27th Annual Hillcrest CityFest, This Sunday (New Sign)

I hadn't been paying close enough attention, otherwise I would have mentioned it earlier.  This Sunday is the annual CityFest street fair in San Diego.  They will be lighting up the NEW, LED-equipped Hillcrest sign. There's going to be a good-sized crowd. Wear sunscreen, and drink lots of water!  There will be a lot of vendors selling sandals, candles and sandalwood candles. I plan to feast on plenty of Chicken on a Stick, and people-watch. I seem to have a keen eye for shirtless men holding hands together.

I remember the first CityFest quite vividly:

Roger Hedgecock was mayor then, and had shown no sign of the nasty, hateful radio talk-show host he would become.  The original event was a party celebrating the re-lighting of the newly-rebuilt Hillcrest sign. The old, worn-out sign had been taken down, refurbished and put back up. Hedgecock threw the switch, the sign lit up, and the crowd of primarily gay folks exulted. 

Somebody had brought brightly-colored paints and brushes, and everybody started painting the street asphalt on Fifth between Robinson and University with fantastic designs and idealistic phrases. It was glorious. It was a psychedelic explosion of raw creativity. Everybody went home and slept, and in the morning, all of the colorful designs were gone - A work-crew had blackened the entire street overnight.

Hedgecock promised that this would become an annual event, to celebrate Hillcrest culture, which at the time was quite solidly gay.  In those days, Hillcrest used to be known as the "Gay Nineties", because if you were living there, you were either gay, or ninety. A lot of the original landowners were dying out, and gay folks were buying up the houses in the area. This attracted a lot of new boutiques, shopettes and bars, which just encouraged the LGBT community to seek homes there.

This caused the property-values to skyrocket, so folks started shopping further and further outward from Hillcrest. From highway 5 to Lakeside heading east, and from Clairemont down to Golden Hill heading south, it's one BIG, highly-integrated "gay neighborhood". Here in Normal Heights, there are a minimum of 2 or 3 LGBT households per block, and sometimes quite a bit more.  How do I know?  I've hosted massive, 250-household neighborhood gay & lesbian parties, where attendees would arrive and place rainbow-flag push-pins on a big map of Normal Heights, showing where they lived. I've spoken with party organizers in University Heights, Kensington and Burlingame, and they have assured me that their neighborhoods are the same. Simple observation fills in the rest of the details.

There is no more need for a "Gay Ghetto" any more, because the world has shifted our way. We don't have to hide out in "Boy's Town" because of the hatred and persecution everywhere else. Hillcrest still has the "Gay Neighborhood" reputation, but it's just the original, well-known area. What has changed in the last thirty years has been the level of easy-going, affectionate support we've found in the "straight" community, allowing us to safely (and peacefully) live further afield.  

Roger Hedgecock may have gone rabidly hostile since 1984, but he's the only one left from that first CityFest who went that way.