Below are some seminal SF bars that not only helped turn a city queer, but helped launch a revolution. They may not have the respectability of PAC or a the picket fence, but bars were often at the frontlines of our struggles. I was struck by how many of the battles we fought - and won - started in these bars, and how often bars served as a launching pad for our claims, places where activities became an identity. The project, part of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, shows a lost world of piano bars and bathhouses, butch-femme discos and beachside hustlers. After several prominent bars in San Francisco started shuttering - victims of Manhunt and Grindr and time - I started mapping a city's worth of shuttered gay bars. We don't give gay bars the respect they deserve. (Above: A scene from The Tool Box depicted in a Life magazine story called 'Homosexuality in America.')
