Gray Bars

This town is swimming in gays and chock-full of bars. Though gays lay claim to many of those bars, there are enough left over to keep the straights sloshed, too. But there is a strange lack of middle ground in San Francisco -- call them gray bars -- that attract a good mix of gay and straight people at the same time.

San Francisco's neighborhoods, politics, workplaces and social settings are already pretty integrated with and accepting of the "alternative lifestyles" -- but they don't seem terribly alternative here. It's less surprising to have a transgender co-worker than it is to have a Republican one. But though some 10 percent of the city population is GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender), there are only a handful of watering holes where 10 percent (or more) of a bar crowd is. Can't we all just drink along?

Certainly much of this separatism has less to do with antipathy between orientations and more to do with romantic opportunity. People go to bars to socialize, but also to look for love, and the odds of finding a gay husband are significantly higher in the Castro than in North Beach. This explains why bars that go gray are usually populated by younger people -- clientele less likely to be looking for a lifetime commitment as a chaser for tequila shots. Likewise, restaurants and other mellow scenes are more mixed between gay and straight patrons because many of those patrons are already coupled.

What gray bars may lack in mate-shopping possibilities they make up for in atmosphere. People are more receptive to starting up conversations with strangers when they're not worried about those strangers trying to cop a feel. In gray bars, the other features of the venue stand out -- the quality of the drinks, the music and the people you meet.

Here's a toast to these few, proud gray bars and the people who patronize them. Maybe they'll inspire you to stop by, meet in the middle and to create new gray bars -- you have the power.

Read my list of San Francisco's Gray Bars in this article in the SF Chronicle.