Until 1848, the San Francisco Bay Area was only a tiny village at the outer reaches of Mexico’s California province. But the discovery of gold in northern California changed San Francisco overnight. Over 300,000 would-be gold seekers came from all across the world and more than 90 percent of the City’s residents were men. The sleepy port village instantly became a cosmopolitan, expensive and attractive city.
A City of Men
Concepts of homosexuality had not yet been invented and all sexual intimacies outside of marriage were sinful but during the gold rush, “the preservation of virtue and dignity was a struggle as dispiriting as a San Francisco hill,” according to Lipsky, author of Gay and Lesbian San Francisco. “With few women in the city and even fewer in the mining camps, men undoubtedly turned to each other for comfort of all kinds.”
Many would-be gold seekers traveled to California by clipper ships. The sea voyage from New York to San Francisco typically took about 4 to 12 months. Lipsky said that sex between seafarers was so common that it had its own name – boom cover trade – which referred to the physical intimacy sailors shared with each other under the tarps that protected ship’s masts. As San Francisco lacked infrastructure, boardinghouses, saloons, gambling clubs, public baths were always packed with men. They lived in extremely close proximity with each other, often sharing rooms, beds and blankets. According to Lipsky, female companionship was available but it cost $4,000 to $8,000 per night in today’s dollars. As there were almost no women, some men agreed to “fill women’s roles” by becoming the dancing partners of other men at clubs and bars.
New World New Norm
The gold rush attracted a transient population of young men who were less likely to conform to social and sexual rules and regulations in a newly built San Francisco city than in their hometowns. Lipsky said sex between men was a sin but “some kinds of sinfulness became irrelevant among at least some of the miners.”
Charles Warren Stoddard was a first important gay writer and author in San Francisco. Mark Twain moved to San Francisco in 1864 to work as a journalist and later wrote privately that Stoddard was “such a nice girl.”
Oscar Wilde famously said: “It’s an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the world.” He visited the Bay Area in 1882 to give a series of lectures about “The English Renaissance.” He made catch phrases such as “too utterly utter,” and “do you yearn?”
San Francisco during World War II
Since the gold rush, World War II had a huge impact on San Francisco’s gay community. Hundreds of thousands of people came to San Francisco to work in the war industries and many settled down in the Bay Area. They created a gay friendly neighborhood with bars, restaurants, shops, political and social organizations, and the nation’s first community center in South of the Slot, an area around Market Street and the Tenderloin.
San Francisco as the Gay Capital of the World
During the 1970s, a large number of gay people moved and started their own businesses on Castro Street at the upper end of Market Street.
A report by Alfred Kinsey in the early 1970s found: “San Francisco is generally considered the best city in the U.S. for homosexuals. It was partly due to the city’s “tradition of tolerance.” Another factor was the city’s size and geography, as it is smaller and less residentially dispersed than New York or Los Angeles, which made it “more conductive to a tightly knit homosexual community.”
“The Mayor of Castro Street”, Harvey Milk won election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 as the city’s first openly gay elected official. Today, the Castro has the highest per capita gay population in the world and is the center of local gay politics.
Sources:
GLBT Historical Society http://www.glbthistory.org/
Lipsky, William, Gay and Lesbian San Francisco, Arcadia Publishing, San Francisco, 2006
Stryker, Susan, et al, Gay by the Bay, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1996
Miki Garcia - Miki is a freelance writer from San Francisco. After obtaining her master’s degree in journalism from City University London, UK, ...
