Halloween in the Castro
By the late 1970s, it had shifted from a children's event to a gay pride celebration that continued to grow into a massive annual street party in the 2000s.
In the mid-1990s, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence revived Children's Halloween with an annual party held at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, including a costume contest and gifts from Cliff's.
[3][6] Halloween in the Castro was tied to the LGBT culture of San Francisco and began in the 1950-1960s in the Tenderloin/Polk Street area of the city where the mainstream gay bars were first centralized.
The event traces its history to the ostracism of LGBT people in the first half of the 20th century from mainstream culture which led to community identity and using gay bars as a focal point for socializing, networking and organizing politically.
In the late 1940s after World War II, the San Francisco Bay Area became a haven for LGBT military personnel who didn't want to go back to their old lives.
In the 1950s, a group of gay bars in San Francisco's Tenderloin area helped to create a strip of venues for "sex, drugs and late night fun".
Halloween in the Tenderloin grew in the early 1960s with the growing LGBT community and welcomed tourists, upon whom many of the prostitutes and hustlers relied for income.
In addition to the holiday's pagan roots, which is attractive to those who have been shunned by mainstream religions, many LGBT people are able to be outrageous and flamboyant even if they remain closeted.
[11] According to Bruce Mailman, a gay events organizer, "public partying on Halloween fits into gay liberation in general, being seen and heard" in a heteronormative society where media watchdog groups like GLAAD have had to campaign to ensure that LGBT people are portrayed and done so accurately without perpetuating negative stereotypes.
[11] On Halloween night in 1989, two weeks after San Francisco was devastated by the 6.9 (Richter scale) Loma Prieta earthquake,[12] the Sisters performed street theater and used donation buckets to collect thousands of dollars for the mayor's Earthquake Relief Fund from the Halloween crowds that poured into The Castro for the massive street party.
[15] In 1995, the Sisters agreed to host a costume-mandatory dance, HallowQueen, in a SoMa gay nightclub – which raised over $6000 for charities – as their contribution to helping move the event out of the mostly residential neighborhood.
[19] The massive crowds quickly overwhelmed the streets, mass transit and because of the Castro's location along two major transport corridors, disrupting traffic flow well outside the neighborhood.
The opera ran in the Castro at the Metropolitan Community Church (then located on 18th Street) for two weeks, culminating in a final performance on Halloween night.
In hindsight, the Sisters were seen as a bargain of sorts, raising money every year for charity without city funds while keeping the chaos under control by providing entertainment and structure.
[3] They continue to stage and consult on large city events like Folsom Street Fair and Pink Saturday.
