Local Historical Panel Discusses How ‘Eureka Valley Became the Castro’

Panelists (from left to right) Jim Mitulski, Sande Leigh, Jim Van Buskirk and Marc Huestis.

By Bill Sywak

Around 170 interested neighbors and residents crowded the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) on April 14 to hear a panel of long-time residents and skilled storytellers share their personal histories of Eureka Valley and the Castro.

Entitled “How Eureka Valley Became the Castro: A Panel Discussion on the History of the Castro District,” the event was co-sponsored by the SF History Center at the SF Public Library, the GLBT Historical Society and the LGBT Community Center. The panel brought together the Reverend Jim Mitulski, former pastor of MCC, Sande Leigh, principal of the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, and Marc Huestis, film maker and founding member of the Gay Film Festival as well as long-time head of special events at the Castro Theatre. Huestis was filling in for Allen Sawyer, manager of the Castro Theatre in the late 1970s, who was unable to attend. Jim Van Buskirk, author and local historian, moderated the evening.

Van Buskirk started by reading from a history of the Castro written by Pauline Scholten posted on the Castro Community Benefit District web site. Mitulski followed by discussing the fifteen years he spent as pastor of MCC while the AIDS crisis crested in the city. He described the experience as bringing about “an incredible capacity to be in solidarity with one another,” and noted that the ‘80s were a time when “this neighborhood had an impact in changing the attitude on AIDS.”

Mitulski told the story of tour buses arriving in the neighborhood to see the strange and feared creatures of the Castro. Instead of taking offense, he said, many wanted the tourists to see how proud they were of themselves. They even chanted, “Get off the bus, get off the bus; we’ll help you with your dress, we’ll help you with your hair.” Mitulski concluded that his church functioned as a de facto community center in those years before the coming of the LGBT Center.

Leigh arrived in San Francisco in 1973 and will serve her last day as principal of Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy on June 16. One story Leigh recounted was the renaming of two elementary schools after the 1978 murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. While one school on Harrison Street was quickly renamed after the assassinated mayor, Douglass Elementary was not renamed after Milk until 1996.

Supervisor Tom Ammiano led the campaign to change the name of Douglass to honor Milk. In the end, the words “Civil Rights Academy” were added to the school’s name because they represented what Milk’s life was about and described the school’s mission to teach tolerance, diversity and respect for all.

Huestis, who described himself as the “understudy” for the evening filling in for Sawyer, shared his journey coming from New York in 1975 on the famous Green Tortoise bus. Calling himself a theatre queen from the East, he soon became active in a theater collective called the Angels of Light, an offshoot of the Cockettes.

While taking film classes at SF State, Huestis and his friends realized there were no real gay movies for gay people and proceeded to remedy the situation by creating their own Super 8 gay films. The year was 1977, the era of the free theater movement. To give their films a showing, these gay filmmakers filled a packed venue on Page Street for the first gay film festival. The screen was a wrinkled sheet against a wall, and the projector might stop at odd times as some of the splices broke.

From the energy of those who attended it was apparent that the stories told by the panelists just scratched the surface of the rich memories held by many.

Copyright 2009 Castro Courier