Currently: Residential Garage
Previously: Scott’s Pit
10 Sanchez Street
San Francisco, California
Status: Residential
History
Summary
| Name | Dates of Operation |
| Scott’s Pit | 1970? – 1984 |
Details
Scott’s Pit was an early Castro bar and the first lesbian biker bar in the City; accounts vary on whether it opened in 1970, ’71, or ’72. The name came from the original owner, a charismatic lesbian named Scotty who smoked cigarettes with a cigarette holder. She later sold the bar to a gay man who tweaked the name to simply be Scott’s.
In addition to its pool table, the Bay Times reports that it was remembered for “notable poetry readings and epic brawls,” though a former bartender there said in a blog post comment that its reputation was overstated and the bar was really just a neighborhood bar with a lot of “baby butches.” Phyllis Lyon said that after Kate Ullman took over the bar, speakers from the National Organization for Women and other organizations were brought in to speak about women’s issues at the jam-packed poetry readings.
It was the only gay bar at the time to accept leather-clad women. Although it was often labeled a lesbian bar, it always had a mixed-gender clientele.
In 1973 and ’74, police threatened to shut down fundraisers at the bar to support lesbian mothers in child custody battles, but backed down after the Council on Religion and the Homosexual intervened on the bar’s behalf.
The bar remained open until 1984. Uncle Donald’s Castro Street says the building is now a corner store, but from what we can see, the space has subsequently been converted into a garage for the residential flats above.
Sources
Boyd, Nan Alamilla, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, University of California Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0520244740.
Bowling, Mary Jo, “The Gayest Buildings in America most important to LGBT history,” California Home + Design Magazine.
“Castro Business Ads from the 19870’s,” Uncle Donald’s Castro Street.
Chan, Herman, “Gayest Buildings in America: San Francisco is Prominently Featured…No Surprise,” Habitats For Hermanity, March 14, 2013.
Rivers, Daniel Winunwe, Radical Relations: Lesbian Mothers, Gay Fathers, and Their Children in the United States since World War II (Gender and American Culture), The University of North Carolina Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1469607184.
“Scott’s Pit,” Lost Womyn’s Space, accessed online September 30, 2014.
Sides, Josh, Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco, Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0199874064.
Location
10 Sanchez Street, San Francisco
