(You know, the one who made you watch Nashville and taught you to inhale.) Cozy inside and breezy out back, Wild Side West is ideal for a hot toddy on a dreary evening or a blueberry mojito in the summer.
The original owners repurposed them into planters but boarded up the front, “which is why there are no street-facing windows today.”Įxuding comfort, the décor looks like your eccentric aunt’s living room. While definitely a home for women-loving women, this 50-year-old institution could perhaps best be described as “plurality lesbian,” because these days, it’s for everyone.Īlthough the bar and the neighborhood feel spiritually inseparable, bartender Beth Kenny noted that when this location opened in 1977, locals threw toilets through the windows. San Francisco’s hilltop urban village has a reputation as a lesbian aerie, a distinction cemented by Cortland Avenue’s Wild Side West. Second and fourth Sunday afternoons mean “Shot in the City,” a beer bust with a photo booth where all the pics wind up on Facebook and everyone marvels at how sexy you look and wishes they’d been there to make out with you. While having more than a dozen beers on tap might jeopardize its dive status, The Cinch establishes its cred with the bizarre nudes on the walls, including an image of a lion topping a man. People tried to bowdlerize it into “Polk Village,” but that never took off, so the name and history vanished - such that Yelp, for instance, lists The Cinch’s location as Nob Hill.īut it’s still Polk Street. Polk Gulch was the epicenter of the hustler universe until all that disappeared. on game days, so you can watch football like they do in real America. Is this a Saturday night bar? No, but $2 beers on Tuesdays beckon.
Bathe in the redness or sit window side to gawk at the gawkers who come to marvel at the Haight.
You might even call it a fantasia en rouge: from the bar itself to the lighting to the felt on the pool table to the stools that all fill up before the booths do. In contrast to the area’s street culture, Trax is pleasantly subdued, with a broad mix of folks, from tattooed dykes to middle-aged guys in corduroy hats they made themselves - and it’s heavy on the regulars. When, to accommodate this request, the bartender produces several with little effort, you know you’re in the Haight’s only LGBT watering hole. “Do you have a glitter pen I could borrow to make a sign?” While they all share a welcoming atmosphere you won’t easily find in a club, each retains its charms and quirks. As gay rights win, gay culture sometimes loses - and often, these spaces go unremembered, written off as frivolous or incidental to the “real” fights.įolsom Street has lost its dens of iniquity and people have lamented the Castro’s homogeneity for decades, but across San Francisco, the neighborhood dives live on - albeit, perhaps tenuously. With the closure of the Deco Lounge, San Francisco waved good-bye to a fourth gay bar in two years. Like the fast-disappearing bookstore, the institution of the gay bar is in peril, a victim of the acceptance of LGBT people in mainstream society as well as of the easy availability of online hookups. But there are gay bars across a wide swath of this gay city.Īt least for now. San Francisco’s reputation as one of the gayest places in North America rests primarily on one neighborhood: the Castro. We celebrate the free-wheeling spirit of the city. The Bold Italic is an online magazine, shop, and events hub in San Francisco. This story is brought to you by the great people over at the Bold Italic.