SAN FRANCISCO — Cleve Jones has lived in the Castro neighborhood for nearly 50 years, almost since he graduated high school in Phoenix and hitchhiked to California.
He was a political and cultural leader, organizing gay men and lesbians when the AIDS epidemic ravaged these streets in the early 1980s. He created the nationally recognized AIDS Memorial Quilt from a storefront on Market Street. He was the face of the anger and grief that engulfed de Castro in 1978 after the murder of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to the board of trustees.
mr. Jones helped define de Castro, dancing seven nights a week in gay bars when he was younger, hanging out with friends for drinks and gossip when he got older. To this day, he is recognized when he walks the sidewalks. “Hello Cleve, I know who you are,” said San Francisco Police Department Lieutenant Amy Hurwitz, after Mr. Jones began to introduce himself.
But in May, Mr. Jones, 67, moved into a small house with a yard and apple and peach trees 75 miles away in Sonoma County after the monthly cost of his one-bedroom apartment jumped from $2,400 to $5,200.
His story is not just another story of an old resident priced on a gentrifying housing market. Across the country, LGBTQ neighborhoods in major cities — including New York, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco — are experiencing a confluence of social, cultural and economic factors accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, diminishing their influence and visibility. In a few cases, some LGBTQ leaders say, the very survival of the neighborhoods themselves is threatened.
“I walk through the neighborhood that has encouraged me for decades, and I see the memories of Harvey and the Rainbow Honor Walk, which famously celebrates gay and transgender people,” said Mr. Jones as he took a visitor on a tour of his old neighborhood, pointing on empty storefronts and sidewalks. “I just can’t help but think there will soon be a time when people walking up and down the street have no idea what this is all about.”
Housing costs are an important reason for this. But there are also other factors.
LGBTQ couples, especially younger ones, start families and consider more traditional features — public schools, parks and larger homes — when deciding where to live. The appeal of gayborhoods as a haven for previous generations seeking to escape discrimination and harassment is less necessary today, reflecting the increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians. And dating apps have for many replaced the gay bar as a place that leads to a relationship or a sexual encounter.
Many gay and lesbian leaders said this could be a lengthy realignment, an unexpected product of the success of a gay rights movement, including the Supreme Court’s recognition of same-sex marriage in 2015, which has pushed for equal rights and mainstreaming. society.
Few places show this transformation more than in the Castro, long a barometer of the evolution of gay and lesbian life in America. It’s a place where same-sex couples fill the streets, sidewalks, bars and restaurants in protest and celebration while LGBTQ people in other cities lead secluded lives.
It was the scene for some of the first glimpses of the modern gay rights movement in the late 1960s; the rise of the political establishment with the election of openly gay officials such as Mr. milk; and the community’s strong response to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
“Gayborhoods are disappearing,” said Mr. Jones. “People need to pay attention to this. When people are scattered, when they no longer live in geographical concentrations, when they no longer live in specific areas, we lose a lot. We are losing political power. We lose the ability to choose ours and defeat our enemies.”
Cynthia Laird, the news editor of The Bay Area Reporter, a San Francisco-based LGBTQ newspaper, said she was reminded of this transformation every time she walked through the neighborhood.
“I wanted to take a picture of people walking on the rainbow crosswalk on the corner of Castro and 18th Street and no one was walking,” she said. “The Castro and San Francisco have changed a lot in the past 25 years. We’ve seen a lot of LGBTQ people move from San Francisco to Oakland – where I live – and even further into the East Bay.”
Jones’ departure has shaken gay neighborhoods across the country, all the more so as it happened during the annual pride celebrations that mark the rise of the LGBTQ movement since New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar. in June 1969.
“What I see in Houston is that we are losing our history,” said Tammi Wallace, the president of the Greater Houston LGBT Chamber of Commerce, who lives in Montrose, the city’s gay neighborhood. “A lot of individuals and couples say, ‘We can move to different parts of the city and know we’re going to be accepted.'”
Daniel B. Hess, a professor of urban planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the co-author of a book on the evolution of gay neighborhoods, said U.S. census data over the past three decades showed a decline in density. of same-sex couples in Chelsea and Greenwich Village in New York City, Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, West Hollywood in Los Angeles County, and the Castro, which he called “America’s premier gay neighborhood.”
“Gay men move out of gay neighborhoods,” he said. “They are settling in other city districts and nearby suburbs. And non-LGBTQ people move in and take away the concentration in gay neighborhoods.”
dr. Hess said some of this was generations. The men and women who founded these neighborhoods “wanted to get divorced and be surrounded by gay people,” he said. “If you ask today’s young people what they want, they prefer an inclusive coffee shop. They don’t want anyone to feel unwelcome.”
Some gay leaders argued that the instinct to live in communities of like-minded people remained a strong pull and that there would always be some version of a gayborhood, though perhaps not as concentrated and powerful.
“I say this as a gay man: it’s nice to live in a community where there are a lot of other queer people, where I can go out and walk down the street to a gay bar,” said Scott Wiener, a California state. senator who lives in the Castro. “Where I can walk two blocks to get an HIV and STI test in a clinic that won’t judge me.”
“We need to be very conscious about protecting these neighborhoods — and keeping them queer,” he said. “Having said that, I also believe that the Castro is very strong and has very deep LGBTQ roots.”
These changes follow a similar pattern in American history: immigrants settle ethnic neighborhoods to escape discrimination and build community ties, but those enclaves lose their distinction and energy as succeeding generations move to suburbs that have become more welcoming.
In this case, it is also a story of gentrification, economic cycles and social change. Gay men and women have moved to relatively downtrodden neighborhoods, like the Castro and Montrose, to refurbish them. Once housing costs get too high, residents and younger generations have moved to another downtrodden neighborhood.
In New York City, that meant a shift from Greenwich Village to Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen; in the Los Angeles area, a migration from West Hollywood to neighborhoods like Silver Lake. But the moves are further off track this time.
“I know a lot of new gay dads who live in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill,” two Brooklyn neighborhoods, said Corey Johnson, a former New York City Council speaker who is gay and lives in Greenwich Village. “They are not traditional gay neighborhoods. Schools are better. It’s more affordable. And you have more space.”
Mr Johnson argued that this had in fact led to an increase in openly gay and lesbian members of the city council. But other LGBTQ leaders said there was a real danger in this kind of diaspora.
“I think it’s important that we have spaces where we can walk around, hold hands and maybe share a quick kiss and not be too concerned,” said Tina Aguirre, the manager of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. “We need to live in queer neighborhoods. It’s just not as urgent as it was in the ’80s and ’90s.”
On a beautiful June afternoon, gay rainbow flags fluttered up and down Castro Street as Mr. Jones walked past memories of an earlier era. A landmark for parades and protests for decades, the Castro Theater is reopening after a lengthy closure forced by Covid-19. Mostly men drank in bars and some sex shops were open. At one point, a completely naked man casually walked past on the sidewalk.
“I think he’s also trying to keep the neighborhood gay,” Mr. Jones said.
Mr. Jones stopped by the storefront where Mr. Milk owned a camera shop. In 1979, Mr. Jones lived two houses away and watched from his apartment as police raided protesters on Castro Street following the mild-tempered statements made against Dan White, a former supervisor, for the murders of Mr Milk and George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco. “On the night of the White Night riots, when the police counterattacked, we were there on the fire escape, watching the chaos,” said Mr. Jones.
Mr. Milk, who had been evicted from his shop on Castro Street, later moved his camera shop to Market Street. That was the space Mr. Jones used for the AIDS quilting project. It is now a restaurant.
Mr. Jones isn’t happy to leave this corner of San Francisco, but said he had little choice. He had lived in his apartment in Castro for 11 years before his landlord claimed he forfeited his rent control protection by moving to Sonoma County, effectively forcing him to double his rent by more than doubling his rent. He said he enjoyed escaping his home in Guerneville, but considered himself a city dweller from the day he arrived here from Phoenix as a teenager.
“Everything good in my life comes from this neighborhood,” he said.