The Mayor of Castro Street

Harvey Milk Plaza

The gateway to the Castro, marked by Gilbert Baker's permanent rainbow flag installation, flying since 1997.

You're standing at the crossroads of Market and Castro, under the giant rainbow flag that has flown here since 1997. The flag is 20 feet tall and 30 feet wide, mounted on a 100-foot pole. Gilbert Baker designed the original rainbow flag in 1978 for San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade. He simplified it from eight stripes to six so it could be reproduced more easily.

Baker never trademarked the flag. He wanted it to spread freely, and it did. This installation at Harvey Milk Plaza is the only permanent rainbow flag he ever created. The plaza itself was dedicated to Milk in 1985, five years after the Castro Muni station opened beneath it.

On the night of November 27, 1978, after Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot at City Hall, a crowd gathered right here, then marched down Market Street in silence. Six months later, after Dan White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder, thousands returned and the White Night Riot began at this intersection. Look at the bronze plaque at the base of the flagpole. It lists the openly LGBTQ elected officials who followed Milk, a reminder that the door he pushed open stayed open.

Castro Camera

The storefront where Harvey Milk ran a camera shop and launched four political campaigns from 1972 to 1978.

You're looking at 575 Castro Street, the storefront that was Castro Camera. Milk and Scott Smith opened it in 1972, using the last thousand dollars of their savings. Milk was an amateur photographer who had been a Wall Street investment banker and a theater production assistant in New York before arriving in San Francisco at age 42. The shop wasn't just a business.

It became the neighborhood's informal city hall. New arrivals stopped here for advice. The front windows were a community bulletin board plastered with flyers for protests, meetings, and events. Milk ran all four of his campaigns from this room: for supervisor in 1973 and 1975, for state assembly in 1976, and finally the supervisor race he won in 1977.

He lived in the apartment upstairs. Daniel Nicoletta, the photographer who documented Milk's life, first met him as a customer here and later worked behind the counter. Cleve Jones and speechwriter Frank Robinson also passed through this door. The mural above the storefront shows Milk leaning out a window, smiling, wearing a T-shirt that reads 'You gotta give 'em hope.' It was dedicated in 1998, twenty years after his death.

The bronze plaque in the sidewalk tells the story. The storefront is now a Human Rights Campaign shop.