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Gay Bar, Castro District
The Castro gained national attention as a center for gay culture in the mid 1970s but the community's roots can be traced back much farther. The Gold Rush newspapers wrote of "Lavender Cowboys" in the booming city consisting of mostly young males. Alice B. Toklas was born here in 1877 and Laura deForce Gordon declared herself a "lover of her own sex" in a book dated 1879. The first gay bar, 'The Dash' opened in 1908. By the 1920s the speakeasy, Finocchio's was providing female impersonators as entertainment and in 1930 the first gay bathhouses opened.

In the 1940s the military homosexual purges during WWII also contributed when many servicemen and women serving in the South Pacific were dismissed in San Francisco where many chose to remain. The 1960s saw the first national lesbian conference and the first openly gay man to run for office in the country. In 1972 the city banned gay discrimination in municipal employment and later that year the first Gay Day parade is held. Today it is estimated that there are 100,000 gay men and lesbians residing in San Francisco.
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