Bay Area Reporter
The paper frequently promoted male competitions, including the 1975 Acme Beer-sponsored event.
The closing of Cafe Flore marked the end of another era last year in a way that all the other bar turnovers have not. And yet, there’s a bunch of queers still there, tracking their history and identity and organizing around it unapologetically like nowhere else. And it’s unclear what the Gen Z kids will think of the place as they fill cities like Orlando, Florida now the city with the 4th highest percentage of households of gay couples.
It may not be everything to every queer person, but it’s still a lot to the many queer communities who wouldn’t trade it. It’s home of The Stud, The Trocadero Transfer, Cafe Flore, Castro Street, Cockettes, Folsom, South of Market, Lesbian Coaches, Nob Hill Theater, Castro Clones, Harvey Milk, The AIDS Quilt, and to a sad degree AIDS. For many gay men it’s a lot of ghosts and sadness with not much taking it’s place. That said we know what opens the San Francisco Film Festival every year. When there is a really hot police officer in the Castro it became national news, Armistead Maupin even gave up on the folly of moving away and returned a few years ago