Producer Peter L. Stein on the Making of The Castro

Peter L. Stein, producer, writer, and director of The Castro.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly how and when this program got its start. Was it in June of 1996, when KQED's cameras first started to roll tape (it was an AIDS benefit at Josie's Cabaret & Juice Joint)? Or perhaps it was in May 1992? That's when I first discussed the idea of a series of programs telling the story of San Francisco through its neighborhoods, and it quickly became clear to all of us that the Castro would make a powerful and entertaining episode.

Or was it in 1973, when a 13-year-old kid from the Sunset District had to spend a lot of after-school hours riding the streetcar home, and got his first look at the neighborhood that was soon to become the "gay mecca"? Truth to tell, I didn't notice too much about the Castro then -- it was just a place to catch the streetcar; but by the time I moved back to San Francisco as an adult in 1983, six blocks from Castro Street, the neighborhood had become, it seems irrevocably, a cornerstone of gay history. That transformation has always intrigued me -- because I feel a part of both worlds that the Castro defines. As a third-generation native San Franciscan, I can appreciate what the old "Eureka Valley" must have meant to its residents; and as a 37-year-old gay man, I have come to know both the appeal and the problems the Castro presents for a generation of gay men and lesbians who came of age there.

To tell the dramatic story of the Castro, my associate producer David Condon and I began by speaking with more than 200 individuals representing a wide spectrum of experiences in the neighborhood -- from the original merchants and families of Eureka Valley, to lesbian and gay pioneers who paved the way for a community to evolve in San Francisco in the '50s, to those who planted a rainbow flag in the neighborhood in the '70s, to young queers disaffected from the neighborhood today.

As a storyline emerged, we called upon KQED's viewers (as well as the remarkable archives of the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California) to begin piecing together a visual history of the neighborhood; and shooting and interviewing took place mainly during the summer of 1996 -- more than 70 hours in total. Sometimes we were fortunate in our discoveries: a visiting out-of-towner happened to catch one of our appeals for footage on the air, and supplied us with exquisite and poignant home movies of gay life in San Francisco in the '40s and '50s. And sometimes we lost out: many of the important storytellers of the Castro, who should by all rights be around to share their tale, have died in the last 15 years. AIDS still casts a long shadow over the neighborhood, as inevitably it must over the documentary -- but I hope that in re-telling the history of the neighborhood, some of what shines through is the sense of exhilaration that an entire community began to feel as they laid claim to a neighborhood in a way that was unprecedented. What is most remarkable to me is that the sense of attachment to the valley has been transferred from generation to generation, from community to community over decades. It seems that somebody always wants to call that place "home."

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