The Castro!

I had my first tour of the Castro today, given by my new Jordanian friend. It's quite a neighborhood. For those not familiar, the Castro is a neighborhood in SF that is known to be the main gay district in the city. And, it is.

Key things I noticed/had explained to me about the Castro:

• There are many gay men (and women, but I saw many more men) walking around all over the place.


• A good number of the men have cute little dogs they walk around, presumably as conversation pieces with the attractive people they meet on the street.


• People in the district are very concerned with looking good and eating well. In the span of two blocks I saw four gyms and a handful of organic food stores, not to mention vitamin shops (and a crystal healing wand!).


• There are many, many, many rainbow flags flying about. At some places, they were lining the streets. I was told that the flag presents itself in front of an apartment building once the entire population of the building is gay. I'm not sure if that means that they convert the current straight residents, or if they kick the straight residents out and move in gay ones. I presume it's the latter.

So, that's what I learned today, in a nutshell. Other highlights included: a man with some killer calves, wearing a pleated skirt; some sort of shop that had trance playing constantly out of a speaker outside the shop (I've seen this elsewhere in SF, though); a personal ad with a large naked man saying something like "Hi, I'm Mr. Kong, and Mr. Kong needs to be fed!" It's a pretty cool neighborhood.