What It's Like at Twin Peaks Tavern in Castro

This is part of a series called "What It's Like" where we at The Bold Italic tell you what a place in San Francisco is actually like. Based on our own experiences and those of our readers.

Twin Peaks Tavern: 401 Castro Street, at 17th and Market, the Castro. Open daily until 2 a.m., from noon Monday through Wednesday and 11 a.m. Thursday through Sunday. (415) 864-9470.
Order an Irish coffee, or a Bloody Mary if you turn up before noon. Take the window seat.

Twin Peaks opened in 1935 as a working-class neighborhood bar, and by the time it changed hands in 1971 the plate glass was papered on the inside and painted on the outside, which is how every bar did it. Mary Ellen Cunha bought the lease that year with Peggy Forster, and when they reopened in 1972 for a gay clientele they put clear glass in.

That was a genuinely dangerous thing to do. Gay bars in America had blacked-out windows because being seen leaving one could cost you your job, your apartment or your family. Twin Peaks is generally credited as the first known gay bar in America with full-length open plate glass. Patrons could see out, the street could see in, and nobody was hiding. The city made it Landmark No. 264 in 2013, and the designation protects the glass specifically, down to requiring it stay "open and unobscured" and free of decals and signage. Covering the windows again is now against the law.

How to get there

You cannot really miss it. The F-line's outer terminal is on 17th right at the corner, and Castro Station, served by the K, L, M and the S shuttle, is across Market. The 24-Divisadero stops at Castro and 17th and runs all night on the Owl network, every half hour after midnight, which matters at closing time. The 33-Ashbury/18th is a block south. People say you can't park in Castro but you can. You just might have to walk a few blocks afterward.

What it's like

A partial mezzanine, a mirrored backbar older than Prohibition, and no thumping music, which is most of the reason people come. The owners call it a conversation bar and mean it. The window seats are the good ones and everybody knows it. The bathroom is very small.

It has a reputation as the room where the Castro's older men are regulars rather than relics (the famed "glass coffin" nickname), and readers describe it in domestic terms. Jan Allen called it "my former home away from home" and "the gay Cheers." Jay Narey, more dryly: "A San Francisco institution for gentlemen of a certain age."

In my experience, it's honestly a no-frills bar that's good for conversation, next to a spot on Castro that's great for people watching. I have nothing special to report on the cocktails here, including the Irish coffees even if they're known for them. A younger crowd can still have fun in Twin Peaks Tavern, either for pregaming or at the very end of the night.

What people say

John Marino had the most-liked remark in our Facebook comments: "Those windows were also a target of homophobes and vandals. I was in the bar twice when the south window was shattered."

Robert Alan Mansfield watched it happen in 1972: "I remember when they were scraping the paint off the windows. My friend commented, 'You're going to be able to see right in there,' and she responded, 'That's the point!' As a group we were sure they were crazy."

David Weeks arrived a decade later and felt the difference: "Having windows in a gay bar, when I moved to SF in the 1980s, was such a thrill coming from Boston & New England bars that were dark & designed to make patrons think they needed to hide."

Not everyone is sentimental. Douglas Brock called it "the most unfriendly bar in SF."