Peg's Place was a San Francisco lesbian bar (1950s–1988)[1][2] and the site of an assault in 1979 by off-duty members of the San Francisco vice squad,[3] an event which drew national attention to other incidents of anti-gay violence and police harassment of the LGBTQ community[4] and helped propel an unsuccessful[5] citywide proposition to ban the city's vice squad altogether.
In 1975, it was described as a "sedate location for gay women to socialize", featuring "unprepossing décor, a fake gas fed fireplace, pool and a Pong machine.
"[1] On March 31, 1979, a group of ten to fifteen men, including some off-duty members of the San Francisco vice squad, were out celebrating a bachelor party.
"Anti-homosexual violence has increased to a level unparalleled in San Francisco's recent history," said the Washington Post, "In the six months since the murders, the homosexual community has been rocked by beatings, knifings, clubbings and shootings of gays.
[27] Attorney Tom Steel brought a successful civil suit against the city on behalf of the victims, an action which was described in 1998 by a fellow lawyer as "radical" for its time, and "a very important, watershed event".
[2] Scholars of LGBT history, including Randy Shilts, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, Trinity Ordona, and others, have described the incident at Peg's Place when discussing the gay and feminist liberation movements of the 1970s and the backlash against them.
[30][31] Shilts says the assault hit the front pages of the newspapers, amid "…gay complaints that that the fracas was only part of a concerted increase in police intimidation of gays."