EVPA Column: The Castro’s Entertainment Renaissance

By Scott Wiener

In many ways, entertainment is the cultural lifeblood of San Francisco. From nightlife to music venues to theater to outdoor fairs and festivals, entertainment brings us together as a community, uplifts us, and provides needed diversion from the stresses of daily life.

Entertainment has always played a key cultural role in the Castro. We have a long tradition of bars and clubs that have brought people – and particularly LGBT people – together and built community. The Castro Street Fair has been one of our great community gatherings for decades, and events like DogFest in Duboce Park and movie night in Dolores Park are quickly gaining status. Café Du Nord is one of the best music venues in the City, and Café Flore provides a great mix of food, drink, and live entertainment.

Recently, the Castro has seen an entertainment renaissance as several new bars – including Trigger, Q Bar, Toad Hall, Bar on Church, Lookout, and the new Metro – have opened. The Café is undergoing significant remodeling.

Entertainment proprietors in the Castro are developing a positive working relationship with the neighborhood at large. With support form Supervisor Bevan Dufty, bar owners will be hiring off-duty police officers to provide additional security to ensure that patrons act responsibly and do not disrupt the neighborhood. Similarly, the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District has been holding meetings among neighborhood leaders, merchants, and bar owners to talk about neighborhood security issues. These are great team efforts to make sure that we sustain thriving entertainment to keep the neighborhood livable and safe.

It is important to remember that entertainment venues are typically small businesses that provide a significant source of economic activity in the neighborhood through the jobs, taxes and foot traffic they generate. As a city and as a neighborhood we need to support these businesses and work with them to improve the Castro.

Recently, we have seen unfriendly policies by the City – particularly unreasonable and unpredictable fees – that threaten to shut down several outdoor fairs by making them economically non-viable. The City needs to take a global view of what entertainment brings to San Francisco, both culturally and economically, and make sure that we support, rather than undermine, this key part of what makes San Francisco great.

Scott Wiener is president of the Eureka Valley Promotion Association (EVPA), the neighborhood association for the Castro, Upper Market, and Eureka Valley.

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