Speaking of San Francisco, many people will think of its beautiful bays and exotic urban landscape, but in many Western eyes, San Francisco is famous for its opening.
There is a street named Castro, it is far from the busiest streets in San Francisco, but it is known to everybody in the local maverick, because Castro Street has a quite provocative nickname – the world’s gay capital.
Start from the downtown of San Francisco, jump on a tram, 20 minutes later, you will get to the Castro Street. Arrived at Castro Street, you will feel no different from other neighborhoods. Both sides of the street are the architectures of northern Europe. But if you look carefully, you can find some clues. There are many colorful flags in the street. With red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple of six colors and consist the Rainbow Flag. This is a sign flag of gay. At the entrance of the street, there is a six-story building next to the spire, on its top there is the huge “rainbow flag”, however the American flag is laid behind.
Follow the “Rainbow Flag”, you can see a number of shops which provide service for the gay. From books and magazines to the clothing products, it all introduce the heterosexual things. So may be many people feel it is difficult to accept. Castro has a famous theatre which is about more than 70 years old. It is popular among the locals because there you can see the film about homosexuality, such as “Brokeback Mountain” and so on.
In fact, many major cities in the world, all has a variety of methods to identify homosexuals, such as wearing earrings method and put a handkerchief.
However, in Castro Street you will easily find the gay who are walking along this street and many of them may holding hands or wear a dress of same-sex couples or they may laugh out loudly from time to time, and even have a kiss.
Some people also wearing a black leather jacket, studded clinch the top, it is said to be the uniform of gay. If you want to make good contact with the gay, then I recommend you go to the bar.
Harvey Bar is best known in this street, you can see many middle-aged men who drink alcohol in small groups and chat with each other. They do not reluctant to talk with you for a few words, as long as you do not hastily raised your camera.
A shop owner told me that Castro Street has the free and open attitude towards life, as you enter here to enjoy unlimited tolerance. Only in the Castro, homosexuals can live so calm, so fair and dare to paint the eye-catching gay flag in the car and have their own bars, restaurants and shops. Because of this, Castro Street was known as the world’s gay capital and it not only attracts the U.S. gay, but also the gays in other countries around the world.
Is it amazing and do you want to pay a visit to it? Yes, of course. You will know that this phenomenon is very common. So please accept it.