Polk Street’s Cinch Saloon, Its Pride Roots Showing, Straddles Gay SF Old and New
With naughty selfies and Star Wars props, the bar will witness the revival of an old tradition Sunday.
Long before its shops sold $19 salads, Polk Street had a reputation. It was gay and illicit.
In 1970, the pride flag didn’t exist, and the Castro was still coming out of the closet. (Harvey Milk didn’t open his shop, Castro Camera, until 1972.) Gay men flocked to Polk Street for bathhouses like Jack’s Baths or to find sex for sale.
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The Cloud Seven Bar at 2360 Polk, now a high-end fro-yo shop, was “outfitted with numbered tables and lip-shaped phones by the late 1960s,” according to one interviewee in the Polk Street History Project. Sex workers would line up by the bar, and seated patrons would use their tacky phones to call the bartender and place an order.
But a movement was brewing too. At the Suzy-Q bar on Polk, the neighborhood formed the nation’s first LGBTQ business association, known as the Tavern Guild. On June 27, 1970 — one year after the Stonewall riots sent tremors through New York City — 30 gays and lesbians marched along the street. They didn’t get a permit until 1972, when an “official” parade, called Christopher Street West after the New York gayborhood, marched to Civic Center. (In 1974, the parade, led by fife and drum, had the theme Gay Freedom by 1976.)
Today’s gay San Francisco might look a lot different if the city hadn’t embarked on major construction along Market Street in the 1970s. The work cut off Polk Street and helped nudge gay business into the Castro. Over the years, gay bars shuttered along Polk, all except one: the Cinch Saloon. If not for the pride flags outside, the nearly 50-year-old bar might be indistinguishable from the other old-timey watering holes along the corridor. But step inside and find a more eclectic and colorful display.
When the Cinch closed at the start of the pandemic, manager Eric Berchtold, a lifelong sci-fi and fantasy nerd, transformed the back room into a replica of the famous Star Wars cantina. On a recent Thursday night, a bartender told me that George Lucas was so impressed that he stopped by to take a photo. Berchtold laughed when I brought it up: “I don’t know where these people get that!”
The yarn has spun that way because local Lucasfilm staff did once stop by, and as Berchtold remembers, they were impressed.
That said, we’re in a galaxy far, far away from the late ’60s and ’70s. You can’t buy sex so easily on Polk Street anymore, but you can still advertise. A decade ago, Berchtold connected a TV to a service that live-streamed social media photos that tagged the Cinch Saloon.
“That company died out, but people were getting used to seeing all their photographs on the TV,” says Berchtold. “And then I was like, ‘Ooh, this guy’s really hot. Let’s put his picture up there.’”
Over the years, the photos got “a little naughtier,” according to Berchtold. Since no one can see them from outside, it wasn’t a problem — or at least, he jokes, “nobody has ever said anything.” Some of the photos are solo, either frontal or rear, and others have a bit more action. At this point, Berchtold’s digital library is so big and ever-changing that he can’t remember where many of the photos are from. Most of the time, he just pulls photos he likes from Twitter, but every once in a while, the stars are local. Anybody can send their photos to Berchtold, who promises to post them on the live feed.
When I tried to track down some of the bar’s indecent celebrities, I learned that one of the men, famous for his underwear shots, is actually getting married — to a woman. How the times have changed on Polk Street.
But some of the old times haven’t faded away. In 2020, high-profile drag queen and impresario Juanita More (or, as she styles it, MORE!) and community “artivist” Alex U. Inn organized a march down Polk to honor Pride’s roots. Like in the days of yore, there were no corporate sponsors or branded merchandise. “It was just people with handmade signs, just being who they are and marching for a cause,” remembers Berchtold. “It was the best gay pride I’ve ever been to.”
This Sunday, More is bringing the march back to Polk. And you can be sure that I’ll be celebrating at the Cinch.
Adam Echelman covers housing and development for The Frisc.
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