I did notice that 12 Adler was laden with Butches as well as some foxy ladies. In the early 50’s I began hitting Broadway for the girls. In the late 40’s, I was usually with the boys and the focus was on drinking and stories. My favorite two places were Vesuvio and 12 Adler. I was going to all kinds of places in North Beach in the late 40’s and early 50’s. But by the mid-fifties that founding principle had been forgotten. We called ourselves Alpha Zeta Sigma and to us that meant we welcomed everyone from A to Z. The irony here is that at our founding we had applied for a national charter but declined it after we learned of the national’s racial and religious stipulations. In fact, the fraternity that a group of my friends and I started in 1948 at San Francisco State, “black balled” (no pun intended), some years after our departure, Johnny Mathis, not because of his race, but because of his sexual orientation. It was that way in high school and college in both athletics and fraternity life. In the 40’s and 50’s and into the early 60’s, gay guys were called either “fairies,” “homos,” “fags,” or “queers.” Lesbians were called “butches” or “bull dykes.” Homophobia reigned. In 1960 I became a partner in Pierre’s Bar at 546 Broadway.ĭuring these years I was an observer of the homophobic behavior of the time.
In 1955, I was a Grey Line Tour Guide for their Night Club tours that made stops at Finocchio’s, the Gay Nineties and La Casa Dora, all on Broadway. I hit many of the watering holes in this story. From 1948 through the 50’s I was a habitué of North Beach. This story has been a blast from the past for me.
During the 1950s era of sexual repression, the gay community was able to thrive in North Beach by creating a public sphere where gay people and lesbians could be free to talk and create like-minded public communities. He goes on to describe the scenes at six North Beach bars that he feels “best exemplif a cross section of gay/lesbian establishments,” including The Paper Doll, The Black Cat, The Beige Room, Mona’s, Tin Angel, and the Fallen Angel apartment. He opens the article with his own personal account of going to lesbian bars on Broadway Street as a teenager in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Dick Boyd recounts the Gay and Lesbian scene in North Beach during the 1940s and 50s. Originally published in The Semaphore #189, Winter 2010įront of Mona's, 1945. It is an 8 mile ride that lasts 3 hours so be prepared for the workout.ġ:30pm MEET-UP At “Cupid’s Arrow”, On The Embarcadero, Near Folsom Street.Ģ:00pm ROLL-OFF For The Gay Pride Freedom Ride And LGBTQ History Tour.ĥ:00pm ARRIVAL At Castro’s 17th Street Plaza To Shop “PINK SATURDAY”, Have Dinner/Drinks, And Await The Arrival Of The DYKE MARCHīest to RSVP on the group’s Facebook page.Author of Broadway North Beach: The Golden Years
to the home of the first gay bars in North Beach, to Polk Gulch where Gays and Transexuals made business alliances, off to City Hall where gay marriage was won and lost and onwards, with many more landmark locations through to Castro’s 17th Street Plaza. Led by the SF Bike Coalition, the ride meets at the “Cupid’s Span” sculpture on the Embarcadero at with a roll-ff at 2 p.m. But this ride, coming on Pink Saturday, is for everyone and highlights significant spots in the LGBTQ movement (the newly added Q stands for “Queer”). There’s going to be plenty of byke pride on display at the Gay Pride Parade on Sunday.