Deliciously Invisible: Being a Straight Woman in a Gay Neighborhood
San Francisco’s Castro District in the Early 1990s
In 1991, my marriage ended and I lived alone for the first time in my life.
I rented a studio apartment in a lovely building at the corner of 18th Street and Collingwood, in the heart of the Castro in San Francisco. It was a big studio — an entry hall, a little bathroom, a big main room with a huge closet (which had clearly once housed a Murphy bed), and a decent-sized kitchen with built-in cabinets and room to put a small dining table. The apartment had high ceilings and hardwood floors, and big windows in the kitchen and main room, and a small window looking onto an airshaft in the bathroom.
My rent was $610 a month, which was outrageously expensive for a place that didn’t even have a separate bedroom. But I had a full-time job and a tiny bit of savings (even after I’d “loaned” my ex-husband enough for first-and-last-and-deposit on a place of his own so that he’d move out already). I couldn’t afford the place that we’d shared (it was a two-bedroom in Noe Valley, and nearly $900), and I’d tried the roommate thing and hated it, so, I took the risk and signed the lease.
(How times have changed…I just did a quick online search. A small one-bedroom one block down Collingwood…
