they have to take you in.”
— Robert Frost
The straight takeover of San Francisco was made all too clear last month when Castro Street had to cancel its annual Halloween parade.
And if you examine the photo at left you’ll understand why. Yes, it’s a gay bar. And yes, it’s crammed wall-to wall with straight people
“The Glindas, gladiators and harem boys of the Castro — along with untold numbers who plan to dress up as Senator Larry E. Craig, this year’s camp celebrity — will be celebrating behind closed doors,” reported the New York Times, citing the decision to disband the parade as a wrenching moment of “soul-searching” that struck “a blow at the heart of neighborhood identity.”
It is a decision that is coming to symbolize the dismantling of the great gay ghettos throughout America — what the press used to call “Gay Meccas,” those insular enclaves where men could walk down the street carelessly holding hands, or slobber over each other in the hellish light coming from some leather bar as they made out on the sidewalk. (A world lovingly imagined — but wildly, cartoonishly overdrawn — in the American version of Queer as Folk, below) (more…)
