First Castro Street Fair 1974: Iconic Event
GAY HISTORY 1974
“CASTRO BLOOD”
GUNMAN KILLED IN SCREAMING CROWD @ FIRST CASTRO STREET FAIR
GUNS BOOK-ENDED HARVEY MILK
Harvey Milk came to San Francisco because he had an “Appointment in Samarra.” GUNS FRAMED THE BRIEF 4 years between Harvey’s first real public event, the Castro Street Fair, August 18, 1974, and his murder in 1978.
It ain’t funny how I ended up like SUSAN HAYWARD on the front page (circled below) of the next day’s “Chronicle” standing over a dead gunman’s body in the intersection of 18th and Castro. (In Harvey’s column –pictured below, he made no issue about guns and covered up the killing in 22 dismissive words.)
That sunny afternoon under the ticking clock of the Hibernia Bank, at 18th and Castro, cheers of fun welled up from the festive crowd of 5000 Castro clones, shirtless gym bodies, drag queens,
lesbians, and leatherboys cramming shoulder to shoulder, cruising each other, browsing vendor booths, laughing, smoking pot, and moving to the beat of music from the bandstand set up for Sylvester near the marquee of the Castro Theater.
The fair was Milk’s brainchild to register new voters. However, the City, snubbing the ambitious interloper from New York, agreed to close Castro Street to traffic, but refused to close 18th Street where cars inched through the queer intersection packed curb-to-curb with a surging sea of people and dozens of trapped cars heading east and west on 18th.
My lover David Sparrow (1946-1992) and I were just stepping off the curb into the jammed intersection near Donuts & Things when shots rang out. Buckshot ricocheted off the Hibernia Bank walls. Two women fell wounded. The trapped crowd screamed with nowhere to run.
An SFPD cop sprinting hard down the sidewalk, pushing and yelling, gun drawn, shoved David and me aside. David stumbled into 18th street. Time stood still. The shooter who had held-up a gay shop on 18th with a shotgun was shoving through the crowd toward us waving his gun barrel wildly. People backed away from the fast-approaching shooter, and the cop.
It happened so quickly. The gunman blasted off another round, coming closer, stumbling. twisting, falling flat on his back across the hood of a stalled car. The robber who looked so young got off another wild blast into the air before the cop jumped him, straddled his legs, leaned over his torso, and fired his .357 Magnum point blank into his ribcage six feet from us.
The “Chronicle” reporter (Kevin Wallace) and cameraman covering the fair were suddenly covering a killing. “I didn’t know how many shots he had left,” the officer (Arnold Strite) said. “I shot him close up for fear my bullet would go through him and hit someone else.”
The next day in the “Chronicle” of August 19, the shooting hit the front page. In the fast-moving mayhem, the news photographer happened to catch me (circled) in his picture. Not that I ever wanted to be seen on a front page standing over a dead body in the intersection of 18th and Castro. Welcome to the 1970s.