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  1906 – The Black Cat Café opens at Mason and Eddy shortly after the 1906 earthquake. It won’t be known as a gay bar until the 1940s.

• 1908 – Police close the Dash at 574 Pacific. In their report, the police claim that male customers were performing oral sex under the skirts of cross-dressing men who were dancing on the tabletops.
• April 10, 1910 – The Gangway, which remains open to this day, opens in the Tenderloin. Its claim to being the City’s first gay bar seems strong but is disputed; when the Old Crow closed in 1980 after 45 years, it claimed to be the City’s oldest gay bar.
• 1911 – Charles Ridley acquires the Black Cat and turns it into a vaudeville-style showcase. It’s not yet known as a homosexual hangout.
• October 1911 – The Gangway experiences its first raid for sexual activity.
• January 17, 1920 – The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bans the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages, is ratified on on January 16, 1919 and goes into effect on January 17, 1920.
• December 12, 1922 (or 1923) – José Julio Sarria, who is later known as the Widow Norton, is born.
• May 22, 1930 – Harvey Milk is born on Long Island in New York.
• 1933 – The City’s first two explicitly gay bathhouses, Jack’s Turkish Baths and Third Street Baths, open.
• December 5, 1933 – Prohibition is repealed with the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Black Cat Café reopens at 710 Montgomery Street before the end of the year.
• 1934 – Mona’s, the nation’s first lesbian bar, opens on Union Street. Waitresses and female performers wear tuxedos in contrast to many gay bars where women were expected to wear skirts.
• 1935 – The Old Crow opens at 962 Market Street. It closes in 1980, the last of the gay bars on the island where Market Street meets Turk that had also been home to the College Inn and Pirate’s Den.
• 1936 – Finocchio’s, known for its gender illusionist drag performances, moves to 506 Broadway.
• 1939 – Mona’s moves to 440 Broadway.
• 1940s – Sol Stoumen acquires the Black Cat in the 1940s. It becomes a hangout for the bohemian and Beat crowds and starts to attract a homosexual clientele, particularly after World War II when gay soldiers stay in the City rather than returning to their hometowns.
• 1946 – Mona’s moves to 140 Columbus Street.
• 1948 – Mona’s moves to 473 Broadway.
• 1950s – Jose Sarria, now working as a cocktail waiter at the Black Cat, begins performing in drag at the bar, becoming known as the Nightingale of Montgomery Street. To protect drag queens from being arrested for impersonating the opposite sex with the intent to deceive, he gets them to wear labels that said “I am a boy” to prove that they did not intend to deceive. At this point, San Francisco has at least 34 gay and lesbian bars.
• 1950 – The Nob Hill Club becomes the first gay bar in the Polk.
• 1951 – The Why Not opens at 518 Ellis, becoming the City’s first leather bar.
• August 28, 1951 – After the Black Cat’s liquor license is suspended in 1948 due to serving known homosexuals, the bar appeals, and in 1951 the California Supreme Court rules in favor of the bar, finding that homosexuals have a right to assemble socially and that there was no evidence of other illegal or immoral activities on the premises.
• September 8, 1954 – A police raid of 12 Adler and Tommy’s Place, lesbian bars owned by openly lesbian Tommy Vasu that are connected by a shared back staircase, uncover a few underage girls on the premises, resulting in jail time for Jessie Joseph Winston, a patron, and Grace Miller, a bartender. Both bars are shut down.
• October 1955 – Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon form the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian rights organization, as a safer alternative to gay bars that were still subject to police raids. It continues to operate for 14 years.
• 1956 – The earliest gay liberation organization in the country, the Mattachine Society, moves its headquarters from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
• 1957 – Mona’s, the City’s first lesbian bar, closes after being in business 23 years in four different locations.
• July 23, 1959 – The California Supreme Court’s Vallerga v. Munro decision affirms the ABC’s policy of shutting down gay bars for homosexual behavior (like same-sex dancing) rather than just the presence of homosexuals.
• 1959 – The Nob Hill Club, the first gay bar in the Polk, closes after a police raid.

Through the 50s | The 1960s | The 1970s | The 1980s | The 1990s | The 2000s | The 2010s | 2020s+

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