Beyond the Castro: new maps reveal Pride’s forgotten history

For many LGBT San Franciscans, Pride exists primarily in the Castro, and the gayborhood indeed boasts a rich and robust history. But long ago, when the Castro was still a blue-collar neighborhood filled with straight families, there were vibrant queer communities in North Beach, the Tenderloin, and Polk Street. Those who equate Pride only with the Castro might need to take a closer look at these other neighborhoods, where dozens of gay bars and other kinds of queer businesses flourished long before Harvey Milk opened his camera store on Castro Street.
Shawn Sprockett, a gay San Francisco man, has just published two maps with which people can take a walk through these neighborhoods and see where these long-shuttered businesses existed. Sprockett, who also leads monthly tours of the neighborhoods, came to San Francisco by way of New York City. Previously he had lived in Florida, which he left in order to escape the state’s increasingly hostile anti-LGBT politics.

“In the last few years, as Florida continued to pass ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills, I realized that young people there are actually having a much worse time than I did when I came out in the state,” Sprockett said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “I feel incredibly privileged to live in a city and state that not only supports my rights, but provides me with countless resources to research queer history and empowers efforts like ‘Unspeakable Vice,’ my queer history walking tour project, which helps make this history more accessible to others.”

Cool cat
The first tour Sprockett led was his North Beach tour. The tour is about ninety minutes long and includes stops at the former location of the Black Cat Cafe, where during the 1950s the late and legendary Jose Sarria did drag shows and mentored many young gay men, often being the first person to tell them that it was okay to be gay. Also visited is a former lesbian supper club which was known as Miss Smith’s Tea Room back in the day and is now an Irish sports bar. The second tour covers the Tenderloin and Polk Street, where there were around 158 queer spaces. Two of those businesses remain today, Aunt Charlie’s Lounge and The Cinch.

“I’m fortunate to stand on the shoulders of giants in many ways,” Sprockett said. “Nan Alamilla Boyd’s book ‘Wide Open Town’ was the first text that introduced me to a world of queer spaces outside the Castro. She was thoughtful enough twenty years ago to leave all her book’s original notes in the GLBT Historical Society’s archive, whose archivists helped me find even more evidence and stories.”

And now Sprockett has created the maps as a supplement to his walking tours.

“Both maps highlight the lost bars of these neighborhoods,” he said. “For the North Beach One I created fictitious logos for the bars to make them come to life. I’m a graphic designer by trade so I was able to create period-matching designs. Most did not have logos like we’d expect today. They just had the printers in whatever publication stylize their name so it changed a lot. I include stories about each of the bars as a primer for the walking tour, the route of which is drawn in yellow.”

Map quest
The Tenderloin/Polk Street tour and map has been dubbed “Valley of the Queens.”

“For the ‘Valley of the Queens’ map, the challenge was quantity,” Sprockett said. “I worked from several old maps made in the 1970s as well as informal history efforts being done by groups. One Google map had a lot of contributors so I’m not sure who to thank, but they gave me enough clues to go on and confirm their existence. My version might be the most complete version ever as it amalgamates several others together. With more than 158 queer spaces documented, bars, bathouses, bookstores, etc, it might be a view of the densest concentration of queer spaces in the world.”

Sprockett spoke of why he created the maps.

“I actually did it because I often need artifacts to share online or in a presentation or as part of my promotional booth I created to explain the project at fairs and festivals,” he said. “The maps say a lot at a glance. While most of us would expect to see gay bars in the Castro, seeing a bunch of sites marked on unexpected streets tells the crux of the story, there’s more to San Francisco’s queer history than you know.”

Sprockett added that the response he’s been getting from people about the tours and about the maps has been largely positive.

“Younger people are especially receptive to the stories outside of the Castro because they’re inherently more ethnically diverse and highlight the contributions of trans and lesbian figures more distinctly,” he said. “The only times I encounter some resistance is from older gay white men who can have a very fixed view of the Castro that’s shaped by their own story and connection to the neighborhood. I don’t presume to correct such a personal relationship to the Castro. But I also don’t think it diminishes anyone’s love for the neighborhood to say it’s only part of a bigger story.

To book a tour with Sprockett, visit his website: https://www.unspeakablevice.tours/

The maps can be seen at his Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/unspeakable_vice/