The City Whispered Us In

A Pride Parade taking place Market Street in San Francisco.

Maybe our youth in San Francisco was just as brutal—we just didn’t recognize the scars. No social media, no digital breadcrumbs. And to be gay? That was still a tightrope walk—half liberation, half secret-keeping.

So many things I didn’t know. So many I chose not to. Back then, I couldn’t picture life beyond 25.

We gathered, night after night, in the glow of places like The Pendulum, Midnight Sun, The Stud, El Rio—little altars of belonging. The Haight was a no-go—skinheads made sure of that—except when the I-Beam called us, and dancing felt like communion.

The Tenderloin was taboo. “Don’t go,” they warned. “You’ll get robbed. Or worse.” So naturally, we went. Into pitch-dark bars to find one night stand trouble, scandalous theaters with live male revues, and bathhouses that pulsed with an unspoken rhythm.

Come sunrise, we retreated to sanctuaries: Zim’s, Sparky’s, Church Street Café, the always-lively Grubstake on Polk, and that donut shop on 18th and Castro, where pale, wiry boys hustled for cash or crullers.

A block from the Motherland—the Castro—Collingwood climbed past 19th, then leveled at Eureka Playground. After 2 a.m. when the bars closed, boys leaned against its cold stone wall while men idled in cars nearby. They took us home. Or to the 21st Street Baths, parading us like trophies beneath tired fluorescent lights.

For open-air rendezvous, we had the Windmills at Ocean Beach, Dolores Park near the Mission, and Buena Vista Park—rising above 17th at Ashbury like a secret in the trees. Wild, feral, alluring—for those who preferred bark underfoot and danger in the dark.

When the fog held its breath and the wind forgot to bite, stars glittered above Buena Vista’s summit. The Big Dipper hovered low. Crickets chirped like broken metronomes, their songs echoing down the hillsides. Cars circled quietly below. And in the brush, men whispered nonsense—crooning, murmuring, calling out to be seen.