When I tell people that I grew up in the Castro, they usually ask “What was that like?”
“It was fine,” I’d always answer. I lived in a cute Edwardian house with my mom, dad and little brother. I went to school every day, spent my free-time playing in my backyard with my best friend, and eventually grew up and went to college.
The more I got asked this question, the more I started to think of my experience as unique. “I guess it was cool to grow up in such an open-minded place,” I started to say. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of my parents sitting me down and telling me that it didn’t matter if I wanted to marry a man or a woman. They reiterated this so often while I was growing up that I was convinced that I would probably be gay. I was surprised when puberty came around and I was actually attracted to boys.
As a kid I’d have to say that my favorite part about growing up in the Castro was going out on halloween night, and not because of the halloween party in the Castro (I’m a kid, remember). There wasn’t another kid for about a square mile, so trick or treating was awesome. I’d ring a doorbell and someone (I realize now it was almost always a man) would come running out excitedly, saying something like, “thank god you’re here! We’ve been eating this candy all night. Please, take as much as you want!”
As a kid, you don’t really notice your city or your neighborhood as being unique in any way. It’s just your home. Years later, after having lived in two different countries and one other city in the States, I still think of the Castro when I tap my sparkly red shoes together and say “there’s no place like home.”
