For generations, gay people could only surreptitiously meet other gays through clandestine hookups in parks or the piers. Then after the Summer of Love, gay people - particularly gay hippies - started to flood into the mostly working-class Scandinavian and Irish neighborhood, and new gay-owned and gay-friendly businesses opened: restaurants, bookstores and other retail shops, hotels, and bathhouses.īut still, bars remained a strong part of the neighborhood’s gay life, and any history of gay life would be incomplete without covering the history of gay bars. The first gay-related businesses in the Castro were gay bars - the Missouri Mule in 1963, followed by Libra and I-Do-Know in 1967 and then the Mint in 1968. The Missouri Mule, the first gay bar in the Castro.
