Queer Tourism in San Francisco's North Beach and Castro Districts

This paper is part of a larger project that discusses the history of tourism in San Francisco by analyzing the transformation of four historic San Francisco neighborhoods into tourist destinations: Chinatown, North Beach, the Castro, and the Fillmore. It charts the historical emergence of tourist interests, the sources of economic investment, the cultural meanings of local tourist entertainments, the impact of tourism on the local community, and the links between tourism and globalization.  While this project is historical, it is interdisciplinary in nature and takes a transnational approach.  For instance, the transformation of these four San Francisco neighborhoods into tourist destinations tells us much about the production of gendered, sexual, and racial meanings in that the transformation of Chinatown, North Beach, the Castro and the Fillmore has taken place on explicitly racial and/or gendered terms. This project positions “the neighborhood” as the screen upon which gendered and racial meanings are projected.  Simultaneously, it analyzes the impact of domestic and global tourism on the production of local cultural identities and communities.
The proposed paper compares the impact of tourism on San Francisco’s North Beach and Castro districts.  It charts the impact of tourism on these neighborhoods in two ways: 1) as a catalyst for an evolving queer public culture that developed in North Beach in the post-prohibition era, when gay, lesbian and transgender public entertainments came on the scene; and 2) as a force that worked, through the 1980s and 1990s, to produce a highly commodified tourist spending zone in the city’s Castro district, replacing the neighborhood’s emphasis on gay liberation and its anti-capitalist ideologies with retail stores and accommodations catering to local and global tourists.