Celebrating 75
Oldest Public High School San Diego High OPENED IN 1882
While it’s gone through a long line of buildings, including a gothic pile known as “the Old Gray Castle,” San Diego High has remained on the same property on the southern edge of Balboa Park since its first incarnation opened in 1882. Famous alumni include actor Gregory Peck and film composer Frank Comstock, and the school’s neighboring Balboa Stadium has hosted everyone from Woodrow Wilson (who became the first president to speak via a public-address system there) to Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, and the 1960s-era San Diego Chargers.
Oldest Gay Bar The Rail (aka the Brass Rail), Hillcrest OPENED IN THE 1930s
San Diego has a long history of gay bars—in the 1950s, a salacious bestseller called USA Confidential warned readers that local sailors were flocking to “fairy dives” full of “prancing misfits in peekaboo blouses, with marcelled [gelled] hair and rouged faces.” The Rail—formerly known as the Brass Rail—is the oldest gay bar still in business, boasting a queer clientele dating back to the 1930s, when the bar was located downtown. The Rail moved to Hillcrest in the 1960s, where it became a mainstay of the gay community that called the neighborhood home. It became known for its ethnically diverse patronage and remains a local LGBTQ landmark. It’s a survivor, too, outlasting popular gay bars like Bourbon Street, the Caliph, Shooterz, and Numbers.
Honorable Mention: Following in the footsteps of the defunct bar known as The Flame, Hillcrest’s Gossip Grill , which opened in 2009, is a stalwart in its own right as one of the few lesbian bars left in the entire country—current counts put the number at a disheartening less-than-30. That’s down from an estimated 200 in the late 1980s. LGBTQ women and their allies can sip the bar’s generous pours beneath a neon sign reading, “Welcome home, beautiful.”
110 AUGUST 2023
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