Not to be confused with the eponymous bar named after the pair of hills below Sutro Tower, each year the northernmost hill acts as a canvas to a massive pink triangle, which is put up by volunteers every Saturday morning of Pride weekend.

The idea was dreamed up 24 years ago by Thomas Tremblay, Michael Brown, and local architect Patrick Carney.

”My friends and I were sitting in a restaurant on Market Street, wondering how we could spread the weekend’s festivities to other parts of the city,” Carney explained in a 2015 interview with Hoodline. “We noticed a huge blank canvas right outside the window: Twin Peaks. Just a few weeks later the pink triangle of Twin Peaks was born.”

The parish extended open arms throughout the HIV/AIDS crisis in San Francisco, offering weekly support groups and sermons throughout the ‘80s specifically for people of the LGBTQ community.

“The pastors at Glide Foundation and the church saw themselves as missionaries, who did the work important to those in the neighborhood,” notes Found SF. “This included working with gays, sex workers, ‘young chickens,’ youth, hippies, gangs, drug addicts, and others. Because the pastors saw themselves as missionaries...they listened to people to determine what the church needed to address.”

Today the church remains a choice place of worship for those who prefer less fire-and-brimstone and more fabulosity in their Sunday service. 

Created by Robert Bruce and Susan Martin, this powerful memorial, featuring granite pylon rising from the earth, honors the thousands of persecuted queer prisoners in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust—the only freestanding monument in the U.S. honoring them.

According to the artists:

“When we started we didn’t know exactly what the memorial would look like. We did not know it would be granite or how exactly the individual elements would sit on the site in relationship to each other. We did not know how tall they would be. We did not know how they would be installed. We talked, we listened, we learned.

It has always seemed very difficult to express anything about living and dying with a single object. Perhaps this is because none of us would be here without the collaboration between at least two people. The simple definition of collaboration is to work with others.”

Referred to by some as San Francisco’s “queer Smithsonian,” the society maintains an extensive archival collection of materials relating to the history of queerdom in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California. The museum in the Castro showcases this extensive history of LGBTQ life in the city from the 1850s to the present. 

Nurse and early AIDS activist Bobbi Campbell used the front window of this pharmacy to post a flyer in 1981 warning the community of “Gay Cancer”—because neither the local nor national government would sound the alarm—showing photos of lesions caused by Kaposi sarcoma (the rare cancer was found to be a result of HIV’s toll on the immune system).

Star Pharmacy closed in 1985, but the Walgreens across the street has erected a commemorative plaque in honor of Campbell and those who have been affected by HIV/AIDS.

The pharmacy was recreated (pictured here) in 2016 for the television series When We Rise.

Twin Peaks Tavern goes down in history as the first gay bar in America with windows, meaning patrons weren’t hidden from outside view. The windows allowed gays and lesbians to sip cocktails without shame while letting the sunshine and nightlife vibe in. 

Psst: The mezzanine floor table by the window is the best people-watching spot in the entire neighborhood, and the bathroom smells like the sweet treats wafting up from Hot Cookie.

The plaza in front of the Bank of America is the most spacious piece of sidewalk on Castro and, being on the east side of the street, it gets lots of sun in the afternoon. You’ll see people taking in the sun and dancing in front of the bank at all hours of the day, a tradition that started in the early 1980s. The corner is also the spot of protests and a beacon for activism.

Ken Joachim opened the world’s first store/museum dedicated to Barbra Streisand. “You know that song she sings, ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’?” Joachim told the New York Times in 1996. “That’s the attitude I took about this, and it took on a life of its own.” The glitzy little shrine featured, among other things, Streisand dummies, Streisand busts, Streisand oil paintings, Streisand bumper stickers, and Streisand refrigerator magnets. Sadly, after two years in business—and a no-show by Mrs. Arnstein herself—the store shuttered.

“I used to love this lady. I believed in her. I had respect for her. Not any more,” Joachim fumed to the SF Chronicle in 1998, adding, “I turn the radio off when they play one of her songs.”

The museum is now a Philz Coffee.

The historic theater opened June 22, 1922, and is the crown jewel of the neighborhood. It’s also home to the annual Frameline LGBT Film Festival, countless sing-alongs, and Peaches Christ’s iconic movie screenings.

Noted architect Timothy Pflueger designed the theater. Construction cost $300,000, which shakes out to approximately $4.3 million today. The Castro was Pflueger’s first theatre design. It is, arguably, the neighborhood’s most impressive standing structure.

Operated by Harvey Milk from 1972 to 1978, the store became the center of the neighborhood’s growing gay community. It was more than a camera shop in that it offered support to those who moved to and lived in San Francisco in search of freedom to openly express their sexual identity, and was also headquarters for Milk’s various campaigns for elected office. Later turned into a much-missed toiletry store, it is now the HRC’s San Francisco’s office.

Also of note: Milk lived above his camera store from 1975 until his death in 1978. The residence is now a historic landmark for the city of San Francisco.

Rough, casual, and sparsely decorated, the first gay bar in the Castro opened pre-Stonewall way back in 1963. Over the next few decades, approximately 30 more gay bars and shops opened around the Mule.

Since undergoing seven name changes—including the much-missed and sexually charged Detour—the bar is now the considerably more glammed up Beaux.

The Buddhist Hospice for those battling HIV/AIDS was opened in 1981 by former drag queen Reverend Isaan Dorsey (who died from the disease in 1990), but the Center still remains as an open and supportive community for people of all gender identities and sexual orientations to practice Buddhism or attend the occasional (free!) meditation class. 

The gorgeous Beaux-Arts at Civic Center has played host to some of the city’s highest and lowest moments in LGBTQ history. In 1978, Supervisor Dan White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Almost 30 years later, same-sex weddings took place between February 11 and March 11, 2004, after Mayor Gavin Newsom directed the city to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. 

The building’s facade also lights up in rainbow colors for the duration of Pride weekend.

In the summer of 1966, Vanguard Sweep was founded at Glide Church, a youth organization who, through street action, tried to bring together queer and transgendered youth of the city.

The first LGBTQ Pride was a riot.

Three years before the riots at Stonewall in New York City, there was the uprising at Compton Cafeteria. Compton’s management didn’t want the cafeteria to be a popular late-night hangout for drag queens, transgender women, and hustlers. Often workers would call police to harass the trans clientele. However, one night in August 1966, when a policeman grabbed a drag queen, she threw her coffee in the cop’s face.

Per NPR: “The cafeteria erupted...People flipped tables and threw cutlery. Sugar shakers crashed through the restaurant’s windows and doors. Drag queens swung their heavy purses at officers. Outside on the street, dozens of people fought back as police forced them into paddy wagons. The crowd trashed a cop car and set a newsstand on fire.”

The incident was one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots the country. Today the cafeteria is long gone, but the activism incited in the space reverberates to this day.

The Ambassador, a six-story, 134 room single room occupancy hotel in the Tenderloin, was managed by Henry Wilson, a queer activist, from 1978 until 1996. Without any public funding, Wilson and his crew cared for hotel residents, “about half of whom had AIDS,” according to a New York Times piece. He later helped create the Tenderloin AIDS Network.

The property was purchased by Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) in 2000, refurbished, and now provides low-income housing for area residents.