Pink Saturday-near 18th St. awash in the Gay masses.UPDATE:July 02-Crowd estimates from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Castro Community on Patrol have now been raised to 150,000-double earlier reports.
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The Castro was bursting at the seams Saturday as people in the numbers of tens of thousands converged on the world's most famous Gayborhood as the 21st Dyke March and 23rd Pink Saturday converged to form one of San Francisco's largest annual street parties.
Crowd estimates are at 75,000 plus for Pink Saturday. Getting around the 'Stro was at times wiggle room only through the closed down corridors along Market from Sanchez Street to Castro and Castro Street up to 19th Street. The celebration deemed even more lively coming on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling nullifying Prop 8 and dismantling part of DOMA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qLILtnHeoY
What many don't realize is that Pink Saturday didn't start out as party it was in fact-in the beginning 23 years ago-a radical gathering of Queer politicos demanding LGBT equality and an end to the AIDS crisis. Gerard Koskovich, SF based LGBT historian and curator at the GLBT History Museum, penned a history of Pink Saturday that was published recently via Facebook. It is a fascinating read and a great glimpse into the Queer history of both the Castro and the City.
The Radical Roots of Pink Saturday-The History of Pink Saturday
The annual appearance of the massive Pink Triangle symbol atop Twin Peaks-our LGBT beacon of pride.
Pink Saturday started as a permit-free street party sparked by activists from ACT UP/San Francisco the night before the Pride Parade in 1990. The VI International Conference on AIDS also was taking place in San Francisco that week, and thousands of AIDS activists had swarmed into town from throughout North America — along with the usual hordes of Pride tourists. ACT UP had staged a brilliant series of forceful and creative protests throughout the week of the AIDS conference. By Saturday evening, the activists were ready to celebrate — and they were in no mood to be pushed around.
Despite the crowds that had already been growing on Castro Street for several years on the evening before Pride, the San Francisco Police Department had resolutely refused community requests to close the street. In response, exasperated ACT UP folks talked about taking matters into their own hands by shutting down the Castro as a finale for the group's week of massive protests at the AIDS conference. The idea circulated via word of mouth, but there was no formal announcement. (The events calendar in the "ACT UP Handbook," a booklet produced for distribution to activists at the AIDS conference, doesn't mention a Saturday evening protest.)
That Saturday (June 23, 1990), around 7 p.m., numerous ACT UP types led the crowd from the sidewalks onto Castro near the corner of 18th, closing down the street. I was in front of A Different Light, the gay bookstore at 489 Castro, when the action kicked off. The nonactivists jammed on the sidewalk were timid at first, but soon moved into the street. In the face of hundreds of people milling in traffic, the cops gave in, put up barricades, and allowed the party to take place. Former San Francisco resident Eric Roberts recalls, "I had a lot of friends up here from LA and I heard that something may go on, but I did not believe it.... We went anyway and had the greatest night!"
Memories Vary
I should note that memories vary here: My friend Bob Smith, who was very involved in ACT UP/San Francisco, recalls the decision to take the street as a spontaneous one which some ACT UP folks made on the spot; I recall the idea coming up in discussion in the couple of days preceding the event. Whichever was the case, we agree that experienced activists involved in ACT UP provided the leadership and the critical mass that moved the crowd into closing Castro Street on the evening in question. Bob offers these recollections:
"The way I remember was like this: There wasn't any organizing or announcements about a party or Pink Saturday by ACT UP. But as the crowds grew into an unofficial pre-Gay Day party and surged off the sidewalks, some us (Tommy Icabone, the main instigator I remember, and myself among others) began to urge the people into the street. And when crowd from the east side converged with the crowd from the west side, the cops gave up.
"The party continued into the early morning hours with some people (not me) singing show tunes around a rather large bonfire in the middle of the intersection of 18th and Castro streets. As we were leaving I heard one elderly guy say to another, 'See, it was ACT UP.' .... And Tommy Icabone was the first person I heard use the term Pink Saturday."
Another ACT UP/San Francisco veteran, Laura Thomas, put the event into the context of the neighborhood political culture of the era:
"We used to take the intersection of Castro and 18th on a somewhat regular basis at the end of demonstrations.... Moving the crowd into the street was something we knew how to do, folks in the neighborhood had a general sense of what would happen, and the cops were familiar with the resulting routine of blocking off traffic. Pink Saturday wasn't the first time we threw a permit-free street party!
