Gangway — San Francisco (1910 – 2018)
Opened in 1910, Gangway holds the distinction of being San Francisco’s oldest continuously operating gay bar, serving the city’s queer community for more than a century before closing in 2018.
Located near the city’s waterfront, Gangway began as a working-class tavern catering to sailors, dockworkers, and laborers — and over time became a longstanding gathering place for gay men in a port city where maritime culture, masculinity, and queerness often intersected. Long before Stonewall, long before organized liberation movements, Gangway was already there.
Unlike many early queer bars that were raided, shuttered, or erased, Gangway endured through Prohibition, world wars, crackdowns on gay nightlife, the AIDS crisis, and dramatic shifts in San Francisco itself. It remained a lived-in, unapologetic bar — a place where generations drank, flirted, argued, laughed, and survived.
When Gangway finally closed its doors in 2018, it marked the end of an era not just for San Francisco, but for American queer bar history. Few LGBTQ+ spaces anywhere can claim such longevity.
