My friend Ronnie Lynn, Miss Gay San Francisco 1977, moved to San Francisco in 1968.
She proudly boasts that she attended every queer event that happened back in those days and was at the very first Castro Street Fair in 1974. She remembers how excited everyone was to be there as it was one of the first fairs of its kind in San Francisco outdating even the Haight, Union and North Beach festivals. It still fascinates me to imagine what those early queer years were like.
Thinking about how the thrill of the journey to get here must have felt like and knowing that the freedom to express and be yourself was just waiting to be had really moves me. To leave home at seventeen or eighteen and head to a place you’ve only read about in a magazine (yeah, I’m talking about you, Cleve Jones), is a moment of bravery. That bravery still happens today but as I’ve written and said many times before, it is now close to impossible to escape here and survive without assistance as a queer youth.
So looking back on those early days still fills me with the great thrill of guts and independence.
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The first Castro Street Fair I attended as Juanita was in 1993. I had been to previous ones but only as a shy young kid who spent most of the time watching from the sidewalk. The first time as Juanita opened up a whole new world to me. I wore a 12-pack of beer on my head (the beer I had previously drunk) and a gold faux-leather pantsuit that Mr. David designed for me.
I met so many people (some of you who still remind me of that meeting) and made so many new friends that day, many that I would continue to see at each fair I attended years after. This fair for me was a place to see old friends and make new. In 1994, as part of the drag troupe The Fishstix, which consisted of Glamamore (who had recently relocated from New York), Staci Gives (we coached audiences to scream GIVES good head after her introduction – Rest In Power my sweet dear Staci) and myself – we arrived wearing our classic “fish” costumes that Mr. David had created.
Related: In a sea of Pride parties, Juanita More! knows how to bring the magic
Glamamore was the Jellyfish, Staci was the mermaid, and I was the Great White Shark. We were promoting our shows at Kimo’s and walked down Castro Street taking countless photographs with people from Market and Castro to 18th. It was both thrilling and overwhelming as a baby queen. One year, I secured a booth as an exhibitor and sold items out of the House of MORE! closet. There were pieces of Mr. David Couture bursting with feathers, sequins, and drama, all being sold for a pittance.
It was bittersweet to see some of those costumes go but at the time I had run out of room to store them and wasn’t thinking clearly about the future of all that couture and what it really meant in both of our lives. Now I have over 3000 pieces I dare not sell or give away because now every piece is stamped with our history. As the years passed I had the honor of performing on both the mainstage on Market Street and the one that got thrown up next to the Pendulum on 18th.
Day drag has never been one of my favorite things, as the sun is not usually your ally in holding onto the illusion of glamour you perceive in your little makeup mirror at home. But, I’ve prevailed over and over, and my beauty and glamour have only grown more ferocious over the years – be it day or night.
The very first year the fair attracted over 5,000 people. Because of its popularity, it quickly grew to reach over 70,000 at its peak. I throw a lot of parties and events and imagine that it is a daunting task to organize an event of that size, especially when you are relying on volunteers. I will admit that I haven’t attended the fair in recent years, as I felt its sparkle was starting to fade as the humdrum of regular fair exhibits started to take over.
I recently wrote about the March on Polk Street to Reclaim Queer Spaces and said, “It feels like it’s been curtains away for queer spaces for quite some time. There are many people out there fighting to keep them alive, but just as many who shrug those efforts off as the nature of the beast. I don’t want to shrug it off.”
This is also true of the Castro Street Fair. Last year when the fair approached that is how I felt so I reached out to CSF with the thought of obtaining a food booth – I mean you all say you want to come over for dinner so I thought ‘Juanita why don’t you roast a pig on Castro Street and serve sandwiches all day!’
Can you fucking imagine? Well, that didn’t end up happening, which is why I’m reaching out to you today.
San Francisco is rapidly changing and after 44 years the fair has changed too. I want it to be fun, successful, and feel fresh again. So this year instead of sitting back and bitching about it I’ve reached out to the CSF Board and offered my assistance.
And now I need yours. Let’s make the Castro Street Fair the best fair in San Francisco.
Let’s turn this bitch out in 2018.
Please join me at the Castro Street Fair Forum to discuss the future and success of Harvey Milk’s little block party.
Kangol
If LGBTQ people in San Francisco and elsewhere want to support and preserve the Castro Street Fair, it’s going to require even more organization, collaboration with politicians who understand how important it is to continue distinctive LGBTQ cultural traditions and celebrate this important history, and perhaps even create an endowment to ensure funding for the future. Between hyper-gentrification, homonormalization and political sell-outs, so many landmark gay and lesbian, bi and trans spaces are being erased. Equality ? erasure. But there are too many LGBTQ politicians, including liberal LGBTQ ones, who would sell out their mothers for the right price, as Christine Quinn, and gay ally Bill de Blasio, have demonstrated in New York.
On top of this you have LGBTQ people who want all the benefits of the fight for LGBTQ rights and equality, but don’t want to engage in any of the hard work to ensure those rights continue or that equality is fully achieved, and who want to shame gays and trans people they feel aren’t respectable or fit some homonormative model. So it’s a multi-pronged battle, but saving the Castro Street Fair, gay businesses, and LGBTQ cultures are crucial, and remain an ongoing battle that we can win.
drmiller
Im sorry, but where do you think you live? If you really feel this way, I think you need to realign your expectations and maybe consider the fact you moved to the wrong neighborhood or, potentially, the wrong city.
CastleSF
I am here to stay but it’s the city that has to change to accommodate a more diverse residents who are against the so called gay ghettos.
ChrisK
I haven’t been to the Castro Street Fair since 1998 but I do know that it has to be economically feasible like say the Folsom Fair. People aren’t going to go to it just to preserve San Francisco History. There has to be more to it than that. I do agree with all her points though.
ChrisK
Oh and the reason I know you haven’t is because the Castro Street Fair is pretty tame. I’ve never seen any debauchery going on even back in the day. You’re thinking of the Folsom Fair.
CastleSF
You are right. I may have confused the Folsom Fair with the Castro Fair. Well, since the Folsom Fair is brining in a lot of tourist money and is held in an already sleazy neighborhood, I can see myself turn a blind eye on it. Nonetheless, it sounds like a totally decadent event but I will never go near that neighborhood.
sanfranderek
I’ve been going to the Castro Street Fair for 13 years. Recently it’s been a complete bore, it’s gotten smaller and smaller, performers no one has ever heard of, barely any food options, the same merchants that attend every other street fair. The last decent Fair was in 2013 when Peaches was the headliner. This is entirely on the organizers for letting the neighborhood down, we’re a city full of vibrant street fairs from Folsom and Up Your Alley, to Haight Street Fair to How Weird. They need to get their act together, or it won’t last another year.
PinkoOfTheGange
Derek you are a hammer today because you hit the nail on the head.
s
Aside from the Folsom Street Fair, all the street fairs (Castro, Haight, etc.) are all the same: a bunch of tacky booths selling dream catchers.
Troyfight
lol
Doug
I agree… the same vendors just go from one street fair to another. The Folsom Street Fair is still the most original of all of them.
Troyfight
^CastleSF …..in this case, i personally don’t have strong feelings about these fairs either way. Most of your comments, CastleSF, are shoot-em-downs….so after this last time, I’m left curious..??..what kind of specific articles in Queerty get you excited, or you might find sexy, or seem to enlighten you? Honestly, I’m just curious…?
CastleSF
I don’t intend to share my personal life on this forum but my vision for a great city is, plenty of affordable housing for all people who want to live and work in the city. I’d like to see gay couples (or decent singles) doing wholesome activities or volunteer for charities. I’d like to see sex clubs and bathhouses closed but have more wine bars or coffee shops in the neighborhoods. I want zero police brutality against black citizens but I don’t want to be labeled as toxic masculine or transphobic because I don’t subscribe to these or other similar labels.
Cylest Brooks
Just a reminder to everyone on this thread to avoid personal attacks and derogatory comments directed toward other commenters. I have deleted a few already and will continue to monitor this thread. Thanks!
tham
Well he has to be from SF, it’s in his username!!!
And SF has changed/changing…much like East Village and WeHo.
Listen, for 5,000 years gays have been making gayborhoods just to have young, wealthy straight couples move in and take over the place…so we start a new one.
I mean, since the beginning, when Gork said to his life partner Mok “I LOVE this cave! Low T-Rexs, close to the rock mines, has a wonderful fire pit. We’ll draw some pictures on the wall, it will look great!”
And as soon as they were done, some straight caveman couple came buy and said “Look what Gork and Mok did, like, drag wife and children here”
And so…Gork and Mok thinks “yeah…it’s best, we should probably find a cave farther away from the volcano”
AzLights
I hate to break the news to you, but not every damn space on the planet has to be child-friendly. The world does not revolve around parents and children, so parents can just get over it. If parents have issues with CSF, then leave the kids at home with a sitter or person they trust. So tired of all the family-friendly BS.
PinkoOfTheGange
@Tham I noticed that there is a middle step.
Str8 Makie moves in to the gayborhood because it is now safe, and then has some cave-frat-boy drag her to her place and not go back to his Fratcave
calpoidog
@CastleSF You purport to live in SF but confuse Folsom with the Castro Street Fair? How’s that even possible? I haven’t been to Castro since I moved from the Bay Area but even back in the day I only went once or twice cause I was bored out of my mind by booth after booth to tacky “crafts” which were the same booth at the Union Street Fair and every other neighborhood fair in SF.
Perhaps you’re being judgy without even ever having been to one of these? Even Folsom Street is pretty tame compared with how it used to be…now Dore Alley is another story (though I’ve never been and I’m pretty certain children don’t attend either).
Geez, I pine for the days when you could walk down Castro and see a dildo in a store window or jock straps in another. Now it’s just Starbucks and Walgreens and nothing original. Sad.
calpoidog
Yeah, it was never as great as all that. Maybe the people who attended were sometimes worth watching but all in all it was pretty boring.
CastleSF
Seriously? Dildos and jock straps in store windows? Do you have any sense of public decorum? I am not against those and other bedroom items but there should be some discretion and they should not be seen by children.
Riverhog
I lived here from 1980 to 2010 and to be up front and honest it sadden me to see how the gay community has just given up and lost their place in this city and personally I feel we will never see the Glory Days of the Gay Community ever again. We have let the straights in and they have taken over and kicked us out but it not totaly their faults – we -THE GAYS let it and we have no real leaders to stand up for us. Went thru the AIDS period and lost so many good friends who was the rock of the community and the younger generation who lives here does not know what we went thru and faught for. They are placent and lost the will to bge united they want the world to be all the same and dull and boring as the bars are the gay events are and to be honest there is NO REAL GAY OR LEATHER COMMUNITY here San Francisco anymore the community is nothing but a bunch of sheep going no where.
I moved back here after being away for 8 years and this city and gay community is disgusting. Yes we may have done a lots wrong and we may show dildos or totys in the window well Boys and Girls this is 2018 not 1918 if, these things bother you get a FUCKING LIFE AND AND FOR THE GAY COMMUNITY GROW SOME BALLS AND BE ONE AND BE UNITIED AS WE USE TO BE THRU THE 80’S ONLY THE LGB COMMUNITY CAN MAKE THE CHANGES THAT NEEDED.
Sorry guys I do not feel the transgenders are part of the community and that part of the reason we are in the boat we are we add ever tom dick and harry to out group.
Thaqt my take onb this matter and it is disgusting to walk in San Francisco and see drug being done under the eyes of the cops on Market Street or members of the community being mugged and robbed and nothing being done . The community used to march and protest for what we want but now we roll over and hide out heads in the sand. WE GOT WHAT WE DESERVE AND WE HAVE LOST EVERYTHING BECAUSE WE HAVE NO TRUE LEADERS .
Heywood Jablowme
How many children live in San Francisco nowadays, maybe 5 or 6?
chris33133
This is ever the story of gentrification, in all of its guises: take the exotic, the shocking, and the non-decorous; homogenize it all; and leave it all boring blah.
Geeker
Don’t you pretty much have to be wealthy to even afford stepping foot in San Francisco now?
Canuck4Life
YES lol, housing prices are astounding according to a friend who lives there.
ChrisK
Yes you do haave to be well off to live there. The average one bedroom apartment starts at 3500/month and that would just get you a shithole. Forget about owning a home unless you got a million to spare.
I think that has more to do with CSF changing more than anything.
prarie pup
Everybody I know who still lives in San Francisco earns over $175,000 per year and even they are struggling financially because the cost of living is so far beyond ridiculous I can’t come up with a descriptive enough word. I know people who’d lived there for 25+ years but had to move away because their rents (literally) quadrupled.
Canuck4Life
Its not gentrification for neighborhoods to evolve with its citizens. San Francisco fairs like this one are changing because of changing demographics and unwillingness by the gay community to support and promote tbem.
ChrisK
I’m just glad I got it the opportunity to live there back in the late 90s. Of course it was very expensive even then. The days of San Francisco being a Haven for some young guy with next-to-nothing are very far from over.
CastleSF
Sadly it is true. Not many people can afford raising a child or two in this city. The silver lining is, most restaurants you go to, you don’t see crying babies or parents yelling at kids.
WindsorOntario
It’s complicated as it relates to gay neighbourhoods that were once places that a single gay man could move to at age 18, work a minimum wage job and live there for decades. The gay community itself has done a great job at pricing out its own members who aren’t holding multiple post-graduate degrees and/or white collar jobs. Those who didn’t have what it takes to be successful and wealthy have been told to go back to the small towns they came from.
The gay male community’s problem is one of perfectionism: gotta look perfect, gotta be under a certain age, gotta be over a certain income, gotta have expensive things or else you’re worthless. And if we made up more than 2-4% of society, there’d be more places for us to go and find whatever niche to fit into within the community. But even in big cities theres’ only so many gay guys there. And unfortunately the only big cities that have a sizeable gay neighbourhood are also successful, affluent, overpriced places that many of us can cross off our lists. I don’t put the blame on straight gentrification, I put it mostly on the gay elite who have turned affordable housing in most central cities and gay areas into their own private country clubs for themselves and their rich friends.
Aires the Ram
@WindsorOntario: I couldn’t agree with you more. Not only do “they” view themselves at the ‘elites’, they are also extremely demeaning and discriminatory to those gay folks whom they view as less successful (read rich & connected), than they think they are. The “gay community” came up after WWII and grew exponentially in the late 60’s & 1970’s, and had a good run up into the mid 90’s. After that, the ‘so-called’ elites retreated off into their own little ghettos, so that they didn’t have to associate with the unclean, meaning the rest of the gay/lesbian community at large. They gay meccas once drew gay folks from practically every ‘Hooterville’ in the United States, so they could be themselves, experience freedom for the first time in their lives, and join together to fight and lobby for our right to be treated equally. Once money and status became an issue as more and more gay men graduated from liberal/socialist teaching of major Universities, the elitism began, thus the separation. It’s a wonder there are any “gay places” left at all because of the actions of what is actually a small minority. I don’t blame the straights, the city councils, any particular Presidential administration or political party, I blame the nasty rich queens, They got the gay community at large to run off into their respective little corners and got them to pointing fingers at one another. The gay movement begun so long ago has made much progress, it’s a shame to see it end so very badly.
rbernard
Life in San Francisco has forever changed. When my lover (now husband) and I moved there in 1982, the gay community was concentrated around the Castro, because it was safe place for gay folks to be. If you were gay, It was one of the few places in the country that had a real functional neighborhood with gay bars, restaurants, and businesses and thousands and thousands of gay men. In those days, men wore their hair short, had mustaches, wore tight T-shirts, and Levi button fly 501 jeans. The Castro was a vibrant bustling gay community with our own fairs and our marches often began there. Politicians of every stripe came from all around specifically to courted us for our votes. Gay folks from all over the country moved to San Francisco to be a part of it. It was so easy to get laid. Eventually the entire city became immersed with gay people and our community gained growing political capital and acceptance. As we became more accepted and the Castro became more crowded, gay people moved into the surrounding neighborhoods, furthering acceptance throughout the city. I think we were almost too successful, because as our community eventually spread throughout the city and as the rents went through the roof, we spread into the adjacent towns and communities. What that did was break a dynamic, a concentration of gay enchantment in the Castro, that we saw in the late 1970s and 1980s. In the early 1980s, when you would stand at Castro and Market Street, there used to be 50 plus men standing to cross. By 1990, that number was cut in half, and by the year 2000, it was cut in half again. As a young man in my 20s, before the plague, it was a spellbinding time. I neglected to mention the HIV plague that swept through our community in the 1980s and took so many of the best of our tribe and extinguished an era that was forever lost and the answer to this story’s headline is yes, it was lost to assimilation.
CastleSF
I like what San Francisco is these days. You don’t think about being gay and it is very mainstream and metropolitan. What you remember about the 70s and 80s is just nightmarish. I can’t never understand why men would dress themselves in such a groteque way, that thick mustache, tight shorts looks and preoccupied with sex and doing drugs. Yes the rents are a bit high in the city but if you have a good job, you can easily manage and still go out to nice restaurants and high end wine bars.