Along with The Sailor Boy, there were other bars with nautical names like The Castaways (90 Market), The Ensign Café (1 Market Street), The Admiral Bar (first at 198, later 144 Embarcadero) and The Sea Cow (109 Steuart). And in 1937 (one year after the Bay Bridge opened) the first queer bar, The Sailor Boy Tavern, opened on 24 Howard Street (it would stay open till 1953).Ī connection to sailors was natural because of the docks, and lasted till the 1960s.
Before Harry Hay formed The Mattachine Society, he and actor Will Geer came to town for the General Strike on the docks in 1934. The waterfront was a rough working class neighborhood with a produce market that had both a lesbian bar (The Front, 600 Front) and a railroad (the San Francisco Belt Railroad). The start of the Pride Parade has a secret - and it's hidden! The downtown assembly area on the waterfront is among the oldest LGBT neighborhoods in the city, and there is barely a trace of it left.