Just stay gay
Writing by treason on Saturday, 29 of April , 2006 at 10:15 am
During a particularly arduous game between the Cubs and the Marlins the other day, T turned to me and said I’m starting to remind him of Jack Nicholson in The Pledge. Fine. Ever since we rented Capote, he’s been walking around imitating Truman Capote. He has him down. It’s spooky.
But we were sitting, the two of us, Truman and Jack, and we saw a story on FNC about the Castro District in San Francisco. Couples with children are flocking to the place because the crime rate is low and the schools are good. But issues are arising. Some people are uncomfortable walking down the street with their kids because the little crumb-crunchers might see explicit window displays.
T and I reacted, oddly enough, the same way:
“Too bad!”
“Why did you move there?”
“What did you expect?”
I may lean Conservative, but here’s where I’ll defend the Castro to my death. Are gay couples with children having issues, or is it just the heterosexual couples? If it’s gay couples, then that’s an interesting development and I want to watch how this unfolds. But if it’s just the heterosexual couples…well, excuse me, why did you move to an openly gay neighborhood in the first place? Because it’s a great area, right? Fun, colorful, relatively safe, and diverse. But now that you live there you want it to change? Let’s see. You left suburbia to live someplace more interesting, but now you want it to be suburbia.
It’s like when my mother moved us to Rogers Park. A Jewish neighborhood, safe, good schools. If she had rented an apartment, then complained that everyone around us was Jewish and that they should all become lapsed Catholics like her, what sense would that have made?
I have long had a love-hate relationship with San Francisco, but I have fond memories of the Castro. Jack and I would go on little shopping trips and have lunch, and it really was one area of the city where I felt safe.
“Jack, why are we holding hands?”
“Ever hear of chivalry?”
“Ever hear of the woman on the inside of the sidewalk and the man walking next to the street?”
“Hon, if a car jumps the curb, it’s your ass. And maybe I’m trying to protect you from some of these shops.”
“What - some gay proprietor is going to pull me inside and try to sell me some chaps?”
“You got me.”
It was a pleasant way to spend a day. People were friendly, there was always something unusual to see; if you were looking for a fabulous greeting card or gift wrap or a peculiar refrigerator magnet, Castro Street was the place to be. If you don’t want to see gay men together or see provocative window displays, don’t go there.
I don’t know how many tourist dollars the neighborhood actually generates, but I’d wager it’s enough to make the area invaluable to the city’s economy. People have lived there and worked there for a very long time and they’ve managed to maintain a successful, thriving - and affluent - neighborhood.
What really intrigues me about this story is the parents. I can’t see that these are Red State Christian Conservatives who have moved into the area and are asking people to change their behaviors. So who are these people?
I say, don’t go changin’.
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