Why every LGBTQ person should visit San Francisco at least once in their lives
As Attitude discovered one sun-drenched weekend in September 2025, San Francisco's countercultural spirit is still going strong
Three generations of beer-swilling men are gathered around a table at San Francisco’s Twin Peaks Tavern gay bar, their heads thrown back as they guffaw. The trio are made up of a pretty, techy-looking twink, a beardy, outdoorsy thirtysomething, and a handsome older gentleman whose smile carries the contentment of someone who has spent decades in a city where he can be himself. It’s a portrait of queer continuity I’m not used to.
My mind briefly wanders to predictable places – ‘Perhaps they’re a throuple?’ But the dynamic doesn’t seem sexual; rather, they come across like family members. Their energy matches the ambiance of the rest of the tiny pub on the Saturday night I stop by, with its warm wood panelling and stained-glass lamps emitting an amber glow.
San Francisco’s buzzy Castro gaybourhood
The most beloved watering hole in San Francisco’s buzzy Castro gaybourhood, all the more valued for narrowly avoiding closure during Covid-19, Twin Peaks opened in 1972 under the stewardship of lesbians Mary Ellen Cunha and Peggy Forster. Their decision that year to remove the bar’s blacked-out windows – to let the world look in – was a radical, unprecedented political act back then. Today, it is our collective LGBTQ+ community’s “local”, while San Francisco is our place of pilgrimage.
The city’s origins as a gay capital date back to the Second World War, when it served as a major Pacific naval port: sailors were discharged here for being gay, or suspected of it, and rather than return home, where they’d potentially face stigma, many chose to stay.
The Castro neighbourhood hot spots
Another rite of passage here is catching a movie at Castro Theatre, where the premiere for Oscar-winning Harvey Milk biopic Milk was held (telling the story of the gay rights pioneer who was one of the US’s first elected publicly gay officials and was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978).
Built in 1922 and famed for its opulent blend of Spanish Colonial Revival and Art Deco design (the jazzy neon sign outside lives rent-free in my gay head), the theatre is closed for a $41m renovation when I come to town. Critics may fear the venue’s new corporate owners could taint its legacy by turning it into an entertainmentplex, but a 20-night residency for Sam Smith slated for February 2026 bodes well.
The Castro pulsates with queer-owned businesses and cultural centres, as well as decades-old queer hotspots — The Edge bar is a leather-leaning classic, while the wraparound balcony of The Lookout bar, restaurant and nightclub is perfect for people-watching.
On Stretchy Pants’ Castro & Mission Food Tour, we discover Hot Cookie, a gourmet biscuit shop famed for cheeky, penis-shaped treats, and we later pass the GLBT Historical Society Museum, where, on a previous visit, I spotted a copy of Attitude.
Exploring San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ history
But speaking to San Francisco’s status as the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement – the trans-led Compton’s Cafeteria Riot of 1966 preceded Stonewall by three years and took place in the Tenderloin district – many of the city’s most significant queer landmarks lie beyond the Castro. Nightclub The EndUp, for example, immortalised in Looking, anchors the SoMa district, while nearby Folsom Street hosts the annual BDSM-centred Folsom Street Fair, where the city grants event-specific exemptions to allow public nudity and consensual kink demonstrations. Meanwhile, the oldest gay bar in the US, the White Horse Inn, established in 1933, sits across the Bay in neighbouring Oakland, connected by the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
For tourist information, visit San Francisco Travel. British Airways flies from London Heathrow to San Francisco International Airport (shout out to SFO’s therapy dog programme, The Wag Brigade) from £489 return, including taxes and carrier fees. Book flights via the official British Airways website.
This is an excerpt from a feature appearing in Attitude’s January/February 2026 issue.
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