On Polk Street, a strip where the first San Francisco Gay Pride Parade took place in 1972, and was once home to 65 gay bars, peep shows, bathhouses, and hotels, only one gay bar, The Cinch, remains. This is especially true in San Francisco where there is only one gay bar left in the Tenderloin ( Aunt Charlie’s Lounge), the neighborhood where the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, the first recorded transgender riot in U.S. The reasons behind this mass exodus are complex-with more mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ lifestyles and cultures, such spaces are deemed less “necessary,” and yet they are still necessary for so many reasons, including the fact that these spaces represent a vital piece of our collective history and because progress doesn’t erase the need for safe havens of belonging. Over the past few years, gay bars and queer spaces have been disappearing in San Francisco and across the country at a depressing rate.
