The Castro - Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco

The true story of the neighborhood Harvey Milk made famous, from its earliest days to what he helped it become. Known internationally as the world's first 'gay hometown', San Francisco's Castro district began as a quiet, working class neighborhood of European immigrants. In this moving documentary, filled with rare archival footage and photographs, the story of the Castro's transformation is told by those who lived it, young and old, straight and gay. It's a tale of social upheaval, exuberant street culture, political assassination, and the inspiring coming-of-age of an entire community - an ongoing saga even today. Through the stories of the original merchants and families of Eureka Valley, to the lesbian and gay pioneers who paved the way through for a community to evolve in San Francisco in the 1950s, to the self-styled 'Queer' youth disaffected from the neighborhood today, THE CASTRO chronicles how the evolution of the neighborhood changed the way Americans viewed gays and lesbians. For the first time, this long-persecuted minority had the audacity to lay claim to a residential neighborhood as its own - and to begin exercising its own political and economic clout. The Castro of the 1970s became, for many gays and lesbians, both a haven from prejudice, and a model for joining the fabric of middle-class American society. At the same time, the neighborhood became a lighting rod for America's growing discomfort with the new openness of gays in their midst.