Gay neighborhoods worry about losing identity

updated 6:50 p.m. ET March 12, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO - In just about any other place, the sight of a man and woman pushing a stroller would be welcomed as a sign of stability and safety. In San Francisco's heavily gay Castro District, some people can't help but think: There goes the neighborhood.

Gay leaders in the Castro and other gay neighborhoods around the country fear their enclaves are losing their distinct identities.

These areas are slowly being altered by an influx of heterosexual couples, the forces of gentrification, and growing confidence among gays that they can live pretty much wherever they want nowadays and do not need the security of being in a "gay ghetto."

"What I've heard from some people is, 'We don't need the Castro anymore because essentially San Francisco is our Castro,'" said Don Romesburg, co-chairman of the GLBT Historical Society, a group that represents gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals.

For decades, most big cities have had a district that was understood to be the place to go if you were gay — the West Village and Chelsea in New York City, Dupont Circle in Washington, the South End in Boston. Men and women who had kept their sexual orientations hidden reveled in the freedom to live openly as gay.

AIDS no longer a stigma
Don Reuter, a New York writer researching a book on the rise and fall of gay neighborhoods in the U.S., said he has observed a trend in cities as far-flung as New Orleans, Philadelphia and Seattle: Gay neighborhoods are becoming "Disneyfied" places, with chain stores and other businesses with little or no overt appeal to gays.

"What makes these neighborhoods gay? Not much," he concluded.

As the fear of AIDS has eased, gay neighborhoods have become attractive to developers and investors trying to encourage families and empty-nesters to return to city centers, Reuter said.

Besides the brigades of baby strollers in the Castro, ominous signs include the security gates installed last year by a hotel to discourage "cruising," and the recent closing of a store that sold erotic leather gear. National chains like Pottery Barn and Diesel now occupy prominent Castro locations.

In addition, a sex toys shop that had posters from gay porn movies in the window and an antiques store that had a naked male statue were asked last year to tone down their displays. They grudgingly obliged.

Rising rents force some out
Several nonprofit agencies serving the gay community in the Castro have also moved out because of rising rents. Meanwhile, 500 new apartments and condominiums are planned for the area, and half of them have been designated "family housing."

"When I see a stroller now, I see it as someone who evicted a person with AIDS, right or wrong," said longtime community leader Brian Basinger, president of the Harvey Milk Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transsexual Democratic Club.

No one is suggesting that the Castro has been overrun by heterosexuals just yet.

The neighborhood has the nation's second-highest concentration of same-sex couples, behind the Cape Cod resort of Provincetown, Mass., according to analysis of 2000 census figures. And San Francisco as a whole is still America's unofficial gay capital, with gays making up 15 percent of the population.

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