Castro and 18th - The Honor Walk and the Crossroads
Photo: Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
Look down as you walk along Castro Street. Set into the sidewalks are bronze plaques of the Rainbow Honor Walk, a community project that began installing them in 2014 to honor LGBTQ people who left a mark on history, art, science and politics. The first plaques included figures such as the writer Oscar Wilde, the artist Frida Kahlo and the mathematician Alan Turing, and many more have been added since.
The intersection of Castro and 18th Streets, with its rainbow crosswalks, has long been the neighborhood's crossroads. It has been the scene of street protests, celebrations and vigils, including the candlelight march that formed in these streets the night Harvey Milk and George Moscone were killed in 1978 and flowed to City Hall.
Read a few plaques as you continue south to the storefront where Milk worked.
More on Wikipedia: Rainbow Honor Walk · Oscar Wilde · Alan Turing
Stops on this tour
- Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
- Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
- Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
- North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
- Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
- Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
- The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
- Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
- Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
- Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
- The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
- The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
- Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
- South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom