Harvey’s, gay bar at the heart of S.F.’s Castro district, closes – San Francisco Chronicle
Harvey’s, a prominent bar and restaurant named for Supervisor Harvey Milk in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, shuttered Sunday after decades in business.
The Castro area restaurant, located at 500 Castro St. in the heart of San Francisco’s longtime center of LGBTQ activism and culture, announced its closure with a handwritten sign and an accompanying Instagram post.
“This is our last day being open,” the sign read. “What is next? We don’t know, but we know we will miss all of you.”
Manager David Facer called the closure “a sign of the times.”
“COVID kicked us in the butt,” Facer said when reached by phone Sunday afternoon. “We see it all across the Bay Area.”
The restaurant, established as the Elephant Walk in 1974, was closed and renovated after a fire in 1988, then rebranded in memory of Milk in 1996. Standing less than a block away from Milk’s former camera shop and apartment, it was filled with historical memorabilia celebrating the life of the slain supervisor and the neighborhood’s place in LGBTQ history.
The announcement was greeted with surprise and sadness by longtime patrons.
“This is a blow to the neighborhood, both in terms of the restaurant itself and the location,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a 25-year resident of the Castro.
But Wiener, who represented the Castro on the city’s Board of Supervisors before he joined the state Legislature, said business closures — and openings — are far from uncommon in the neighborhood.
“We’ve always had vacancies — sometimes some very prominent ones — and they often will fill up again,” he said. “The neighborhood does have real challenges, there’s no doubt about that, but this is a very attractive spot for a restaurant or bar.”
Restaurants in the Castro and across the city have continued to struggle amid rising food costs and labor shortages, despite tourism rebounding from the pandemic downturn.
San Francisco lost more than half of its restaurant worker population from 2019 to 2021 during the pandemic shutdowns, city data shows. The lingering effects of the pandemic, high rents and inflation are also among the challenges industry leaders say may continue to hamper restaurants in 2023.
Frustrated Castro merchants threatened last year to withhold taxes unless the city tackled drug use and littering on the street.
The Castro Merchants Association urged city officials to address the mental health of some area residents. In a public letter, the organization said people living on the streets “regularly experience psychotic episodes” and have vandalized storefronts and harassed businesses, residents and tourists.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the Castro, said the neighborhood has a “real problem” with landlords unwilling to lower their rents to bring new tenants to vacant spaces.
“I don’t know the details of what’s going in this particular property, but I do know there are people out there who want to open gay bars in the Castro,” Mandelman said.
Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com