TWIN PEAKS TAVERN 401 Castro Street If you’ve been to the Castro in San Francisco you
have seen this bar still sitting prominently at the corner of Castro and 17th Streets. Now designated as a San Francisco historic site, it is one of the few places on this list that remains open. Notable not only for that distinction, it was also one of the first gay bars to have large, clear windows facing the street unasham- edly. Pre-1970, when being gay was a subversive existence and we were subject to arrest just for the mere suggestion of same-sex love. So being visible in a “gay” establishment was making quite a statement.
THE AIDS QUILT FOUNDING SITE 2362 Market Street Few things altered the course of the LGBT move-
ment more than the early AIDS crisis of the ‘80s and ‘90s. And its lasting symbol is the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Gay rights activist Cleve Jones is said to have landed on the idea of making a quilt because he wanted to memorialize his friends who had passed from the dreadful disease. The NAMES Project was born and the quilt grew from a single panel sewn by Jones in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman to more than 48,000 pieces commemorating over 88,000 individuals. Today the building where it all started at is considered a city landmark and houses the seafood restaurant Catch.
CASTRO CAMERA 575 Castro Street Another building that still proudly stands, this
property is rich in history and, fittingly, is now the home of the Human Rights Campaign Action Center and Store. 16 years after José Julio Sarria was unsuc- cessful in his electoral bid, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man to win an elected office when he won the race for District 8 Supervisor. Castro Camera was the center of Milk’s life and the Castro move- ment. It was his home, his campaign office and the seat of San Francisco’s burgeoning gay community from 1972 until his assassination in 1978. Authors Note: The aforementioned Serra would in
1964, found the oldest and now second largest, LGBT charitable organization, the Imperial Court System.
LOS ANGELES:
JULIAN ELTINGE’S VILLA CAPISTRANO 2327 Fargo Street Julian Eltinge was a vaudeville star and female im- personator, who unlike his contemporaries, did not do caricatures of women but offered audiences the illusion of actually being a woman. So successful was he, infact, that he had a theatre named for him, The Eltinge, which still stands in New York, thought not at its original location, having been lifted and moved in its entirety down the block. Villa Capistrano, Eltinge’s lavish and opulent Spanish-Moorish home in Los Angeles, with its sunken garden was built by noted architects Pierpont and Walter S. Davis and still stands, sans the garden.
PERSHING SQUARE 532 South Olive Street Once called “The Run,” Pershing Square was a group of gay-friendly establishments and cruising spots in Downtown Los Angeles that flourished from the 1920s through the 1960s. It was an early place where people could meet and socialize and included the Central Library, the Subway Terminal Building’s bathrooms and the bar at the Biltmore Hotel. Incidentally, the Biltmore was the site of the 1971 International Psychologists & Psychiatrists Conference, at which the organization was going to declare electroshock therapy as the “cure” for ho- mosexuality. The Gay Liberation Front “disrupted” the meeting, forcing a dialogue and leading to the eventual removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder.
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RAGE monthly | MAY 2014
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