Castro Street, the heart of the gay universe, is actually quite compact. There are two blocks of bars, restaurants, and boutiques: Twin Peaks, Orphan Andy's, Almost Home, Thai Thai, the Q Bar. A Walgreen's Drug Store. A barbr shop. Two banks.
At 19th Street it becomes residential. Bright, ornate Victorians with covered dormer windows, crammed together, covering every inch of space for the next five blocks. The hill becomes very steep.
By 24th you are technically still on Castro Street, but you're not in The Castro anymore. You're in Noe Valley.
Who actually lived in those Victorians on Castro Street?
They never came up for sale or rent. No one we met ever gave them as an address.
Maybe they were the original residents of the street, not even gay, who moved in when the neighborhood was called Little Scandinavia and inspired the play I Remember Mama, who didn't budge during the 1970s and 1980s as Gay Liberation happened all around them.
There was no particular reason to go past 19th, so I never did, until the day I saw the homeless guy pushing a shopping cart up the hill.
The full post, with nude photos and sexual content, is on Tales of West Hollywood.