Gay history is inextricably linked to the bar scene. For generations, gay people met each other furtively at hookup spots: parks, the piers, and other unsafe places. Finding fellow gays was challenging, especially ones interested in more than a one-time hookup.

But particularly at a time when many bars were “gentlemen only,” some bars became known where men of a certain persuasion could meet similarly-minded men. When sailors on leave knew that at particular bars they could make good cash with a quick assignation with an older gentleman.

As we’ve described in our histories of gay neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Castro was neither the City’s first gay neighborhood, nor even its second nor third. It didn’t start to become gay until 1963, when the Missouri Mule on Market Street (where Beaux is now located) was purchased and became the neighborhood’s first gay bar.

Today, depending on how you define the boundaries of the Castro, and depending how you distinguish bars from restaurants, liquor stores, and other establishments that sell alcohol, and how you define a gay establishment versus a mixed/straight one, there are about 22 gay bars in the Castro, along with two straight bars that used to be gay, and about 13 other places that used to be LGBT bars but are no longer even bars.

Though it’s continues to be a work in progress, we’re trying to piece together the history of every spot in the Castro, address by address, that is now or ever once was a gay bar. Check it out:

• History of Gay Bars in the Castro