The bar featured cross-dressing waiters who would perform sex acts in nearby booths for a $1, a huge sum back in those days. San Francisco may have had gay bars before the The Dash, but none were as notorious. Below are some seminal SF bars that not only helped turn a city queer, but helped launch a revolution.
They may not have the respectability of PAC or a the picket fence, but bars were often at the frontlines of our struggles. I was struck by how many of the battles we fought - and won - started in these bars, and how often bars served as a launching pad for our claims, places where activities became an identity. The project, part of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, shows a lost world of piano bars and bathhouses, butch-femme discos and beachside hustlers. After several prominent bars in San Francisco started shuttering - victims of Manhunt and Grindr and time - I started mapping a city's worth of shuttered gay bars. We don't give gay bars the respect they deserve. (Above: A scene from The Tool Box depicted in a Life magazine story called 'Homosexuality in America.')
