Halloween in the Castro

2006, the last year of the large organized street party, a crowded city bus with the destination "Halloween Castro."

Halloween in the Castro was an annual Halloween celebration held in The Castro district of San Francisco, first held in the 1940s as a neighborhood costume contest. 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 2006, a mass shooting wounded nine people, prompting the city to call off the event.[1]

San Francisco's gay Halloween celebration in the early 1960s originally centered on the early gay bars in the Tenderloin district. They had moved there from the North Beach neighborhood which continues to be a magnet for adult entertainment and nightlife. In the late 1960s, the celebration was centered on Grant Avenue in North Beach. From 1970 to 1978, the Halloween celebration was held on Polk Street in Polk Gulch. In 1977, gay-bashers clashed with police and tear-gas was used to disperse the crowds.[2]

By 1979, the city's gay village had moved to the Castro and "gay Mardi Gras" followed.[3] The event became known as the leading Halloween celebration in the U.S., where costumes ranged from "the outrageous to the spectacular".[4] By 2002, Halloween crowds had grown to the hundreds of thousands and became difficult to control.[5]

  1. ^ Meredith May (October 31, 2006). "7 shot at revel in Castro". SFGate. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
    - Heather Knight (November 2, 2006). "S.F. ASKS: IS PARTY OVER?". SFGate. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
  2. ^ Jim Stewart, "Halloween on Polk Street 1975", Bay Area Reporter, October 24–30, 2013.
  3. ^ Meredith May (November 3, 2006). "Halloween started as a kids' costume contest. Then". SFGate. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
  4. ^ Joseph Siano (September 7, 1997). "Halloween by the Bay". New York Times. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
    - Szymanski, Zak (November 3, 2005). "Mixed reviews for Castro Halloween". Bay Area Reporter. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved October 23, 2020.
  5. ^ Jesse McKinley (November 2, 2006). "San Francisco on Halloween Turns Violent; 10 Are Injured". New York Times. Retrieved December 4, 2013.