Queer Pilgrimage: The San Francisco
Homeland and Identity Tourism
Alyssa Cymene Howe
University of New Mexico
Introduction: My Love Waits There
The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay
The glory that was Rome is of another day
I've been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan
I'm going home to my city by the Bay
I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me
To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars
The morning fog may chill the air
I don't care
My love waits there, in San Francisco, above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco, your golden sun will shine for me
—"I Left My Heart in San Francisco," music by George C. Cory Jr.,
lyrics by Douglass Cross, sung by Tony Bennett
The crowd was silent and transfixed as Tony Bennett began to croon his rendition
of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Surrounded by the thousands who
had come to baptize the Virgin MegaStore in downtown San Francisco, Bennett
concluded his ditty to much applause. The song has become a kind of unofficial
anthem for the City of San Francisco since it was made popular by
Bennett in the early 1960s. However, the tune was written by a gay couple having
recently moved from the city (Hobica 1995:190). The links among San
Francisco, queer people, and the lure of a "homeland" have been a long time in
the making.
Anthropologists have, for decades, noted how places are made mythical
through the telling of stories and the singing of songs. Anthropologists have
also, more recently, assessed how places are made mythical through anthropologists'
retellings of stories and analyses of songs (Castafteda 1996; Clifford
and Marcus 1986). Because San Francisco has enjoyed a long history of mythologizing
embodied in sonfcs such as "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," the
following will also add to the legacy of stories about places and how people conceive
of those places. In the popular imagination, the city is often proclaimed
Cmttmrml Anthropology 16(1):3S-61. Copyright O 2001, American Anthropological Association.
36 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
the "world's gay and lesbian capital" (Apell 1998:94). This sense of a "capital,"
I will suggest, is more accurately described as a territorial "homeland."
While capitals are the legislative nexuses of states, homelands offer a symbolic
refuge for believers who make the pilgrimage. The focus of my discussion will
be to elaborate some of the elements that foster the construction of San Francisco
as a queer homeland. Borrowing from de Certeau (1984), I hope to elaborate
the "scriptural economy" through which "the multiple levels and contexts
of cultural-ideological productions" (Castaneda 1996:65) shape the notion of a
queer homeland. Through ethnographic narratives, touristic ephemera, and gay
tour guidebooks,1
I address the following questions: How is San Francisco
constructed as a pilgrimage site for the elaboration of queer identity, and how
might this sense of a homeland emerge over time and through "touristic" practices?
Does a queer homeland rely on "staged" authenticity, the "backstage"
only available to some? Further, how might nationalist-like tropes foster the
construction of a territorial homeland for a queer nation?2
Finally, how does
queer group identity differ from nationalisms that are dependent on imagined
primordial conscription?
In this article, I frame the construction of a queer homeland through the
phenomenon of tourism. Tourism offers a rich set of juxtapositions because the
interplay between tourists and residents illustrates the complexity of creating
place, locality, and a sense of homeland. I also suggest that, in the case of San
Francisco, tourism is critical to creating a sense of group identity for both tourists
and residents, albeit in different ways. Thus, tourism as a practice that enhances
identity is fundamental to the creation of a queer homeland, which relies
on "identity" for its production. I further consider the city's history as
integral to its construction as a homeland for queer people, and my theoretical
concerns are rendered through a historical lens. The larger theoretical issues
that inform my discussion take up the discursive notions of "queer," "identity."
and "place." I attempt to resituate these sometimes nebulous terms by applying
them to concrete ethnographic examples. Narratives of tourists and residents.
as well as the language found in tour guidebooks, suggest an emerging queer
homeland that is being constructed through pilgrimage. Tour book discourse,
narratives of respondents, and my own interpretive gloss all evidence a slippage
among categories of "gay," "lesbian," and "queer." I focus attention on a
specifically "queer" homeland in order to suggest a more complex articulation
of group identity than that allowed by gay and lesbian. Queerness moves beyond
homogeneous identity categorization, which. I will argue, is fundamental
to the creation of a homeland in San Francisco. Thus, part of my project
throughout this discussion will be to highlight the multivocality that arises in
attempting to grasp the panoply of sexual identities I gloss as "queer."
I maintain a particular focus on fissures of age. gender, race, and class
status within a queer whole, and I argue that these factors evidence a break in
queer coherence, a rip in the umbrella term that underscores the ongoing reformulation
of queerness. By mapping sex onto sites, linking gazes with voyeurs,
and politicizing place, I attempt to move away from essentialized constructions
QUEER PILGRIMAGE 37
of queerness. Instead, I suggest that the differential marking of bodies and
queer consumption among residents and tourists illustrate a continuum of sexual
fluidity that marks San Francisco itself as an explicitly queer place. This
discussion is complicated by my own position as a former longtime resident
and occasional tourist to the city. I recognize that my "voice" often seamlessly
slips between that of activist and that of analyst. Because queers have been persecuted
many times in many places, I believe that territorializing a place, a
homeland, can offer a sanctuary from oppression. Although I acknowledge this
slippage between the positions of advocate and anthropologist, I have chosen
not to erase this dynamic but, rather, to highlight its potential to add yet another
dimension in the making of a homeland.
Touring the. Town: Identity Migration
Tourism considered as an economic and ideological endeavor (MacCannell
1976; Rothman 1998; Urry 1990) informs how representations of the city
are constructed by the purveyors of "gay tourism" and highlights how these
representations are received by both gay tourists and gay residents of San Francisco.
Tourism, as a "privileged practice" (Towner 1985) of the economically
endowed, is inverted when considering a distinctly marginalized group such as
gays and lesbians because tourism is, as the Turners (1978) have argued, linked
to older forms of pilgrimage to the world religious centers.3
Tourism, like pilgrimage,
has a "magic" that is "enhanced by group identity" (Graburn
1989:34), which may prove even more magical when it is tourism itself that
congeals group identity—which I argue is the case in San Francisco's queer
homeland.4
Queer tourists leave "home," where they may not be accepted
based on their sexual identity, in order to come to a "homeland" where they are
accepted. The medium of tourism illustrates an uneven "emergence" of a
homeland, rather than an essential, "authentic" homeland. "Staged events"
(MacCannell 1976) and "pseudo-events" (Boorstin 1964) have been described
as those fabrications designed to create a more "authentic" experience for
"moderns" in search of escape. However, in a pilgrimage to a queer homeland,
the generalized escapism of modernity is interwoven with an acute need, at
times, for queer people to literally "escape." Because the queer pilgrim does
not seek an escape from the modern but, rather, an escape from oppression
"back home," notions of "staged" and "pseudo-events" are less germane.
Rather, I invoke Castaneda's "imagined understanding of experience"
(1996:17) to illuminate how an essentialized "gay authenticity" appears in the
narratives of queer tourists and residents. In the elaboration of queer identity,
essentialized meanings seem jo facilitate a sense of membership in a larger
queer nation—"imagined" or otherwise. Queer discourses of membership resemble
nationalist discourses but also depart from them, particularly when factors
of gender, class, and race are brought to the fore. For queers, a "homeland"
comprises many voices, built consciously and unconsciously through diverse
practices over time.
38 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Moving through History
The historical and cultural nuance of "moving" holds particular significance
for an immigrant city such as San Francisco.5
Kaplan has suggested that
in narratives of "modernist exile" and "postmodern tourism," it is "modern cities,
especially major ports, [that] function as crucibles where identities are
formed, transformed, and fixed" (1996:31). Similarly, Weston (1998) elaborates
how gay migrants from rural areas and small towns sought the anonymity
of urban centers, thus facilitating the creation of a "gay imaginary."6
According
to Weston, this imaginary made San Francisco "the premier destination"
for identity migrants such as gays, lesbians, and "explorers" of sexuality
(1998:32) to create subjectivities based on identification with "others like me."
However, many historical sequences preceded the making of the homeland and
intimately informed the imagining that would follow. San Francisco's past
foreshadowed the representation of the city as a place of nonconformity; this
nonconformity would later be transformed into an imagined gay mecca.
Weston situates the Great Gay Migration in the 1970s and early 1980s.
But it is also the case that San Francisco served as a crucible for subversive
identities dating back to the city's boom era in the mid-1800s. The discovery of
gold in the northern reaches of the state ushered in an age of pioneering men in
search of fortune. The gold rush lured a huge, predominantly male population
to San Francisco following in the wake of mission building and the near decimation
of indigenous peoples.7
Tales of the city's early days, in the 1850s, refer
to the absence of women; when a woman did appear, she was greeted by
hundreds of leering men intent to gaze on the female form. Word throughout
the nation was that the city was a new frontier for the entrepreneurial man willing
to leave the securities of home and hearth behind. Wealth was extracted
from the earth, funneled into the city, and used in the service of decadence:
drinking, gambling, and carousing. Fortunes were spent in the building of railroads
and the development of agriculture,8
as immigrant laborers, primarily
young Chinese men, were encouraged to lend their hands and backs to the
city's growth.9
Immigration legislation was fed by a racism that considered
Chinese immigrants a viable source of labor but an inappropriate group to
propagate and settle in the city. Chinese women were forbidden from immigrating
to California, which served to increase the predominance of a male
population. This much disseminated "origin story" of the city is one rooted in a
nearly single-gendered population with a taste for decadence. Although this alludes
to a sense that heteroreproductive norms would not prevail in the city. I
contend that other factors would create San Francisco's reputation as a crucible
for nonconformity.
I highlight the gold rush and its effects in order to make clear that San
Francisco has been associated, since its inception, with an irreverence for
dominant notions of home and heteronormativity. Gold rush immigration patterns
were distinct from previous Western migrations, primarily because, unlike
their agricultural counterparts, large families were not necessary to 'strike
it rich" in California. Although white settlers in the city held more power over
QUEER PILGRIMAGE 39
«
their destinies than the Chinese immigrants, each group comprised, for some
time, males only. Shiploads of Navy men on leave heightened the reputation of
the city as a locale for tattooing, drinking, and other forms of decadence. This
nonconformist irreverence, or "cultural libertarianism" (Bean 1968:448),
surely inspired such characters as Jack London and, later, Jack Kerouac and
friends to make an intellectual and artistic refuge of the city.10
Queer Moments in San Francisco
In the early part of the century, San Francisco gay bars were populated by
travelers from across the country, and significant political organizing began to
take place in the 1950s.11
World War II drew thousands of workers to the urban
centers of the West Coast, where gay enclave communities were quickly being
established (Faderman 1991). After the war the military imposed more virulent
restrictions on gay personnel, and many were loaded onto "queer ships" along
with other "undesirable" discharges and sent to nearby port cities such as San
Francisco. Indeed, ironically, the U.S. government seems to have "sponsored a
migration of the gay community" (Bgrube* 1982). The burgeoning growth of
gay enclave communities in the postwar era, the free speech movement, protests
against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and hippie counterculture blossoming
in the Haight Ashbury District all demanded diverse freedoms. The 1967
Love Generation musical hit "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your
Hair)" may have signified the full bloom of hippie culture, but gay San Francisco
was already there. Indeed, Fitzgerald (1986) has suggested that the Castro,
"the first gay neighborhood in the country," arose singularly from an already
extant counterculture.
Countercultural tendencies informed the construction of San Francisco as
a particularly hospitable locale for the thousands of gay people who flocked to
the Castro District in the 1970s. However, this phenomenon must be understood
as a complex set of factors, not simply the "natural" evolution of coun-
terculture.12
In particular, progressive ideals of "tolerance" have long defined
the city's political atmosphere and form a part of the city's symbolic construction.
Some have suggested that San Francisco "was America's gay capital in
terms of political clout" (Newton 1993:9), marking the city as not merely a haven
but an explicitly political place.13
Progressive politics appears to be a key
element in the formation of a gay homeland, and San Francisco was the first
city in the nation to elect an "out" gay official.14
Antigay legislation spearheaded
by the religious Right spread across the nation throughout the late
1970s (Vaid 1995). The establishment of the city as a sanctuary for diverse
sexual identities has taken place in a larger, hostile terrain: a queer homeland is
necessarily built upon uneven ground.
Questioning Queer, Imagining Identity, Politicizing Place
The complexities of a queer homeland are also revealed in the more mundane,
though highly contested, constructions of discourse. In the early 1990s,
40 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
the term queer was popularized partly because it includes gay men, lesbians,
bisexuals, transgendered persons, and other "sexual radicals" (those practicing
sadomasochism, bondage and discipline, etc.). Queer, a carefully selected discursive
appropriation of a derogatory term, includes "faggots" and "fairies" as
well as "lezzies" and "dykes" (Faderman 1991:300). Rendering positive those
monikers that have been used to abuse is queered thinking, born from real
need: "Most societies try to get rid of their deviants. Most cultures have burned
and beaten their homosexuals and others who deviate from the sexual common.
The queer are the mirror reflecting the heterosexual tribe's fear: being different,
being other and therefore lesser, therefore sub-human, in-human, non-human"
(Anzaldua 1987:18). The term queer has served to rally various sexualities under
one umbrella "identity," sometimes engendering political coalitions. However,
queer is not without its problems. Often, argues Anzaldua (1991), queer serves
to erase differences of race, class, and gender within the gay community,
homogenizing differing interests and identities. Further, through neutralizing
difference queer may come to be associated with the dominant sector of the
community (read: white, wealthy gay men). Despite this potential slippage,
Anzaldua ultimately chooses to use the term queer because other identity
monikers, like lesbian, are likewise invested with a dominant, white history.
Following Anzaldua's caveat, I find queer a useful umbrella term while recognizing
that all are not equally sheltered under such terms. I would argue that in
the making of a queer homeland, validating difference is of critical importance.
A homogeneous, one-dimensional sense of queer identity does not appear to
serve the purposes of an inclusive homeland.
"Identity" as a useful category of analysis has also been widely critiqued
in academic works. B. Williams (1996) has insisted that identity, especially
within the frame of nationalism, must be understood as a multiply constituted
construct within power relations. As an analytical concept, identity is both
complex and shifting. Within people's lived experience, identity may also
prove a useful tool for people's self-conceptions. Anderson's discussion of nationalism
formation suggests that an imagined "deep, horizontal comradeship"
(1983:7) serves as the basis of national "communities." The nation is imagined
as a "natural" constellation of persons because it is understood as a limited
(though elastic) sovereign group with a shared history and trajectory. By framing
queer identity against a backdrop of nationalism, I find similarities: both
speak to political aspirations based on a shared sense of identity. However, although
membership in a nation can only in certain circumstances be chosen,
membership in a queer "nation" is almost certainly chosen.15
Further, the parameters
of group identity among self-identified queers are infinitely more
flexible than those of nations.16
Although both forms of "nation" share an
"imagined" continuity of identity, the queer nation is not dependent on imagined
ties of blood and bone but, rather, on sexual practices, self-conscious
forms of marking, and political positioning.
The gay rights movement, since its inception during the civil rights era,
has often made use of nationalist and racial tropes (Phelan 1997). These have
QUEER PILGRIMAGE 41
«
proven effective in building political coalitions and consolidating a sense of
community identity. If, as Lanfant, Allock, and Bruner suggest, identity is "always
in reformulation, a constant site of struggle" (1995:xi), then the process
by which identity takes shape must include reworking, displacement, disruption,
and reflexivity. Just as gender identity coincides with factors of race,
class status, and others, so too does queer identity reflect a composite, shifting
form. This formulation echoes Butler's suggestion that the "doer is constructed
in and through the deed" (1990:142) and the subject is constituted by an "incomplete
list" (in terms of race, class, sexuality, gender, etc.) and only comes
into being as an "I," or an "identity," is named: "In other words, the enabling
conditions for an assertion of T are provided by the structure of signification,
the rules that regulate the legitimate and illegitimate invocation of that pronoun,
the practices that establish the terms of intelligibility by which that pronoun
can circulate" (1990:143)!
Places, too, are contested, their borders defined differently based on one's
position. To highlight the notion of shifting identities in a queer homeland, I
oscillate between places marked as "for women" and "for men" and those
marked explicitly by race. Overt gender distinctions, at times, seem antithetical
to the project of queering, steeped as they are in binaries and bodily dualisms.
However, distinctions continue to be made along these lines by the people with
whom I spoke and within queer guidebooks, and so I follow this gendered
route. In addition to questioning divisions of gender, race, class, and so on, I
hope to problematize the notion of a "queer-only" space by looking to mixedsexuality
events and venues. I find "queer only" to be a problematic parameter,
given the shifting, voluntaristic characteristics of queer nationhood that I have
suggested. The sites I examine in the ethnographic portion of this discussion
are those that appear regularly in queer tour guidebooks. They are, therefore,
defined as significant locales for queer tourists by those who market to this
population. The tour books themselves render a particular conceptual map of
San Francisco, highlighting some venues, events, and places while diminishing
the significance of others. Although I cannot hope to bring a comprehensive
analysis of all of the sociopolitical factors that go into constituting these particular
sites as significant to the queer community, I offer instead an examination
of these representations as they exist now, remembering that this is a particular
map of the heart of queer San Francisco.
Touring a Queer Homeland
The 1998 San Francisco Pride Parade, held in mid-June on a mile-long
stretch through downtown, has drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors, nearly
doubling the population of the city. The rambunctious procession is led by
Dykes on Bikes with revving engines and lots of leather (see Figure 1). This
group is followed by Dykes on Bicycles; taking up the rear is a new addition to
the parade, a contingent of the Radical Fairies calling itself Dicks on Bikes.
Over the course of the three- or four-hour event a host of queer-positive groups
ride atop floats, march, and cheer their way down the parade route. The Philipino
42 <"t LTURAL ANTHROP'H 001
Figure 1
Dykes on Bikes at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Parade, San
Francisco, 1998.
Men's Chorus, gay grandparents, Muscle Systems (a.La. Muscle Sisters) Gym
Boys, and a female-to-male transgendered contingent are a tcvs of the many interests
represented in the course of the parade. Parties, dances, and carousing
compose what is also known as "Pink Saturday" (see figure 2). Perhaps more
than any event in the city, the Pride Parade serves to consolidate and elaborate
queer identity. Through "praying and playing" (Turner and Turner 1978) in the
parade, participants perform an expansive queer ideniit> While 'playing"
seems obvious here,17
"praying comes in a form particular to a queer 'nation.
If prayer is understood as a shared practice that aligns individuals with a spiritual
deity and the community at large, then activism serves .is .i form of prayet
for a queer nation. Networking, strengthening political alliances, and spending
time together all serve to build community and stren 'then indiv lduals alliance
with a queer whole. The values reflected in respondents narratives speak overwhelmingly
to a sense of inclusion in a greater queer communitv which seems
to live and breath at events .such as the Pride Parade ' As I noted. The thing
about San Francisco Pride is that it's political not just .i bunch of pretty boys
and girls doing their thing but floats and events and .til kinds of stuff which focuses
on political concerns ol the community. L. focused attention on the
politics ot the Pride event, a critical aspect of queei pilgrimage In pilgrimage,
"passengers engage in a liminal "betwixt and between state ot being, winch
ends in aggregation, a return to "mundane social lite (Turner and Turner
1978:14). However, in a queer pilgrimage the return is not to a st.ihlc state
but. rather, to one invigorated with new political possibilities Pilgrimages ol
all kinds involve personal transformation, and queer pilgrims returning with
QUEER PILGRIMAGE 4
Figure 2
\ femme fairy performing on Pink Saturday, San Francisco, 1998. Her bod>
adorned with produce stickers that saj "Ripe.
new political agendas may upset the mundane soaal life back home. \
'transformation of the self (Bruner 1991). or at least an attempt at transformation,
then, is salient tor the individual as well as the larger communm adding
to the magic of liminahty.
At Pride. Z. described her sense ot solidarity with a gre&tei queer whole,
partly because in this setting she and her girlfriend felt sale to do so:
My girlfriend and I li\e up in Reno but I used to live here in the ctt) I vcbeenoul
Since I was 18. hut [K ] has only come out to her sister. No one in Reno knows
she s a dyke, and she tccls ljkc she can't be out at work Her parents don't know
either, but that's another story They think that I am a friend' even though we \c
been together for almost two \ears now ' Am how w hen we conic to San l-rancisco
all of that changes \1> girlfriend is out. and 1 get to. finalU enjo> having a girlfriend
who 1 can hold hands with, and smooch, and dance dirty with in public I
hate being in the closet, and that s how it is in Reno for us Here we gel to be 'real."
I don't know what I'd do if we didn't have the city to come to. Of course Pride is
44 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
fun and crazy and there are lots of babes, so we always make it down here for
this.21
Z.'s transformation of "self took place during the window of liminality she
enjoyed during the Pride weekend. Bruner (1991) has suggested that the tourist,
despite the claims of tour books and brochures, does not undergo any radical
transformation. However, Bruner's argument is predicated on the twin factors
of economic power differentials between "the native self and the
"Western tourist" and the proposition that "most tourists are quite satisfied
with their own society, most are not alienated" (1991:240). However, Z.
clearly felt some form of alienation in her "own society," which she mitigated
through liminal experiences in San Francisco.
In Bruner's discussion of "First World" tourists visiting "Third World"
touristic sites, there is an explicit "structure of power" mandating that residents
cater to the "fantasies" of tourists. However, the converse appears to operate in
San Francisco. If only in terms of economics, it would not be out of line to suggest
that most residents of the city (which has one of the highest costs of living
in the United States) are often better economically endowed than many tourists
to the city. Perhaps greater economic parity between tourists and residents
lends itself to transformations. It certainly appears to foster solidarity:
I am visiting from Germany, and we do have many gay rights groups there and
events. Everyone there talks about San Francisco and about this weekend. I've
been hearing about it since I was a teenager and now am finally here, amongst my
people, all these beautiful gay people.22
This is the biggest of all the Pride events Ifyou haven't been to S.F. Pride, you
can't even call yourself gay!23
The refrain of "my people,"24
and the suggestion that one cannot be gay without
having experienced San Francisco Pride, lends itself to an overt articulation
of nationalist-like community identity.25
The emphasis here is on the journey
of pilgrimage and experience, rather than (imagined) primordial ties.
MacCannell (1976) has described the importance of experience for the modern
tourist, for whom a search for "authenticity," often "back there" in space and
time, provides a unifying modern consciousness. As these narratives suggest,
moderns attempt to reach the "backstages" (Goffman 1959), where "true
authenticity" lies, through experience rather than commodification. While
queer tourists may never find an authentic backstage—indeed, one may not exist—they
do engage in the aesthetic of modernity in their quest for "a more
meaningful existence somewhere else" (Kaplan 1996:64). Though modern exiles
may seek the aesthetic elsewhere in order to return, rejuvenated, to their
origins, this does not appear to hold true for the queer tourist. Queers, who
often experience exile from, and ostracism living in, their places of origin (nation-state,
community, family, and so on), here find their "return" in a pilgrimage
to a homeland.26
These narratives and the nationalist-like tropes they embody
QUEER PILGRIMAGE 45
reflect the imagining of a queer homeland in San Francisco. They resonate
with a sense of community: a coherent queer whole. However, this coherence
is disrupted in the following examples; a queer homeland is not made, it seems,
through a monolithic sense of queer identity.
Located in the Castro District is Cafe* Flore, known to many queer San
Franciscans as "Cafe Hairdoo,"27
wherc the clientele partakes of skinless
chicken breast sandwiches and espresso drinks in a sanctuary-like patio. Cafe
Flore appears in gay guides as a premiere breakfast place for a predominately
gay male crowd. Access: Gay USA (Apell 1998), a guide that marks each of its
venues with either a male or a female symbol, lists Cafe Flore with a male symbol
with an exclamation point next to it, suggesting that this is a "tres gay"
male site. Differentiation between male and female sites is a theme that recurs
in gay tour guides, emphasizing that gender is an axis of distinction for those
constructing gay touristic experiences in the form of gay guides. In a recent
glossy tour guide magazine called California: Culture's Edge (California Cultural
Tourism Commission [CCTC] 1998), published by the San Francisco
Arts Commission,28
the section oriented to queer tourists highlights sites that
can be visited within a three-day period. The first day's tour is entitled 'The
Castro.'* Day two is labeled "Mostly for Women: The Mission." These designations
suggest that different neighborhoods will appeal to particular genders
within the queer community. However, there is something more here. "The
Mission" is described as "for women," whereas "the Castro" remains the unmarked
signifier. The Castro, not coincidentally, is a predominately male
neighborhood. As with ethnic "unmarked categories," here the dominant gender
category, male, remains the a priori category. Anzaldua's warning that
"queer" may become a homogeneous (gay, white, male) category is salient
here. Although it might be argued that the Castro District has achieved the
status of being "famous for being famous" (Turner and Turner 1978:12),
within the queer community the Castro District is famous for being a gathering
place of gay men specifically. The Castro and the Mission Districts are represented
as specifically gendered places for queer visitors to the city.29
Although
this does not point to fissures in queer identity per se, it does suggest distinctions
in how queer identity is represented, and therefore shaped, for the queer
tourist. A singular sense of queerness is elaborated and intersected by other
identity factors such as class status and gender through the textual constructions
of gay guidebooks.
An event on the eve of Pink Saturday speaks to these differences. The
Dyke March, which attracts thousands of women to the Mission for a rally,
march, and after party, is a women's event (see Figure 3). Men are encouraged
to watch and cheer but not to march. Women, whether they identify as lesbians,
dykes, bi, straight, polyamorous, and so forth, parade through the streets holding
signs, some semiclothed and some riding atop a gigantic ejaculating vagina.
In the past, there has been debate about whether transgender people
should participate in the Dyke March.30
In the case of female-to-male transgender
people, many of whom have been longtime lesbian activists, their previous
4(> CULU'RAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Figure 3
Dyke marchers at the Dyke March, Mission District, San Francisco, 1998.
gender identity and commitment to women s issues would suggest that thej
should march, while their current gender identity would have them on the sidelines
only. For male-to-female transgender people the situation is reversed,
with questions of political solidarity arising more readih than issues ol gender
solidarity. In either case, the debate is complex and speaks to salient distinctions
within the queer community itself. A singular sense of queer identity is
problematized, suggesting that qualities other than one s sexual self, such as
political and gender allegiance, mu.st be negotiated within the concept of
queerness. Indeed, when noting that a woman in the D\ke March proclaimed.
"There are thousands of me here!' one wonders it she was speaking about
women, or lesbians, or queers, or all of the above
Similar stratifications along lines of race and class appear throughout ga\
tour books. Gay USA: The Straight Talking Guide to (m\ Travel (Hobica
1995) lists topical headings that highlight ethnic idcntitv and income levels
The Pendulum, a nightclub in the heart of the Caslro, is billed under the heading
'African-American and Latino Bars as a "place lor black men and the men
who love them' (Hobici 1995:192). Pleasuredome under the category
"Mostl> or Dancing, caters to "young men on drugs (Hobica 1995:193).
and. next to this entry. Fhe-Box is billed as 'racially mixed. I he young men
on drugs at Pleasuredome maj be presumed to be predominant^ white because
they remain unmarked by race, unlike the patrons at "I he Pendulum and
The Box. Interestingly. Pleasuredome does cater to a primanh white clientele.
In any case, these representations of queer sites reflect overt distinctions
based on race. Similarly, the heading 'Upscale Crowd' invites queer patrons to
QUEER PILGRIMAGE 47
the Alta Plaza, where suits and $7.00 martinis are the norm. Differentiations
based on race, economic status, and gender riddle the ephemera directed toward
the queer tourist. This representational tactic appears to be inclusive, acknowledging
the diversity of the queer community. However, these distinctions
also make clear that certain dominant categories remain unmarked.
A further line of intraqueer distinction is summarized in an anonymous
on-line review of Fodor's Gay Guide to the USA (Collins 1997):
Consider that on page SO of Fodor's Gay Guide to San Francisco Collins says that
many of SF's gay bars cater "mostly to old drunks." He then describes trying to
meet someone at one of these bars: "You give him a quick tap on the shoulder, just
to see if anybody is in there. And crash! He falls off his bar stool/' Later Collins
says that there's a bar stool in SF with your name on it, and "all you have to do is
try not to fall off it." It's incredible to encounter such blatant ageism. Having just
spent time in SF, I can report that one of the city's most refreshing aspects is the
diversity of both age and body type in its gay population, a diversity which I've
never encountered in any other American city. It's possible to feel comfortable in
the Castro and other neighborhoods without being a 22-year-old man with a gym
body. Collins may not perceive that as being a strength. Someone should sit Collins
down, show him The Times of Harvey Milk, and make him read The Mayor of
Castro Street. Then he may learn that those "old drunks" in some cases gave up
their lives so that he'd have a bubble of tolerance to play in. [Anonymous 1998]
The author illuminates yet another line of distinction within the queer community
based on age and body type. Ultimately the author finds San Francisco to
be a particularly accepting locale for all manner of queer tourists. The comments
extend the frame of queer inclusion, affirming that San Francisco is
often characterized as a diverse amalgamation of queer people.
Distinctions of race, gender, class, and age are positioned alongside an oft
repeated trope of gay tour guidebooks: sex. Sex penetrates guidebooks presumably
because sex, desire, and "object choice" have often been foundational for
both forming queer communities and establishing identity for queer people. At
the same time, a singular focus on the sexual aspect of sexual identity offers a
limited scope of queerness, "essentializing" and "naturalizing" complex subjectivities.
In order to distinguish between queer people's lived experience and
the representation of their experience and desire in gay tour guidebooks, it is
important to establish the relationship between representations of experience
and lived experience itself. Although sex alone does not constitute queer identity,
and political motivations are vital to constructing a queer nation, it would
be foolish to obscure the "communitas" engendered through cruising and coupling.
This element of queer identity is not lost on the creators of queer touristic
ephemera. Overt sexual references categorize venues as places for "Cruising
and Drinking," getting into*"Leather," or, for the very explicit, "Sex Clubs"
(Hobica 1995.243-245). The heading Top Tables" (Hobica 1995:243, emphasis
added) highlights restaurants that serve expensive cuisine. However, Hobica's
word choice here, in the context of leather and sex clubs, invokes the age-old
food/sex correlation. Using the jargon of domination and submission, Hobica
48 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
manages to couple gastronomy with radical sexual positionings. "Mostly for
Dancing" (Hobica 1995:193, emphasis added) leaves the reader wondering
what else might go on here. Sexual references throughout queer tour guides,
some more veiled than others, emphasize the sexual aspect of representing sexual
identity. To ironically twist Graburn's (1989) "sacred and profane," one
might say that what is "profane" by normative standards is in fact "sacred" to a
queer homeland. Heteronormative sentiments often maintain that "homosexuals
[are] deviant, immoral individuals . . . [who] simply live an aberrant lifestyle
rather than constituting a legitimate cultural identity" (Irvine 1998:575).
Thus, the overt representation of queer sexual behavior throughout these
guides suggests a distinct reverence for sexual behaviors that are stigmatized in
heteronormative discourses.
Discussing the representation of Amsterdam as "the Gay Capital of the
World," Dahles describes the contentious debates among the city's tourism
boards as to whether Amsterdam's image should be that of "history" or that of
"heretics and whores" (1996:231). The representation of San Francisco as an
explicitly sexual gay mecca has met with similar obstacles. The director of the
San Francisco Arts Commission explained that in composing the three-day
tours to be represented in California: Culture's Edge, he contended with individuals
from the San Diego Arts Commission who did not agree that a "Pride"
tour should be included in the magazine.33
The "Pride" tour was ultimately included
because, in the director's words, "I could not face my constituency in
San Francisco and tell them that a gay and lesbian tour had not been included."
Those creating the representations of both Amsterdam and San Francisco have
grappled with the cities' sexual "stigma" and the stigma of homosexuality in
particular. Both Amsterdam and San Francisco continue to be linked with
sexuality in the popular imagination, often through particular sites.
Josie's Cabaret and Juice Joint is situated in the nexus of the Castro/Market
Street area and packs its sunny back patio with a late breakfast crowd.
Vegetarian fare constitutes the menu, and the artwork of HIV+ people covers
the walls. In the evenings, campy shows and comedians entertain audiences
who sip ginger ale and espresso. Josie's is consistently mentioned in gay tour
guidebooks among the "10 things no self respecting gay person should miss"
(Hobica 1995:189). Josie's is also consistently mentioned in nonqueer guides
to the city as a "must see" that is "highly recommended.'34
Josie's appearance
in a diversity of guides brings to light two issues in the construction of a queer
homeland. First, the fact that Josie's appears in nonqueer guides suggests that
queer entertainment and perhaps queer people themselves are considered one
of the many "attractions' of the city. Queer people, in this sense, are portrayed
to a nonqueer audience as ^suitable objects of the "tourist gaze" (Urry 1990).
Gazing tourists attempt to appropriate "authentic others" in order to sidestep
modernity. Perhaps the very spectacle of queer performativity. in all its flamboyance,
invites a voyeuristic crowd of heterosexual gazers. Perhaps vivid performances
of "queer identity" (see Figure 4) are viewed as a product to be consumed,
the "sexual other" taking the place of the "primitive other." However,
QUEER PILGRIMAGE
Hgure 4
Playing out a leather lifestyle at the Kolsom Street 1 air, San Francisco, 1998.
at times it is unclear who is gazing at whom. Is the straight' audience the active
voyeur, or are queers, in fact, staring back at the straight other 1 Moreover,
can the audience be rightly characterized as entirely composed oi
"straights ? Probably not. Feminist film theory has deconstructed the 'male
gaze, and many scholars have addressed the colonial gaze and the unite
gaze However, a comprehensive analysis of Kith the 'queer g.i/e and the
straight gaze has yel to be produced.
In any event. gating on a sexual ' other seems to constitute a part ot the
touristic experience tor both straight' and queer tounsts The visually rich
performances and ambiance at Josie s are explicitly concerned with queer issues,
from overtly political one-act |il.iv s to decor made b\ HIV + people 1 h
allure ot a queer cafe unapologetically 'out" about its politics is available to
both queer and nonqueer visitors to the city. This suggests a second element in
the construction of a queer homeland- that coalitions must be consciously built
and maintained between queer and nonqueer people. Josie s is a sale place tor
50 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
a panoply of patrons; it is a place that hosts a diversity of sexualities. The representation
of Josie's implies that heterogeneity is necessary to build a queer
nation. Boundaries, here, become stretched to include "straight" allies.
Discussing the phenomenon of "gay space," Hodge describes the controversy
about "straights" in "gay space" and suggests that queer events "should
be first and foremost a safe celebration space for gays, not exclusionary like
'women's only' space . . . though there is sometimes a need for exclusionary
spaces. Although 'straight space' is never totally straight because gays are always
present whether they are 'out' about it or not" (1998).36
The construction
of a "gay space," or "queer place," is complex and here includes nonqueer allies.
Josie's is represented as a nonexclusive, though no less overt, queer hub.
It is a place where sexualities mix, while its status as a political venue for queer
people remains. Further, Josie's is not described as an exclusively "men's" or
"women's" cafe but, instead,' is represented as open to the play of various gender
and sexual identities. Although the representation of Josie's is verifiably
queer, the cafe is not represented as monolithically so. The polymorphous inclusivity
of queer identity was well spoken by a female informant whom I interviewed
at Josie's.
M. identified herself as a lesbian who had recently moved to San Francisco
after having visited the city many times. She recalled with some nostalgia
her first trips to the city, where she felt empowered by the queer surroundings
and her sense of belonging to a community. M. concluded that she felt safe as
an "out" lesbian in San Francisco. This sense of safety ultimately led her to
place less emphasis on her sexual identity:
When I was in Minneapolis, and after I came out, I felt like I had to be so out all of
the time. It's like I had to be superlesbian because the environment there was so
different than here. I went to all the marches and rallies and was involved in organizations.
It was all about being gay. Here, after a while, 1 just quit doing all that.
Now I do political work with prison rights and animal rights. But it's like 1 don't
have to highlight queer stuff so much anymore. So, in that way, 1 don't think I'm
quite "as gay" now. ... There I had to do dyke drag all the time, constantly proving
that I was part of the community. I had to be a certain kind of lesbian: the white T
shirt, the jeans, the big black boots. So 1 think that San Francisco has allowed me
to become a different kind of woman, I don't have to fit the role of superdykc here.
... I can be me, a little more femme, and that's OK. [emphasis added]37
M.'s queer identity is here intimately linked with her political activism and
gender identity. As she became less involved in queer politics, M. de-emphasized
her sexual identity. In representing her identity, or as Butler (1990) might
have it, "performing" her identity, M. associated queerness with political activism.
Her "transformation" was not sexuality based but. rather, a gender transformation—"a
different kind of woman"—intimately linked to her sexuality.
M.'s words reflect that sexual identity in general, and queerness in particular,
is a complex set of factors that includes shitting between various versions of
the self. Her comments situate queer identity not as a monolithic essence but,
rather, as a fluid set of meanings hinging on notions of sexuality and gender.
QUEER PILGRIMAGE SI
*
Like the representation of Josie's, M. reflects the political aspect of queer nation
building. Each representation denies the notion of an essential, exclusive,
queer population. In this sense, M.'s discourse and the discourses surrounding
Josie's suggest a particular kind of nationalist-like rhetoric, more akin to "cultural
nationalism" (Chatterjee 1993) than that described by Anderson (1983).
Rather than political control of the state, a network of "insider ties" coheres
this queer nation.
Red Dora's Bearded Lady, on the fringe of the Mission District, is a regular
rallying point for a preliminary ride by Dykes on Bikes on the eve of the
Pink Saturday "Gay Day" Parade. Co-owned by a member of the notorious
punk dyke band Tribe 8,38
the cafe* serves steamed eggs, unlimited coffee, and
vegetarian hot dogs. It maintains a community bulletin board with an abundance
of queer events and workshops and hosts poetry readings, musical
events, and rotating shows of local artists' work. Red Dora's is listed as a
"women's cafe*" in queer tour books and does not appear in nonqueer guides to
the city. I spoke with a female cashier, whom I call S., about her interaction
with queer visitors to the city.39
She explained that queer tourists were very
easy to recognize: "You know when they are a tourist because they are overwhelmed
by the menu and can never decide... and they buy everything: the Tshirts,
and sweatshirts, and postcards, and everything. I guess they want to
show everyone back home in Iowa that they were here and went to the cool gay
spots."40
S.'s comment reflects the stereotype of tourist-dupes who are never
quite comfortable in their surroundings; it also emphasizes the "insider's" acumen
in recognizing queer "interlopers." Further, she refers to the consumption
of queer "markers," which Red Dora's is in the business of providing. Though
Red Dora's does not sell rainbow flags or pink triangle bumper stickers, it does
market the punky equivalent: T-shirts that say, "I may not go down in history,
but I'll go down on your sister," or a play on dive bar rhetoric, "Liquor in the
front. Poker in the rear." S. seemed to relay an antipathy for queer tourists who
want to buy some form of identity, a shallow reflection of themselves, that can
be bandied around back home. Iowa, in her estimation, is figured as a place
where one must wear one's identity; San Francisco is the place to procure this
"identity." Consumption then validates and marks the "experience" of the pilgrimage.
In contrast, residents of the city, "insiders," are expected to manifest
some "authentic" queer self without the aid of trite symbols. Perhaps being a
queer resident of the city, as opposed to a mere visitor, one is supposed to live
an "essential" queer identity that is not dependent on queer trappings. Residents
of the city may thus avoid purchasing "touristic" queer markers in order
to avoid being mistaken for anything but "authentic" queer San Franciscans.
Shenhav-Keller (1995) addresses a similar phenomenon in her analysis of purchases
made by tourists in Tel Aviv's popular Maskit store. Tourists, anxious
to bolster their sense of Jewish identity, actively seek the most "authentic" representations
available. Residents, however, rarely purchase these icons, presumably
because they are comfortable with their own "authentic" identity by
52 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
virtue of residing in a Jewish state. In sum, it appears as though "insider"
(Boissevain 1996) status precludes overt identity markings, queer ur Jewish.
In the introduction to Gay USA (1995), Hobica suggests a further disruption
of bounded and easily marked identity categories. He writes that in San
Francisco, "unlike Boston, people don't care what you do—they don't judge.
You can be a lesbian one day, bi the next and heterosexual and married a week
later and no one bats an eyelash" (1995:184).41
Hobica emphasizes that San
Francisco, as a place, allows people to move between and among particular
identities. The fluidity he describes echoes recent debates about the use of
"identity tags," which some argue limit subjectivity (Butler 1997) and obscure
the heterogeneity of queerness (Anzaldua 1991). S.'s words and those of the
tour book suggest that San Francisco allows a range of sexual identity choices
not available in other places. Not only can one easily choose a sexual identity,
but this identity can also be easily traded in for a new one. Unlike Boston's or
perhaps Iowa's, San Francisco's cultural climate does not insist on the maintenance
of strict identity categories. In other words, a queer homeland provides
choice in regard to sexual identities, and these identities are flexible and
changeable over time; even through shifts of sexual identity, one can retain an
"authentic" queer self.
These discourses of authenticity are reminiscent of Goffman's front- and
backstages, where the authentic backstage is accessible only to locals, who
guard the mystique of essential identities. In the case of San Francisco, however,
the "authentic" queer self is enhanced by rejecting identity labels and the
overt symbols of queerness: identity markers based on circumscribed categories.
I would add that this ability to remain "unmarked" while still retaining an
"out" queer identity is only possible in places where queer activism and a high
tolerance for "alternative lifestyles" have prevailed over time. In those places
where it is dangerous to be marked as queer, there is no luxury of choice.
Rich's (1986) "compulsory heterosexuality" is perhaps "queered" in San Francisco
to become a form of sexual fluidity. However, this inversion is possible
only after heteronormativity has been disrupted to some degree. San Francisco,
in this sense, is represented as a place, unlike most places on the planet, where
one can "play" with sexual identity tropes. One need not take a one-dimensional
stand on the sexual self.
Conclusion: A Homeland Halfway to the Stars
Guidebooks that routinely boast that San Francisco is "the gayest city in
the United States" and "gay central USA" reflect many of the sentiments ex
pressed by queer tourists in search of a homeland. San Francisco becomes constructed
as a pilgrimage site for the elaboration of queer identity through
emerging discourses that, though sometimes "essentialized," are continually in
a state of negotiation—a negotiation that takes place between "insiders" and
"outsiders" and within the rubric of "queer" itself. Queer pilgrimage does not
conform to a homogeneous sense of queer identity but, rather, is mediated by
other factors such as race, class status, age. and gender. Thus, queerness as an
QUEER PILGRIMAGE S3
#
identity construct reveals itself to be flexible, fluid, and open to shifts in meaning
even when queemess is employed in the very concrete process of territorializing
a homeland. Unlike many trends within identity politics, the imagining
of a queer nation, with a homeland located in San Francisco, suggests new avenues
for articulating identity. I have argued that San Francisco does serve as an
imagined homeland for queers, a nexus point for the "ideoscape" (Appadurai
1996) of a queer imaginary. However, I have also elaborated how representations
of the city include a flexible set of identities, rather than a singular
emphasis on a one-dimensional queer subject. The city operates as a transnational
mecca for queer tourists only on the condition that it not restrict too drastically
its definition of "queerness."
Nationalist-like tropes, deployed to consolidate a queer nation, are ubiquitous
in the ethnographic narratives I encountered in San Francisco. Although it
would be unwise to configure a queer nation as exactly equivalent to other nationalist
projects, it would be equally problematic to discount the efficacy of
nationalist-like discourses. It is, after all, no coincidence that the largest flagpole
in the city is erected in the Castro and flies the rainbow flag. The proliferation
of nationalisms around the globe underscores the need to better understand
diverse articulations of nationalist-like endeavors. In particular, forms of
nationalist-like sentiments that do not rely on the "imagined" ties of blood,
bone, and cultural patrimony may suggest new ways of conceptualizing peoplehood
based on different criteria, such as sexuality.
My intention has been to emphasize that a queer homeland may be both
logically and ethically tied to touristic practices. If all of the "back homes" offered
the "playing and praying" possible in San Francisco, the city might not exist as
a point of queer concentration. The "mundane social life" outside of the mecca
stands in stark contrast to the symbolic inversion possible in a queer homeland.
Although all pilgrimages involve leaving "home" to find spiritual redemption,
the unique quality of queer tourism is that a reversal of religious pilgrimage is
at play. Many queer tourists leave home because it is there that they have undergone
spiritual exile; a "homeland" offers the sanctuary that many "back
homes" do not. Pilgrimage to San Francisco also raises the question of whether
having a place for queer liminality forecloses the need to effect change in the
status quo back "home." The construction of a queer homeland may thus be
politically dangerous, providing a "ghetto" for the banished. Whatever the political
ramifications may be, the path to a homeland seems to be built on sex and politics.
San Francisco's history of nonconformity is critical here too, for neither
sex nor politics prefigures a sense of peoplehood; these phenomena have occurred
in other places at other times without ever creating a mecca. By gazing
at and through the queer tourist, it is clear that the construction of a queer
homeland is a complex and rich terrain. Through these multiple aspects of identity
migration, many queers have left their hearts in San Francisco, and a homeland
is still in the process of being imagined.
54 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Notes
Acknowledgments. This article has benefited from the thoughtful feedback of
Sylvia Rodriguez, Les W. Field, and James Quesada, all of whom I thank for their support
and insights. I also acknowledge the comments made by Daniel A. Segal and the
anonymous reviewers for CA, whose suggestions I found useful in developing this essay.
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the American Anthropological Association
meeting in Philadelphia in December 1998 and at the American Ethnological Association
meeting in Portland, Oregon, in March 1999. For their comments at these
meetings, I would like to thank Ellen Lewin and Louise Lamphere. My thanks go out to
the graduate students at the University of New Mexico, whose enthusiasm about this
project has helped to make it a reality. I also thank all of the people I interviewed and
hope that I have managed to let their queered selves shine through.
1. "Ephemera," such as flyers, posters, and brochures, are transient in nature, ever
changing, unarchived, and quickly disposed of. In the context of ephemeral things, I
would like to highlight the likewise transient and ever changing discourse that appears
in this discussion. The tour guidebooks I have examined use, for the most part, the terms
gay and lesbian rather than queer. Thus, these guides seem to be "oriented," or marketed,
to lesbians and gays rather than "queers." However, I have chosen to elaborate on a notion
of a specifically "queer homeland" rather than a "gay and lesbian homeland" because
of the inclusivity of "queer" identity (bisexuals, sexual radicals, etc.), which I
hope to demonstrate is fundamental to the construction of a homeland in San Francisco.
Overall, there is a movement among the terminology of respondents' narratives, the language
of tour books, and the conceptual framework of "queerness," creating a dynamic
tension that mirrors the complexity of articulating a sense of homeland.
2. My use of "a" queer nation is distinct from the political organization Queer Nation
started in April 1990 by a group of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP,
organizers interested in direct actions that would address a broader range of gay and lesbian
issues.
3. Tourism is considered a "privileged practice" because economic status often determines
who can, or cannot, engage in touristic endeavors. Further, the practice of pilgrimage,
according to the Turners (1978), arose with the dominant world religions, most
of which denigrate homosexuality. Tracing the pilgrimage qualities of gays and lesbians
going to San Francisco serves to upset the correlation of pilgrimage with dominant and
exclusionary religions. Rather, a pilgrimage to a gay homeland might be construed as
overtly anti"religious."
4. I follow Rothman's suggestion that tourism sells "ambiance, experience, and
identity . . . [an exchange that] is more complicated and ambiguous than a material sales
transaction. A feeling is transmitted and perhaps shared; a way of living is expressed"
(1998:20).
5. Rothman (1998:16) maintains that "cosmopolitan, urban, affluent" coastal cities,
such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, "reflexively" cater to tourism and that this
tourism has taken on a form distinct from that in other places in the United States where
tourism has developed.
6. Weston describes the "gay imaginary" as a participatory process wherein "the
designation of lesbians and gay men as 'a people' becomes bound up with the search for
sexual partners and the construction of a lesbian or gay identity" (1998:34). In other
words, the "gay imaginary" does not require finding one's essential gay self but, rather,
subjectivity is constructed through imagining a "we-ness." Weston contends that this
imagining is generated in the urban centers where gay migrations have occurred.
QUEER PILGRIMAGE 55
#
7. Bean explains that "the Indian death rate was accelerated" (1968:169), primarily
because of disease and starvation, as hundreds of thousands of "Americans" migrated to
California. A Native American population of 30,000 in 1870 was reduced to less than
16,000 by 1900 (Bean 1968:169).
8. The development of railroads, according to Rothman (1998:47), also increased
the number of resorts in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas, thus linking industrial
expansion and touristic endeavors.
9. See Bean 1968:235-243 for a discussion of the complexities among the Workingmen's
Party, California employers, and the federal government on the issue of Chinese
immigrant labor.
10. The early 1950s were the time of the "San Francisco Renaissance," marked by
the establishment of the Poetry Center at San Francisco State (Bean 1968:448). The beat
literary movement that followed soon after has been described as a combination of a retreat
from the "modern" East Coast and a seeking of "individuality" (Rothman
1998:167) that was centered in San'Francisco.
11. Mona's, an all-women's bar, first opened in 1936 and catered primarily to
working-class women, though middle-class lesbians vacationing in San Francisco also
spent time there (Faderman 1991:107). In 1950, Mattachine, a homosexual organization
begun by five gay men who had been members of the Communist Party, was active in
San Francisco. Two years later, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon would establish the first alllesbian
organization, the Daughters of Bilitis.
12. Once a significant number of queer people had moved to the Castro and created
an enclave community, their numbers continued to increase. Stephen O. Murray (1992)
suggests that homosexual residential concentration and the recreational facilities that
followed created a sense of community and shared experience. He goes on to describe
how the development of the welfare state allowed individual gay people to move to enclave
communities as they were freed from economic dependence on their families/communities
of origin. However, I would add that other social factors, such as the "queer
ships" noted earlier, added to the phenomenon of enclave communities.
13. Likewise, Kennedy and Davis suggest that because San Francisco was a "cosmopolitan"
city, "it had the numbers to generate the politically conscious leadership of
the homophile movement" (1993:115). Further, Stein (1997) finds the growth of feminist
culture to be rooted in the lesbian movement that was generated through lesbian bar
scenes, alternative families, and woman-centered ideals found in San Francisco from the
1970s to the 1990s.
14. Harvey Milk's election to the Board of Supervisors was applauded by the gay
men living in the Castro who had formed the backbone of Milk's campaign. Milk's murder
in 1978 and the acquittal of his assassin, Dan White (with the infamous "Twinkie defense"),
caused a profound shudder in the gay quarter of the city.
15. I am not suggesting that sexual "orientation" is chosen but, rather, that one may
choose to include oneself in a larger whole of queer "nationhood."
16. The notion of "chosen" membership in a queer nation is contentious. Historically,
homosexuality has been understood, variously, as "innate'Tbiological or a product
of socialization. Foucault (1978) has also described the social construction of the term in
a historical process meant to mark certain people as "other." However, in the sense that
one can choose to be "out" or not, one chooses to include oneself in a queer nation. Similarly,
the feminist movement in the early 1970s advocated "voluntary" lesbianism as a
way to consolidate separatist power. The more recent use of queer, which includes
56 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
nongay/nonlesbian-identified allies, certainly speaks to the chosen nature of queer nation
membership.
17. Bourdieu (1980) distinguishes critical thought from ordinary perception and
activity from reflection. "Leisure" or "play" is, then, a function of privilege. My use of
play here is more flexible than that suggested by Bourdieu. "Play" functions as active
participation in a queer community rather than solely a practice of one's cultural capital.
18. Judith Butler (1993) has suggested that play constitutes "the matrix of identity"
as players, after play, make community—much as ritual leaves in its wake "a community
of believers" (Lancaster 1997:24).
19. Interview with "L.," conducted at the San Francisco Pride Parade, June 1998.
L. was a 31-year-old self-identified Latina bisexual originally from Dallas who lived in
Los Angeles and worked as an administrative assistant. Our interview was brief because
of the context of the festivities, crowds, and so on. The brevity of this interview, however,
highlights the difficulty of conducting research on gay and lesbian topics within
anthropology. While funding sources are limited for many anthropological research endeavors,
the lack of funding available for queer research may be particularly pronounced,
thus limiting researchers' ability to conduct extensive ethnographic projects.
20. Discussing a related phenomenon in heterosexual "sex tourism," Tucker notes
that "tourism clearly influences power in sexual identity and presents opportunities that
may be perceived as lacking in the tourist's home environment" (1997:114), suggesting
that transformations through sex(uality) tourism occur within queer and "straight" en-
counters.
21. Interview with "Z.," conducted at Red Dora's Bearded Lady Cafe", June 1988.
Z. was a 32-year-old self-identified white lesbian living in Reno, Nevada, who did freelance
graphic design work and frequented San Francisco, her former home.
22. Interview with "J.," conducted at the San Francisco Pride Parade, June 1998. J.
was a 40-year-old male, self-identified as white and homosexual, who worked as a
waiter in Hamburg, Germany.
23. Interview with "O.," conducted at the San Francisco Pride Parade, June 1998.
O. was a 23-year-old male who self-identified as a black gay man. O. lived in Atlanta,
Georgia, his birthplace, and worked as a financial consultant.
24. This respondent's use of "my people" is particularly interesting given that he
was a German tourist who was, in San Francisco, far outside the borders of his own nation-state.
Further, "my people" is reminiscent of the use of Volk to consolidate a sense
of nationalist pride. Here, gay people are configured as the "Volk," which seems to invert
the reproductive, blood ties of the German nationalist "Volk."
25. "Pride" parades and events have become ubiquitous in many U.S. cities and
abroad, which suggests, perhaps, that the Pride Parade in San Francisco is just another
example of this trend. However, I maintain throughout this article that the particular
qualities of San Francisco as a site of identity construction, rooted in history, politics,
and so forth, make the San Francisco Pride events unique and exemplify the qualities of
a homeland.
26. See Shenhav-Keller 1995 for a discussion of Jewish pilgrimage to Isreal, where
a parallel dynamic seems to occur: a journey "back" to a "home"land that one has never
been to before. Both experiences, queer and Jewish pilgrimage, serve to disrupt easy
definitions of "home" as a place of material, geographic familiarity. Rather, a homeland
is a composite of symbolic and material factors: a place of we-ness, sanctuary, historical
relevance, and so on.
QUEER PILGRIMAGE 57
27. Cafe* Flore is well known as a "cruising" place for gay men in the Castro, where
one's ability to coif correctly may mean the difference between a date or not. I believe
that the sexualized atmosphere at Cafe" Flore alongside a playful appropriation of stereotypes
about gay men's vanity are the origins of the nickname "Cafe* Hairdoo." However,
as with all cultural products that arise in subcultures, there are no doubt multiple interpretations
of the meaning of "Cafe" Hairdoo."
28. This particular guide is distinct from others in that it reflects San Francisco's
representation of "itself." It is not a commercial guide from "outside" the city.
29. The economic differences between the Castro and the Mission are significant
here as well. In general, rents are less in the Mission District than in the Castro, and the
income levels of residents in each neighborhood seem to correspond to this fact. Commercial
venues in the Castro, for example, have tended to be more costly than those in
the Mission, although this has changed in recent years as the Mission District has become
gentrified.
30. This debate arose sporadically while I was active in the 1995 Dyke March planning
sessions. The question never reached the level of an official agenda item in the
meetings, but it was bandied about as a point of contention. In comparison with the
Michigan Women's Music Festival, where the debate about (specifically male-to-female)
transgender inclusion has been volatile, Dyke March concerns about transgender inclusion
have been far less controversial and divisive.
31. Interview, conducted at the Dyke March, June 1998, with a 29-year-old woman
who self-identified as a Jewish lesbian.
32. Here I take the position that "young men on drugs" are unmarked in comparison
with racial "others" who are explicitly marked by race in the text I am assessing.
However, it is important to note that often, in popular media and in stereotyping discourses,
men of color are portrayed as "on drugs." I do not believe that to be the case in
this particular instance, but I do acknowledge that this pervasive and damaging stereotype
may be a factor in how the text of this guidebook is interpreted by readers.
33. California: Culture's Edge (CCTC 1998) comprises 12 different tours in the
cities of San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Consensus had to be reached on
which 12 tours to include because each city was responsible for providing one tour
within the stated categories. In other words, all three cities have showcased tours such as
"Jewish Heritage," "Fiesta," "Mission Trail," "Jazz and Blues," and so on. Apparently,
the San Diego board felt it did not have enough "Pride" sites within the city and so advocated
that "Pride" not be one of the tours. Whether or not this was the actual reason the
San Diego board contested the "Pride" tour is, of course, questionable. The publication
was funded, in large part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, whose acceptance of
homosexuality and sex-positive images has not been exemplary. Perhaps a feared loss of
funding influenced the conclusions of the San Diego tourism board.
34. Though Josie's is not marked explicitly in nonqueer guides as a queer venue,
the lists of events and descriptions of Josie's in these guides do emphasize a nonheterosexual
environment.
35. Urvashi Vaid (1995) suggests that AIDS had the effect of "outing everyone"
because gay and bisexual men weie dying in such large numbers in the first years of the
epidemic. The queer community significantly shifted focus as energies previously spent
on organizing for queer rights were now needed to combat AIDS, raise awareness, promote
research, and so on. The nature of politics in the queer community underwent and
continues to undergo significant changes. Vaid further suggests that the AIDS epidemic
forced the queer political community to revision its goals, from a "liberation" model to
58 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
a "legitimation" model. Because the medical needs around AIDS are so great, queer organizers
have needed to call on "the straight world" for assistance. This shift to obtain
"conditional equality" was, according to Vaid, initiated by the AIDS crisis.
36. Michael Bronski (1984) makes a similar claim in his assertion that much of
what is called "straight" culture is heavily infused with a gay sensibility: ballet, opera,
Broadway, theater, art, and film have all been shaped by the talents of gay men. A similar
sentiment is reflected in the film The Celluloid Closet (1996), created by two San Francisco
gay men.
37. Interview with "M.," conducted at the Lexington Club, June 1998. M. lived in
San Francisco and worked as a firefighter. She is identified as a white lesbian and was 33
years old. For detailed discussions of the distinctions between "butch" and "femme,M
see
Case 1993, Kennedy and Davis 1993, and Stein 1997.
38. "Tribe 8" has a similar pronunciation to tribade, which, according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, is "a woman who practices unnatural vice with another
woman."
39. "S." did not mention nonqueer tourists during our discussion.
40. Interview with "S.," conducted at Red Dora's Bearded Lady Caf6, June 1998.
S. worked at the cafe*, lived nearby, and identified herself as a Jewish dyke. She is originally
from Kansas.
41. It seems to me that this progression from "lesbian," to "bi," to "hetero," to
"married" is not accidental. The issue of bisexuality has been raised as a concern within
San Francisco queer communities. Are bisexuals "authentically" queer? Can they be
trusted as political allies and potential bedfellows? More recently, however, one hears
more and more about "hasbians" (former lesbians now involved in significant relationships
with men). As one woman ironically put it, "Lesbians these days! If they're not
sleeping with men, they're becoming men."
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