penny candy, load up on penny candy, come in the theater and look at two features.

♪ He won't move so I might quickly hop ♪ - [C. Rodney] And then a serial.

- Fred and I, we worked at the Castle Theater as ushers.

Yeah, right?

Oh, that was great.

That's, the theater was wonderful.

I think that was one of my best jobs I ever had.

- Let all your friends in for nothing.

(men laughing) - [Narrator] A compact neighborhood with good weather, lots of bars, charming houses, a great theater.

Unbeknownst to its residents, Eureka Valley in the 1950s contained the building blocks for the gay culture that would transform the neighborhood decades later.

But gay people in the '50s weren't claiming neighborhoods.

They were scarcely tolerated in public.

- The bar at the St. Francis Hotel, the Oak Room, the men's bar, opened right off Powell Street, and it had been a friendly place.

But after the war was over, the management of St. Francis decided that they wanted to change the ambience, the atmosphere of the Oak Room.

They began to let you know in very subtle ways that they didn't appreciate you being there.

They'd be very slow to fill your drink order.

But then came the time when the management decided to take its next step, and they began putting a little card by your drink.

As they'd give you the drink, they'd put a card on the bar and the card said, "The management of the St. Francis Hotel no longer appreciates your patronage."

And within a few weeks, a month, the Oak Room was no longer a gay bar.

(sirens wailing) - [Narrator] City officials soon turned to less subtle measures.

In 1955, Police Chief Michael Gaffey assigned the task to the head of his sex crimes squad, who described the scene.

- [Investigator] Homosexuals have flocked into the city from all parts of the United States.

They are everywhere.

They fill the bars in the city's cheap Tenderloin district.

They throng together in the city's parks and squares.

Instead of being known as Golden Gate City, San Francisco was being tapped Queer City, or a haven for homosexuals.

My orders from Chief Michael Gaffey were, "Get rid of this offensive mess."

It wasn't an easy job, Lieutenant Eldon Bearden.

(soft somber music) - There was a horrible crackdown in '54, '55, lots of arrests, front page headlines in the newspapers, to get the homos out of San Francisco, to send them back to where they came from.

(soft somber music continues) - They would not only take your name and address, they would take your occupation, and you can be pretty sure it would be in the next day's newspaper.

And if you were a teacher, some other professional person, that meant the end of your job.

Many nights I was hauled out of bed to go down to court and bail people out.

(soft somber music continues) - Those crackdowns made people scared.

On the other hand, it made people identify as a group more, that they are attacking us.

Why can't we gather in our own places?

How come we don't have any places of our own?

Why don't they let us have a few secret places where we can be ourselves, why can't we do this?

- [Narrator] Quietly, some homosexuals began to organize.

Two groups made their national headquarters in San Francisco.

Though small, their newsletters were beacons to homosexuals around the country.

By the early '60s, there were an estimated 50,000 gay men and women in San Francisco, and a handful of organizations began talking about civil rights for homosexuals.

In 1964, "Life" magazine even proclaimed this the gay capital of the United States.

It only fueled the crackdowns.

- The raids got worse and worse, and finally culminated in, on New Year's Day in 1965 with the California Hall benefit for the Council on Religion and the Homosexual.

- [Narrator] The CRH was a new organization founded by gay leaders, together with the city's progressive clergymen, who were beginning to preach tolerance for all minorities.

The costume ball on New Year's Day was going to be a Mardi Gras fundraiser, but to the police, it was just another homosexual gathering.

- [Phyllis] We got there early because we were supposed to take tickets and stuff, that type of stuff.

- People were coming in, and they seemed like out of breath and kind of excited and so on, but nobody said anything to us about what was going on out there.

And that's when one of the ministers looked out the door and found there were police all around, and they were taking still photographs of people going in and out of the building- - The buildings.

- And movies.

- [Narrator] The police demanded entrance.

Lawyers protested in vain.

- And then just all of a sudden the police raided the place and turned on their cameras, and took people off to paddy wagons.

It was havoc, I mean it was a chaotic kind of thing.

- [Narrator] Police started arresting some of the CRH supporters.

Among them were a housewife and a straight attorney, who were hauled off in full view of the ministers.

- The ministers the next day had a press conference and were outraged.

Heterosexuals are being arrested for associating with homosexuals, and it was ministers and lawyers who were arrested.

- [Witness] Taking pictures of every person who went in.

- [Del] Public opinion turned at that point.

They said, "The police are going too far, this is enough."

- Now the police in this city and in this country don't make the law, all they do is enforce it and prevent its violation.

They have no right to tell people what to do, to tell people how to live.

They have no right to embarrass people.

- [Narrator] The charges against all the participants, straight and gay, were thrown out, and the police were ordered to appoint a liaison to the city's gay residents.

It was the first action of its kind in the nation.

- This really made the wider community aware that this was going on, and that we had put up with an awful lot for an awfully long time.

And as a turning point, it was as important in San Francisco as Stonewall turned out to be in New York.

- [Narrator] Four years before the riots at New York's Stonewall Bar sparked a national gay rights movement, gays and lesbians in San Francisco had come out of the underground at the CRH Ball.

- And I think they finally began to realize that there really was a rather large community of people like themselves.

You know, there were other women and other men who felt the same way they did, and that's where the political power really began.

- [Narrator] The power would grow slowly, and it would shake the foundations of the modest little neighborhood on the slopes of Twin Peaks.

- I left 10 years ago.

- I left 30 years ago.

- I left 30 years ago too.

- I left 40 years ago.

- It's changed a lot, let's put it that way.

That's about all I can say.

- [Narrator] Eureka Valley did change, but it wasn't because new people moved in.

It was because the old families had moved out.

- The GI Bill, the GI Bill and automobiles, because people moved away from the Castro.

Families weren't staying any longer, they were moving out.

- There was a general exodus going on, very slowly at first.

(soft thoughtful music) - What had happened in San Francisco was, the shops were empty.

Here in the Eureka Valley, it wasn't the little city contained here anymore because supermarket Safeway was open.

People went away and shopped.

They got in their cars and went shopping at Stonestown.

- The police weren't required to live in the area anymore, and the firemen either, so they had moved out.

- [Narrator] The tight-knit neighborhood was fraying.

Families rented out their old Victorians, or let them go all together.

- My ex-husband was a cop and he worked Mission Station.

He was totally afraid that the neighborhood was going down the tubes.

So he says, "The house is for sale."

I says, "What?"

He says, "Yeah, we're selling the house.

I don't want the kids being raised here anymore."

He says, "You know, all that stuff's going out in the Haight."

He says, "It's coming over the hill at us."

(lively psychedelic rock music) - [Narrator] It was 1967.

That summer just across the hill in the Haight-Ashbury district, a revolution was happening.

Thousands of young men and women from all over the country had descended upon the neighborhood, and transformed it beyond recognition.

The be-ins, the free love, the drugs, and the music of the Haight sent out a message to a new generation that in San Francisco, you could be different.

And as so often before, gays heard the call.

- I had read in an old issue of "Life" magazine in 1971 that gay people were moving to San Francisco.

And I'd heard vague references to homosexuals in San Francisco, so it seemed to me that this was a place of refuge.

Living in Phoenix for me was all about hiding.

I knew I was gay from a very early age, and I knew that if anyone found out, I would be beaten up and possibly even killed.

I mean, it was that way and still is that way in many parts of the country.

- I grew up on the East Coast, just outside of Boston, and I had always identified as a lesbian.

And that of course it was a problem, because I was raised Catholic, and it was just so horrible, the things that the Church said would happen to you if you were lesbian or gay.

- I, at 22 or 23, I in my mind was heterosexual.

My partner was a woman, but I had had fantasies all my life, as I later realized what was happening.

Back to the time that I was four, probably as far back as I can remember, I had fantasies of men, but I never acted on any of those, and I didn't know that I was coming to something that was going to become a gay mecca.

- I didn't know anyone when I came.

I had $400 and I got on a plane.

I didn't want the plane to land.

I realized I really didn't have any idea where I was (laughing), but I liked the city right away.

People really were somewhat different.

- Oh, this was a different planet.

Everything about San Francisco was different, from the glitter in the sidewalks to the way the fog rolled in, to the fact that you could see other people on the street that you knew were gay.

- I immediately fell in love with a man, and then I knew something was different.

And that really was the beginning of a real major change in my life.

- I ended up in a commune of sorts in the Haight, and the Haight at that time was devastated, really destroyed by heroin and violence.

It's nothing like it is today.

Most of the storefronts were boarded up.

So I was one of those people that moved over the hill from the Haight, to come to the Castro for cheap housing.

- [Narrator] The new wave of gay immigrants needed a place to settle, and word spread about the faded Victorians convenient to downtown.

- I moved into a flat in the Castro with a group of lesbians.

We all used to live in these flats, and people still do now, with a lot of people.

Every single room was turned into a bedroom.

- The very first time I came to San Francisco, which was February of '73, I went to a party, I don't remember how I got there, on the top of the hill up above Castro Street.

One of the men who lived in this Victorian apartment who held the party, I was really attracted to him.

I stayed on, slept with him.

He took me up to his balcony, and it overlooked the entire city.

The lights were glittering all over the city and the Bay, and he said, "Welcome to Oz."

And I thought, "Oh God, this is really it.

I have finally come to where I've been looking for."

♪ Somewhere over the rainbow ♪ ♪ Way up high ♪ ♪ There's a land that I heard of ♪ ♪ Once in a lullaby ♪ - [Narrator] As young gays made their way from all over the country, they began to turn the little village on the slopes of Twin Peaks into something The world had never seen, a kind of gay hometown.

♪ And the dreams that you dare to dream ♪ ♪ Really do come true ♪ ♪ Someday I'll wish upon a star ♪ - [Narrator] One by one, Eureka Valley's sagging businesses gave way to new owners, with a new clientele.

The maternity shop became All American Boy.

The Castro Theater began showing classics and art films.

Most Holy Redeemer Church didn't exactly welcome the new neighbors, so they formed their own, the Metropolitan Community Church.

And when two lesbians bought the Twin Peaks bar, they installed plate glass windows, the first gay bar in the nation where the patrons were on view for the world to see.

- It just felt like a little town, and you saw though a lot, especially of gay men walking around and some lesbians, and people seemed to be a little bit more relaxed, and you were in the daylight.

And everything I had experienced on the East Coast around being gay was, happened at night.

It's sort of like you only came out after sundown.

- I was at a point where I was making a switch from my life where I had kept my gay life private and separate and after hours.

I was beginning to want a more integrated experience of being out and gay 24 hours a day.

So I decided that it's time to step out into the sunlight, and become part of a gay community that was emerging.

- To be able to walk around on the street, and to not be shutting down part of myself so that I wouldn't be detected, and that meant so much.

And it started to change me dramatically, really dramatically.

♪ Oh, you make me feel mighty real ♪ ♪ You make me feel ♪ - I remember dancing at the Mineshaft, and those moments when you'd smoke a joint, and there'd be all these lights and fans, and this wonderful disco music, which where you felt this beat that really united you.

And I had this kind of spiritual moment or a vision where you could say, "This is what it could be like."

You can see what it could be like and be inside it and feel it, if we were totally free.

(lively disco music) - My poor father couldn't understand what was happening.

He'd say, "I don't know what the hell's happening with them.

Goddam holding hands on the street, for Christ's sake."

You know, he was funny.

- I remember them, and more my father being horrified, and that they came from this very rigid Catholic, straight upbringing, and the very idea that homosexuals were moving into the neighborhood was scary to them.

They didn't know what that meant for them.

- My boy'd come home and he'd say, "I don't wanna be gay.

Am I going to be gay?

Will I be gay?"

And this went on for two years.

- There were problems with the kids.

There are still problems with kids coming here.

But I have to say looking back on it, that I think it's remarkable how little resentment there was.

Part of it's economic.

It's not exactly like people were forced out of here.

It's more like they sold out to get out of here, and they made enormous profits on their real estate.

- Well actually we moved because my kids grew up and they're out of school, but mostly it was because the gay people moved in, and not that we didn't like the gays or anything like that, but my boys wanted to get off the dinner table and run down the street and see if they could pick a fight with somebody or something.

(group laughing) - My oldest boy got in with a group of people at one of the early festivals, and somebody made a pass, unfortunately.

Now this is not saying my son was right, because he wasn't.

But there was a physical altercation and it was nasty.

I mean, he was brought up on charges, and- - [Interviewer] What did he do?

- Well, he physically attacked a man and threw through a window.

- [Narrator] The incidents became more frequent.

In the mid '70s, there was a wave of gay bashings in nearby parks.

The gay church was set on fire twice, and at Toad Hall, a hangout for gay hippies, arson fires hit three times in three months.

(soft uneasy music) Not since the crackdowns of the '50s had San Francisco's gays been the targets of such hostility.

But this time the community had a home base, and it was about to gain an unlikely spokesman, a camera store owner on Castro Street named Harvey Milk.

- We don't wanna be harassed, and also we want the equal opportunity for work, right?

I pay my taxes, but I'm not allowed to be a policeman.

Oh they say you are, but you aren't.

I'm not allowed to be a fireman.

And if I have to pay my taxes, why shouldn't I have civil rights?

- Harvey Milk was quite a character.

You know, it's funny to me to hear the legends about him now because so few of them to me have any connection with the man that I remember, who was always irreverent, often irritable.

His personal life was in disarray.

But Harvey, I think reflected what we were about.

He had been a Republican.

He had been a stockbroker from New York City, and then he drove across country and came to Castro Street to be gay.

That was the first thing, he came here to be gay.

- [Narrator] Harvey Milk was convinced that a neighborhood was more than a place to live.

It was the building block for political and economic power, something gays had never had.

The camera store became a hangout for neighborhood activists.

- I met Harvey because I used to take a lot of photographs and he ran the camera shop.

So I would take my film down to Harvey's camera shop, and give him my film to process.

And you know, he had the barber chair there, and we'd just talk and just, you know, chat up on Castro Street.

- I'm given a few moments to tell you why you should vote for me.

I represent the voices crying out, nurses, doctors, hospitals, buses, homes.

- [Narrator] By 1973, Harvey Milk was running for city supervisor, ponytail and all.

He set up ironing boards on the corner of 18th and Castro, and registered the new gay neighbors to vote.

He lost the election, but he charmed many of the old-timers.

- My oldest daughter was 12 at the time and was going to Gratton school.

And we had taken pictures of her graduation at Gratton, and I brought them down to Harvey's camera store on Castro Street, it was my first time ever meeting him.

And I brought the film in, and went back a couple of days later to pick it up, and brought the films home.

And all the kids are sitting around the table at my grandmother's house and we're looking, ready to open up these pictures of Jennifer's graduation, and it was all of naked men.

(both laughing) So I said, "Well, that's not her graduation."

So I brought the films back to Harvey and I said, and this was the first time, you know, I didn't even know who he was really.

I said, "I think I've got the wrong film."

And so he opens it up and he said, "Yes, I think that you did," and he laughed.

And you know, and from that moment on, I just was endeared to him.

- [Narrator] He dubbed himself the Mayor of Castro Street, and began organizing the new gay merchants.

When they tried to join forces with the long-standing Eureka Valley Merchants Association, they were stonewalled.

The traditional merchants had no interest in cooperating with the newcomers, so Harvey Milk became president of a new group.

They called themselves the Castro Village Association.

Castro Village, not Eureka Valley.

It was a subtle change, but it meant everything.

- So when people began to talk about the neighborhood, it was in a different way, because for the first time we were claiming this as our neighborhood.

And I think many of the original inhabitants didn't particularly care for our passionate attachment to the area, because within just a few years of the gay influx, this became very much gay turf.

- (laughing) I got angry, I got angry.

The first time they shut the street down, I got angry.

"What the hell is this?"

(soft psychedelic music) We never could shut the street down ever, you know?

City Hall would be on your neck.

But the tide was too great, (laughing) and I could not hold it back by myself.

- [Narrator] Street fairs, Pride parades, Halloween parties.

Castro Street's annual events were becoming citywide gay holidays.

The crowds came and they stayed.

By 1977, as many as 20,000 gays had moved into the Castro to be part of a full-fledged movement, and thousands more visited every weekend.

The Little Valley was hatching a brand new culture.

♪ Won't you take me to heaven ♪ ♪ Oh, take me to heaven ♪ ♪ With your fire, oh your soul ♪ - I will never forget our first Halloween party, oh.

- Oh Lord.

♪ Take me to heaven ♪ - Well.

- Well I mean- - We went out- - Talk about costumes.

There were some with no costumes.

- Yes, you know I- - Which for us boys from the Midwest was.

♪ Why don't you take me ♪ ♪ Take me to heaven ♪ ♪ Why don't you take me ♪ ♪ Take me to heaven ♪ - The Castro was like Mardi Gras every weekend, and Sylvester was singing, and I mean, it was just, it was wonderful, it was absolutely wonderful.

It was like dying and going to heaven.

- [Narrator] The new immigrants came from mainstream, mainly white America, and they brought their institutions with them.

There were gay softball leagues, a gay chorus, three gay and lesbian newspapers, a gay and lesbian tap troupe, and at the center of it all, a kind of cathedral.

- Go see a Bette Davis movie at the Castro Theater with a bunch of queens.

All the lines that Bette Davis comes out with, We know them by heart.

- We know them before she says them.

- But of course, everybody's screaming and carrying on.

- What we were doing is creating our own gay versions of the entire world, in a much more fabulous way.

(laughing) ♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey ♪ ♪ Macho, macho man, macho man yeah ♪ ♪ I've got to be a macho man ♪ ♪ I've got to be a macho, macho man, yeah ♪ - There was a look that kind of developed, the so-called cloned look.

♪ Macho, macho man ♪ - Short hair and shaved their beards often, and had mustaches.

- The work shirt, the Levi's and the hiking boots.

- And then men were beginning to do bodybuilding.

So there was like, you know, built bodies.

I shaved my beard, I had a mustache, cut my hair.

♪ It's so hot now ♪ - Didn't do bodybuilding.

- Well, I was an older guy.

I wasn't exactly a kid anymore.

But I didn't want to look like I didn't belong, so I dressed the way everybody else did when I'd go out to the bars.

- People were sort of establishing a group identity, and I had a lot of trouble with that myself.

I felt that I had spent 10 years of my life breaking away from the pack and becoming an individual person.

And when this sort of group look and group thought began to emerge in the Castro, it was too much for me.

- I get off the bus and I look around, and there's all these very, kind of buffed, mustached white men in their late 20s, early 30s, running around who look exactly the same in their attire.

And I'm like, "Well, I guess this is the gay neighborhood, but it sure is a vanilla gay neighborhood, in a sense.

There's nobody here who looks like me."

- [Narrator] Brian Freeman had moved from Boston as a young actor, landing a cheap apartment in the Castro.

The gay culture he found nearly drove him out.

- There was some party honoring "Gone with the Wind" that was up at one of the bars, so it had Confederate flags flying, and all of this sort of romantic Southern hoop skirts, and of course all the Mammy, and it's like, you know, but kind of under the cover of, "It's gay and its camp," but camp to who, who was this funny for?

- My friends who were gay men of color, I began listening to them more, and they would tell me, "This is your neighborhood, not our neighborhood.

We get carded at the bars."

And it made me realize, this is a white phenomenon here.

- [Narrator] Within the white world of the Castro, people of color staked out their own small havens like the Pendulum bar, but they were few and far between.

- I always call myself the last Black man in the Castro.

I'm not, there's other folks in the neighborhood, but for everyone who is not a white gay male, we constantly get the signal that this isn't ours.

- [Phyllis] Most lesbians we talked to didn't wanna go there very much, if at all.

- [Del] It was definitely a male scene.

- Yeah, and it was definite that they just as soon we didn't bother to come around, too.

I mean, I think that was pretty obvious, especially in the bars.

- There were some gay men who had a tremendous amount of attitude about women.

It was about just wanting all the women out of the Castro.

- [Allan] You know as time went on, the population increased, there was just more and more men out on the streets.

It was a very sexually charged neighborhood.

- We believed that sex was good, that sex between consenting adults was a good thing.

And that was quite a radical notion back then, and in many quarters is still a radical notion.

- [Thomas] You come here from the Midwest and you know, this is quite an experience.

- I felt like a little boy in a candy store, and I'm glad we had 10 years under our belt when we came here, or we might have had a little problem.

- Yeah.

- There were a lot of very pretty boys walking around.

- [Thomas] Yeah there were, it was wonderful.

- You know, there were the temptations there.

But we had made a commitment and you know, we were very much in love.

- [Thomas] I think we need to answer that question again.

- Well.

- Robert, we went through our period of time.

- Well, but we still were committed, you know?

We did- - Well, we were committed to one another, but- - We did fool around.

- We tasted the candy in the candy store.

I mean- - We took a few samples.

- Yeah, we took a few samples.

- One-night stands, hell one-minute stands, (chuckling) but there was something there that showed the best of human warmth.

- You forget the newness of it, and there was an innocence about it, a naivete really about the whole thing that I think gets lost now.

People talk about the bathhouses and the sex clubs and things like that, and it all sounds very tawdry and jaded, but I don't remember it that way.

I remember it as being terribly exciting, terribly romantic, and very much about the individual exploration and liberation that was occurring in our lives.

- Felicia, Felicia grew up in the middle of that.

It was her neighborhood, her environment.

So to her it was, you know, it was the ocean that she swam in.

- [Narrator] Just before he had come out as gay.

Walter Park and his partner had had a baby daughter.

Felicia Park-Rogers would spend half of her childhood in the Castro.

- It was fun, it was really fun.

There were people around all the time, smiling, happy people.

And as a really, basically like a cute little girl walking down the street with my dad, with my cute gay dad, people would stop on the street and give me money and give me candy, and there weren't a lot of me around.

And so they were extraordinarily loving because of that.

- And she knew that I was seeing men, and they were home with me.

They were in my bed, they were there in the morning, in the kitchen.

- Sexuality and politics, they were present, they were around me, and I was aware of them.

And although a lot of people tried to paint that as a negative thing, it was a very positive thing.

And my dad took me to meetings almost every night, and he was very much a neighborhood activist.

And I was sort of play with my Barbies in the corner while people talked about all kinds of things, fought about all kinds of things.

- [Narrator] They were arguing more than local issues.

In 1977, gays and lesbians in the Castro found themselves once again under attack, this time not from their neighbors, but from across the nation.

♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Glory, glory hallelujah ♪ ♪ Glory, glory ♪ - Anita Bryant, ♪ a former Miss America runner-up, ♪ was campaigning to overturn a gay rights ordinance in Miami's Dade County.

She took her message nationwide, forming an organization called Save Our Children.

The fate they were being saved from, it seemed, was San Francisco.

- [Announcer] The Orange Bowl parade, Miami's gift to the nation, wholesome entertainment.

But in San Francisco, when they take to the streets, it's a parade of homosexuals.

Men hugging other men, cavorting with little boys, wearing dresses and makeup.

The same people who turned San Francisco into a hotbed of homosexuality want to do the same thing to Florida.

- [Narrator] The message struck a national chord.

In Dade County, the repeal of gay rights won a crushing victory.

Soon anti-gay rights measures were appearing on ballots in Minnesota, Kansas, Oregon.

A full-fledged backlash was underway, and it hit home even in the safe haven of San Francisco, seven blocks from Castro Street.

- In the height of the Anita Bryant campaign in Dade County, there was a young gay man murdered on South Van Ness Street, beaten to death by thugs who screamed faggot while they killed him.

His name was Robert Hillsborough, and his murder brought thousands and thousands of people out into the streets.

And in my memories of this time, it seems to me that this is when gay people, having found each other, also found our strength and our courage.

And we went from dancing up on Planet Candy Store to becoming a serious political force, in this city, in the state, and around the country.

- [Crowd] Gay rights now, gay rights now, gay rights now, gay rights now.

- [Narrator] They took their cue from the civil rights movement.

They gathered, and they marched.

- [Crowd] Gay rights now, gay rights now.

- The Castro then became this place where you went when there was a crisis.

You could go there and find out what people were doing, and if you didn't know what people were doing, then you'd just be there and figure it out, what you were going do, you just marched somewhere.

- I would get my mimeograph thing going.

You know, we'd put up flyers out on the telephone poles and we had phone trees.

And we would call, I would call 10 people, and I'd have them call 10 people, and each of them would call 10 people.

And in a matter of hours, literally, we could turn out 10, 25, 35,000 people, angry on Castro Street with whistles.

(whistles blaring) - [Narrator] No matter how many activists came of age in the neighborhood, the gay community there was still shut out of elected offices.

By 1977, its favorite son had been defeated three times in citywide elections, but that year the city switched to district-based elections.

All those densely-packed Victorians suddenly became more than a neighborhood.

They were a voting bloc, District Five.

Harvey Milk could run for supervisor solely in his own backyard.

(bright upbeat music) Facing 16 challengers, he mounted a furious campaign.

On election day, the Castro District made Harvey Milk the first openly gay elected official in California, and among the first in the nation.

The morning of his swearing in, he made a triumphant march out of the Castro to City Hall.

For many, it meant that gay people were finally joining the ranks of the legitimate.

(bright upbeat music continues) The Gay Freedom Day parade of 1978 was the biggest ever.

350,000 people crammed Market Street.

(bright upbeat music continues) (crowd chattering) At least on that day, the tenor of the times seemed one of tolerance, even acceptance, far beyond the bubble of the Castro.

Five months later, the bubble burst.

- As president of the Board of Supervisors, it's my duty to make this announcement.

Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed.

- Holy- - Jesus Christ.

- They- (crowd chattering) - Hold it, hold it.

- Shh.

- Quiet.

- Quiet, quiet.

- The suspect, his supervisor Dan White.

(soft somber music) - Dan White, a troubled ex-policeman with an anti-gay voting record as a supervisor, confessed to the killings that afternoon.

By that time, the Castro was in shock.

(soft somber music continues) - I will never forget that day for as long as I live.

I just thought, "Well, it'll all end.

Somebody has killed them so that our life, as we know it, is going to end in San Francisco."

- It did make me think, "We're never going to get out of there.

We might have a little ghetto that we can move around in, but we're never going to be able to take our place at the table, they'll just kill us," you know?

But what was amazing then is there was, even at that time, sort of the tom-toms start, and a few hours later we got the word to go down to Castro Street and to bring candles.

(soft somber music continues) - People left their homes and their places of work and their schools, and they came to Castro Street.

And that incredible silent march, this river of candles down Market Street.

(soft expectant music) - The idea to walk out of the Castro in such a large group to City Hall was very empowering.

(soft expectant music continues) Then it was that day the verdict came down, and that's when we found out that he, you know, this slap on the wrist.

And that was, and I was so enraged.

I hadn't ever felt such a focused rage before in my life.

- [Narrator] Dan White had been convicted, not of murder, but of manslaughter, and was sentenced to serve less than eight years.

As they had on the night of the assassinations, gays and lesbians swarmed out of the Castro to City Hall.

But this time they did not carry candles.

(whistles blaring) (crowd shouting) - [Crowd] He got away with murder, he got away with murder.

- I was part of the crowd that was chanting, "No violence, no violence."

And I thought, "Wait a minute, the violence has been done by Dan White getting basically let off for murdering Moscone and Milk."

And the anger had to be expressed somehow.

I really felt it, and I felt like things, things had to be destroyed.

(glass shattering) (crowd shouting) (sirens blaring) - Somebody began to burn the cop cars, and after a little while, all the sirens in all those cars went off.

They sounded like they were all crying.

We heard the death cries of these police cars, just wailing and wailing.

And it was just, it was what happened that night.

It was a night of wailing.

- [Officer] We're just waiting for the mayor at (indistinct), there's still no one at the mayor's office.

- [Narrator] The riot at City Hall lasted three hours.

When the smoke finally cleared, 12 squad cars had been destroyed.

61 police officers and 100 demonstrators had been hospitalized.

Just after 11:00, the police force, angry and humiliated, struck back, and they did it in the Castro.

(whistles blaring) (crowd shouting) - When the police came into the Castro, people who had been non-combatants, people who had gone outta their way to avoid the fighting, avoid the demonstration, were outraged.

"What are you doing here?

This is our neighborhood.

Get out, we do not need you here, we do not want you here, you must leave."

(whistles blaring) - Go, go, go, go.

- And it really felt like war.

It really felt like war, 'cause Dan White had been a cop.

(soft somber music) - A wave of police would come down the street, and then when they passed, my roommate Eric Garber and I would run out and drag in the people who had been clubbed.

We had blood all over our apartment.

- [Narrator] At 18th and Castro, police officers stormed a bar known as the Elephant Walk.

Some hid their badges as they smashed windows and attacked the patrons.

- The Castro was the symbol to them and to many other people that this was where we thought we could be safe, and they were gonna prove to us that we weren't gonna be safe there.

At that moment I saw, this is really not only the place where we have our shops, where we hang out, but this is a much bigger symbol, that was gay.

(soft somber music) - Martyrdom, you know, always has a tremendous impact.

There was some hope that all the queers would go back in the closet.

- But you know what?

- There's no way.

- [Thomas] That did not happen.

- [Narrator] Like the rest of the neighborhood, Thomas and Robert Van Etten did not go back into the closet after the assassination.

If anything it brought them out, at work and at home.

- I wanted to announce to the world, two gay men live in this house.

- [Robert] Well, we did that when we painted it purple.

- Well I mean, but, but no but I mean, in '78, I mean we just said, "There's a couple queens living here, and please notice this"- - No doubt, no doubt.

- There's a rainbow flag here.

- Pride, just plain old pride.

I'm who I am, and you know, why shouldn't I be proud?

If other people have a problem with that, that's their problem.

I'm not gonna make it my problem anymore, I did that too long.

- [Narrator] Rainbow flags in the neighborhood were only the most visible signs of how entrenched the gay community had become in the Castro.

Despite its setbacks, the gay hometown was now a boom town.

Real estate prices were sky high, the stores were thriving.

In the bars, politicians now dutifully courted the influential gay vote, and sought the backing of a new wave of community leaders.

It had been less than 10 years since the first trickle of openly gay men and women had come to the Valley.

Now they enjoyed more concentrated wealth, political strength, and civil liberties than gays anywhere in the nation.

So as the 1980s began, the neighborhood partied into the night, unaware that a terrible enemy was already loose in the streets.

- In the early '80s, Walgreens pharmacy was called Star Pharmacy, and they had pictures on the window of people with these spots on their bodies.

And they said, "If you have this, this is a gay cancer."

It really kinda freaked you out.

You went home and you looked at your body, and any little mark you thought, "Well my goodness," you know?

- [Robert] No one knew how you got it.

- Yeah.

- But it was just- - But then John got sick and you know, it really scared us 'cause we thought, "Oh you know, we don't want to catch this."

- [Narrator] John Sims, who had founded the gay and lesbian marching band, was the Van Etten's friend and next door neighbor.

The strange illness he faced was cropping up in dozens and then hundreds of gay men in San Francisco.

The Castro was ground zero.

- I first started to hear about AIDS when I was, must have been 10 or 11, and it was in the very early '80s.

And people started to die pretty quickly in my life.

Most of my dad's lovers died.

By this time now in life, they have all died.

And that started when I was 11 or 12.

Milton was the first person, and he got sick and died within a couple months.

Just boom, happened.

And that was one that hit me really hard too, because Milton was this very vibrant young man.

He was everything that the Castro was about, tight jeans and all night parties, and total celebration of his sexuality and everything that that embodied.

And then he just died really quickly and painfully, without support and without medical attention or anything.

- (sighing) I didn't feel particularly threatened.

I was having relatively safe sex.

I know the odds of my being uninfected were good.

I guess at some point the odds just began to mount up.

You know at some point, 10% of the community was infected, so your odds of getting something from somebody are one in 10.

But a few years later, 60% was infected.

Well then the odds are completely different.

- [Narrator] In 1985, Walter Park found out that he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS.

His daughter Felicia was 14 years old.

He didn't tell her the news.

- I did think that I was gonna die right away.

I did think that I was gonna have this horrendous problem with Felicia.

I wanted to raise Felicia, and it changed the way I did a whole lotta things.

I moved into a co-op because I wanted Felicia to know everybody in the building, and I wanted everybody in the building to know her, so that there'd be a support group right there at home when I got sick and died, which I thought would be tomorrow morning.

- People died so much faster then.

You know, you'd see somebody in April and they were fine, and then you'd see them in June and they'd say they've been diagnosed, and then you wouldn't see them again.

You know, it was just really, really hard, really scary.

People forget how long we had to operate without any real information about transmission or cause.

So there was a lot of hysteria, and the people who got sick, many of them were not treated well.

- John got sick, and unfortunately, I'm not, I don't even like to admit this, but you know- - We didn't provide support.

- We kind of turned our back on him, and I really didn't want to go over there.

He had thrush and it was very visible on his tongue, and he had something going on with his brain, so he had periods of dementia, it scared me.

I didn't wanna be around him, and I didn't know if being near him, I would get sick, that I might catch this from him.

How stupid, you know?

But in those days, that's maybe how a lot of us were reacting.

- Just everywhere I looked friends were toppling, many of them very, very talented people who'd given so much to the community.

Suddenly you had to realize they were all going.

You know, I would go through an address book and realize that I've had to cross out all kinds of names and telephone numbers.

(soft somber music) As the numbers grew and grew, it got to be really rather terrifying.

(soft somber music continues) - There were times in the late '80s, the early '90s, where I would be standing on a street corner in the Castro and realize that there was almost no man there between the age of 35 and 45.

Everybody was younger or older, and there was this whole missing segment of people.

Or else that they were, that I was surrounded by men in their 30s or 40s who were using canes and wheelchairs, and looked like old men long before they should.

(soft somber music continues) - You couldn't imagine a more depressing neighborhood to live in.

When it really hit, I mean there was, you know denial was going pretty strong for a long, long time here.

But when it really hit, this was a war zone.

It was really, really a war zone.

- [Narrator] On Castro Street, many shops closed or changed hands.

The political rallies turned into AIDS vigils.

By 1990, more than 10,000 San Franciscans had died of the disease, most of them familiar faces in the Castro.

(soft somber music continues) The neighborhood adopted a kind of ritual grieving.

When Cleve Jones founded the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, based in a storefront near the corner of Castro and Market Streets, it became a way for a community and then a nation to come to grips with the epidemic.

- More and more of our friends started getting sick, and then we began seeing what people were going through, the estrangement that people were- - Families disowning them.

- Yeah.

And we had kind of done that to John.

So we said, "Uh-uh."

So we started doing, delivering meals, and then it just grew.

I mean, we just got more and more and involved, and we continue to be very involved with it today.

- [Narrator] Thomas and Robert Van Etten began volunteering at the AIDS support group in their church.

They are parishioners at Most Holy Redeemer, the bastion of Eureka Valley now embracing the gay community it once shunned.

They've even turned the old convent into an AIDS hospice.

The disease caused many transformations in the life of the neighborhood.

Nightly parties gave way to benefits and support groups.

Lesbians long estranged from the neighborhood returned in full force as caregivers running blood drives, and as leaders running for office.

The social and political web spun in the '70s became a safety net, and the community's response to AIDS was called a national model.

It all came at a terrible price, the toll continued to mount.

- In 1988, a lover of my dad's who I had become really close with, I called him my fairy godmother, and he took me shopping and he bought me jewelry, and he talked about boys with me and talked about, "Oh well," you know, "how old should you be when he first have sex?"

And like, I mean he was, he was my fairy godmother.

And he started to get sick, and when he was in the hospital, he didn't want me to come and visit, because he wanted me to remember him as he was.

And then he did die in 1988.

- After my, my friend died, sometime after that, Felicia asked me if I had AIDS.

And I, for the only time in my life, told her a calculated lie.

I said, "No, I don't."

This is when she was in high school.

I just didn't want to sort of bring this dark cloud over her life, and also she was a kid.

I thought she should be an unencumbered kid for longer.

And I really, I wrestled over that for a long time, and maybe I made the wrong decision, but that was my decision then.

But when she was in college, she seemed to me to be grown.

She was away living on her own.

And I thought, "I have to tell her."

So I went to St. Paul and I just sat down outside one day and said, "I wanna tell you something.

I wanna tell you that I do have HIV, and I'm obviously pretty well, but sometime this is gonna unfold."

It was the most difficult thing I've ever done.

- My dad has been the main foundation of my life.

And the immediate feeling, and they always say this in HIV counseling, is that the immediate feeling to people who are told that they're positive is that they're gonna die the next day.

And that's what I felt about my dad.

Like, he's gonna die the next day.

Like, and really in a very painful way, like Milton, like Martin, like so many people that I had known.

And now here it is so many years later, and he's still as healthy as can be.

So I just don't know what to do about it anymore.

I guess at this point I've really come to terms with it, and we've worked really hard to make our relationship be the best that it can be in the present, and it's sort of that whole thing of, you know, if somebody that you loved was hit by a bus an hour ago, and what do you wish that you could have said to them?

I've said all those things to my dad now, just in case.

(crowd cheering) - I feel good about my sex life when I say fabulous.

I always feel like my hair is better, which it's not.

But I feel good about my hair when I say fabulous.

And I like to say it because I like to talk like a gay guy, (audience laughing) and you know, and I really wanna thank the gay men here.

We needed a comedy club.

Our community being hit with AIDS, we needed to have some sustenance.

You know, comedy is entertainment, yeah.

But it's also very political, and it's people expressing ideas, and a lotta communication going on.

(audience cheering) - [Narrator] Like so many cultural institutions in the Castro, Josie's Cabaret and Juice Joint has been hit by AIDS.

This evening is a benefit for its ailing founder, Donald Montley.

- Anyway, Donald encouraged me to play here.

He encouraged me to play straight clubs, which at first made me very nervous.

You know, I remember when I was outside of the Punch Line for like one of the first times and I'm like, "Well, they're gonna know I'm a big dyke.

They're probably not gonna like my material.

Maybe I should have written some straight jokes," so I actually wrote a straight joke.

I'll do that for you this evening.

So I was talking to my boyfriend today.

(audience laughing) That's the whole joke, there's not more.

(audience applauding) - The audiences that cheer at Josie's aren't simply those who survived the '70s.

In its darkest hour, the Castro gained a new voice.

- [Crowd] They care, we care, why don't they care.

48,000 dead from AIDS, where was George?

60,000 dead from AIDS, where was George?

- [Narrator] Out of the anger and frustration of the AIDS struggle, a young generation of gays and lesbians came of age in the 1980s.

Like the generation before them they came to the Castro, and though few of them had grown up there, and most could not afford to live there, they claimed it as their own.

- The attitude that I saw with the younger people toward the Castro is that the Castro was theirs.

And if something came up that they didn't like, they would take the street quite literally.

(whistles blaring) (crowd shouting) And they were so sure of themselves, and so positive and articulate.

- It's a generation that from my perspective, has taken for granted all the stuff that we had done to make that into a gay neighborhood, and I love that.

- I was so proud of them, and so happy to see them, as I was afraid they wouldn't be there.

(crowd shouting and cheering) - [Narrator] For the last five years on the eve of the Gay Freedom Day parade, lesbians have converged onto Castro Street to join in the Dyke March.

As gay men cheer on the sidelines, women take over the neighborhood, a subversive act that is quickly becoming a tradition of its own.

(marching drum music) (crowd cheering) - In some ways I guess, at the night of the Dyke March, it becomes a lesbian enclave, instead of just a gay male enclave.

I think it's lovely, (laughing) I really do.

(crowd cheering) - [Narrator] It's not only women who are more visible in the Castro.

As the neighborhood gentrifies, families, both traditional and not so traditional, have found themselves attracted by the virtues Eureka Valley always boasted, and now a special kind of family has found its way to the Castro, where a small house opened its doors to gay teens.

(lively upbeat music) - Come on.

Okay, wanna play cards?

- Lyric is kind of a centerstone, I think, in a lot of young queer people's, you know, life.

They help you out with services.

Tonight is movie and pizza night, it becomes your second home.

It becomes a place where you can go and say, "Damn, I've had a bad day.

You know, I don't wanna see my family right now.

I don't wanna be alone, where can I go?"

Lyric after school program, hey.

(group chattering) - That's a tackle.

- When I was growing up, my sexuality theoretically felt really clear to me.

I understood very clearly my parents' sexuality, and I understood very clearly that I was straight, and there was just no questions about that.

And I was also very aware, though nobody ever said this to me, there was the possibility that because my parents were both gay, that they would make me gay, and that was bad and wrong.

- Felicia did have a sense, which I really wasn't very aware of at the time, it's only since we've talked about it later that I've really become aware of it.

That in some way she wanted to show the world that a gay man and a lesbian woman could have an okay kid.

And I think for a long time she took that to mean a heterosexual kid, that somehow we hadn't tainted her.

- When I was in my late teens, and when I moved away from home to start college, I started questioning my own sexuality.

And I did end up coming out, I'm bisexual.

And there are a lot of times where I get a lot of questions like, "Oh, well are you that way because of your parents?"

Or things like that, and my answer is, "No, I'm this way because I am this way," you know?

- Felicia wanted to go away to college, but after she was gone a few years, she wanted to come home.

She wanted to be in her community, for one thing.

And when she came back into her community, it seemed that almost immediately she met someone who was really her person, the right person for her.

And I met Rachel very soon after they met each other, and it was real clear right away, first that Rachel was really extraordinary herself.

And secondly, that they were an extraordinary couple.

For them, the neighborhood probably means something different than it did to me when I was 25.

When I was 25, it meant that they were gay men here in an island, and we really needed each other in a certain kinda way.

And now I feel like they're more in a kind of a more natural community.

They don't desperately need to be near Castro Street.

They could live this life somewhere else.

- [Narrator] The couple now share a flat just a few blocks from where Felicia grew up, but they chose to live in the Castro with some serious reservations.

- There actually are very few people in this neighborhood who are 26-year-old women.

There are mostly, it's a very male neighborhood.

It's an older neighborhood, and it's a quite wealthy neighborhood, and sometimes it doesn't feel like a very comfortable place.

- There's very few cafes that I feel comfortable going into as a woman.

There's a lot of cafes, there's a lot of restaurants.

There's places where people should be able to hang out and mingle as a young person.

Most of them I can't afford.

And a lot of them, as a woman, I don't feel comfortable going into.

And if you're under 21, forget it.

There's like 30 bars within a few blocks.

- There's no place really for kids to enjoy themselves anymore in Castro, besides Lyric.

- But yeah, there's nothing really to do out here.

And this is supposed to be like the gay neighborhood, you know, like where we're supposed to feel welcome, and feel like this is like our place to be, you know?

But it's not really our place, you know?

It is more like a place for like old white dudes (laughing), you know?

- In many ways the Castro neighborhood is kind of like a mirage.

It is on its surface, supposed to be one thing, and in reality another thing.

People come here thinking it's the gay mecca.

When you get here, you find that actually it's a commercial strip, there's stores, and there's houses, and they're all expensive.

- [Narrator] 25 Years ago, Harvey Milk imagined a gay neighborhood with economic clout.

It has arrived, but so has a rampant commercialism he might not have predicted.

His old camera store now sells skincare products.

Gay memorabilia is reduced to decor at the old Elephant Walk, now a trendy cafe called Harvey's.

And though volunteers still register voters at the corner of 18th and Castro, the neighborhood can sometimes feel like a gay theme park.

- We won't have time to go through, but by all means, come back to Brand X Antiques, treat yourself to a visit.

There's Headlines for Women.

There's an admission fee of $2.

Show them your rainbow ribbon and you can go for $1.

- And like you know, how many juice bars does the neighborhood really need?

How many gyms does a neighborhood really need?

The tourists can have them, I think that's who really supports them.

And they come in on the weekend, and they wanna do the Castro.

Let them go eat that bad food and greasy omelets, and stare at the muscles on the waiters.

They can have it.

As long as I've lived here, I've always complained about the neighborhood, but I stay here.

So you know, what does that tell you?

It's a love/hate relationship.

- There's a lot about the Castro that is not perfect and that I would like to see change.

There's also things about it that are really glorious, and that I really love and that I couldn't find anywhere else.

Rachel and I can stand in the Castro, and we can hold hands and we can kiss each other, and we can be loving towards each other, and have other people see that and recognize it and pay homage to it, and be happy for us about it, rather than be scared that they are going to kill us for it.

It's easy to start to take that for granted, and it's so important that it's there.

- It's like a freeing place for me though.

'Cause where I live, I can't- - [Interviewer] t's like a what?

I'm sorry.

- A freeing place, 'cause where I live, I can't act the same way that I act down here, like flaming down here.

'Cause I have to put on that brother limp, and have to talk all deep and be like, "What's up?"

And around here, I could be just be like myself.

(crowd chattering) ♪ You are my woman ♪ ♪ You are ♪ - The day of the ceremony, I was a complete blithering idiot.

I had no idea what I was doing.

I didn't know what to say to people.

I was just kinda walking around trying to, you know, stay upright.

That was about as far as I could get.

I was kind of awestruck.

I also began to realize the magnitude of the commitment that they were making to each other.

That's, I knew it all along.

I'd seen them, I knew them.

I'd listened to them talk to each other for years.

I knew what they were doing.

And yet when we got to the moment, the ceremony made a difference, and I found that to be daring and courageous.

- And so we want to speak our love today, to express it to each other and to you, our family, our friends, our community.

- Every single day for almost four years, I've had something I wanted to tell you.

And I've wanted to listen to the something that you wanted to tell me.

Every single day that I wake up next to you, I feel alive and free, so, so lucky, and exactly where I wanna be.

(sniffing) - Okay, it's not over.

(laughing) - It was a very good day for Lilith and me.

I think we both experienced the same thing, which was watching our daughter come unto herself.

We didn't have a wedding, we didn't have this kind of a ceremony, but we made this possible and we made this necessary.

You know, sort of our lives led straight to here.

In some way, our role was to deconstruct.

We had to take a very rigid kind of America and break it all down, and I think we spent about 20 years trying to do that, and it practically destroyed us.

- To help you fly.

- [Walter] And Felicia and Rachel are at a point where they can do the reconstruction.

They can say, "Oh, all that was wrong."

They can live in the Castro as themselves.

(guests applauding) (guests cheering) (soft hopeful music) - You know we've both, I think, come to realize that family is defined by, you know, love and support and commitment.

And that's one thing I think that makes San Francisco so special, and the community in which we've become involved, because we have that in spades.

- Once in a while I'd take a trip up there, and kinda dream a little bit, as the saying goes, you know, and think of all the good times we had up there.

It's still a good neighborhood, still a good neighborhood.

- I know that, you know, places change, but it's always, always going to be the Castro to me.

And it's always going to be a place that is literally and symbolically a cornerstone of lesbian and gay liberation, will always be that way.

(soft gentle music) (bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] Before it was a neighborhood, it was a theater.

"The Castro", one in a series of documentaries introducing you to the hidden cities of San Francisco.

Brought to you in part by your neighbors at Pacific Bell.

- [Announcer] Major funding for this program has also been provided by James C. Hormel, the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, the Durfee Foundation, the Mary A. Crocker Trust, Michael DeZordo, Richard Mac Almon, and Robert W Hofer.

By these contributors, and by hundreds of individuals in the Castro community.

- [Announcer] A production of KQED San Francisco.