Posted on 10/30/2007 3:09:58 PM PDT by neverdem
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24 — This Halloween, 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. The city’s most popular Halloween party, in America’s largest gay neighborhood, is canceled.
The once-exuberant street party, a symbol of sexual liberation since 1979 has in recent years become a Nightmare on Castro Street, drawing as many as 200,000 people, many of them costumeless outsiders, and there has been talk of moving it outside the district because of increasing violence. Last year, nine people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the celebration.
For many in the Castro District, the cancellation is a blow that strikes at the heart of neighborhood identity, and it has brought soul-searching that goes beyond concerns about crime.
These are wrenching times for San Francisco’s historic gay village, with population shifts, booming development, and a waning sense of belonging that is also being felt in gay enclaves across the nation, from Key West, Fla., to West Hollywood, as they struggle to maintain cultural relevance in the face of gentrification.
There has been a notable shift of gravity from the Castro, with young gay men and lesbians fanning out into less-expensive neighborhoods like Mission Dolores and the Outer Sunset, and farther away to Marin and Alameda Counties, “mirroring national trends where you are seeing same-sex couples becoming less urban, even as the population become slightly more urban,” said Gary J. Gates, a demographer and senior research fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles.
At the same time, cities not widely considered gay meccas have seen a sharp increase in same-sex couples. Among them: Fort Worth; El Paso; Albuquerque;...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How could they leave off Provincetown from that map and whatsamatter, couldn’t they line up a beer sponsor this time?
Where the Godless freaks and hippies gather violence soon follows. It’s always been that way.
The NYC one is always fun.
Gays resent how mainstream they’ve become, even though that’s what they were pushing for (supposedly).
What the hell is happening to Texas???
Out in the west Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican boy...
Sorry, Marty.
}:-)4
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Dallas I’d believe. But Fort Worth?
El Paso????? What about Austin?
This makes sense. I’ve read up on the Castor distict - it was originally below the line where black people were allowed to live so housing was cheap and attracted artists...
Now, in town prices are sky rocketing so its not cheap any more.
Yeah, I’d give you Austin.
Good data for anyone looking to start up a chain of AIDS clinics.
That's not what's doing it in this case - it's young black thugs from Oakland and Richmond bringing their gang violence to the Castro, although local media is too politically correct to properly identify the perpetrators. San Francisco is closing the 16th and Mission BART station at 8:30 pm solely in the hope that those types won't ride across the Bay and get off there. A better strategy would be to take advantage of the situation by leaving the station open and having twenty SWAT teams there waiting to run warrant checks on everybody who gets off the train. ;)
Every day is Halloween in Deathocratland
NYT bias.
Interesting how the NYT kind of omits the whole dying from STD’s
Interesting if we just generously average ALL those numbers at roughly 28,000 and divide by 300 million the percentage is .000093! ...and that is being WAAAAAAY over generous with the 28,000!
So a sexual recreational behavior has the special attention of the NYT.
...all the news thats fit to print. The grey lady is truly dead.
Bump. Homosexuality is bad, but the Castro District people aren’t the ones causing this violence in their own community. It is people out to target ‘queers.’
FW, I believe the Bass brothers might not endorse that and nothing happens in FW without their say.
I would have thought that most gays would be able to afford to stay there. Given their prominence in high-powered fields like media & entertainment arts & their (usually) childless lifestyle, they would have more than enough income.
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