The Castro: A Queer Pilgrimage

Identities and remembering collide during a queer, young man’s fateful trip to this gay epicenter

This image was generated with the assistance of AI

There’s a map of the Castro pinned to my wall, next to a calendar of the Black Nazarene, which my mother mounted because she thought I did not pray enough at night.

But I do pray enough at night. I always remember to say thanks each time I turn the lights off, the Black Nazarene in the corner of my eye, stark in a sea of pained men, and the Castro-a blur of grids and green hues.

I snatched the map on my way out of the Queer History museum. It was a museum built on stories that did not speak to me, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and the beginnings of AIDS in the west. It was Queer History in the eyes of the White Queers, and like all other narratives, I felt like an outsider to all its stories and spectacles.

It was 2 p.m. when I arrived at the Castro. I remember this from the museum ticket’s time stamp, which I also kept somewhere along with the Playbills I took home and a few discounted tickets from Broadway. In the afternoon sunlight, the district resembled those typical streets you see in American movies: a parade of grey and of awnings licked by the Bay wind. Perhaps people were still at work then, but I took the silence in and looked around, and…