It was Gay Freedom Day; Sunday, June 27, 1976. Things were very different then; very different.

San Francisco's Tenderloin is roughly bounded by Market, Mason, Geary, and Van Ness. It has a rap sheet dating back to the Gold Rush. By the Roaring 1920s, it had become infamous for its nightlife, jazz clubs, and vice dens. Mocambo was one of those 1970s

If the recent re-opening to the San Francisco Eagle Tavern seemed like a big deal, compare it to the bar's original opening in 1981.

Delay's Ambush, in a rundown 1907 three-story building, was a leather-western-bear, beer and wine bar - and art gallery.

During the 1960s, Polk Street had grown gay. Some complained; others saw financial advantages. Straight places remained empty. Gay places didn't.

In the 1970s Castro at Christmas was real, like gays and Hollywood make things real.

Diversely eclectic, Guerneville is San Francisco's backyard playground on the fabled Russian River where generations of GLBTs have retreated like Thoreau at Walden Pond to vacation.

Years before the first Gay Games (1982), San Francisco's gay community already had a lot going on in organized sports. Several gay softball teams had been organized before the historic Gays vs. Cops games in 1973 and 1974.

Is your Valentine tired of chocolates and flowers? Does sipping champagne with a strawberry dropped in a fluted glass induce an eye-rolling response?

If you are new to the Bay Area, you could be excused for thinking of the area between San Francisco and Mountain View as a nightlife free zone - at least as far as LGBT nightlife goes. But it has not always been this way.

The winter holidays are the most obvious time of year when gays, separated from their parents, are forced to decide between biological family and acquired family.

When did restaurants become gay? San Francisco gays gathered at restaurants and nightclubs that served food for decades before the Stonewall Riots in New York, and before the Compton Cafeteria riots in the Tenderloin.

The night its doors opened, the Leatherneck became the peer of vintage theme bars like The Tool Box, The No Name, and The Brig. The Leatherneck was one of the best bars of the Titanic 1970s.

Like a yin-yang of stalwart athleticism and Bacchan celebration, gay bars and gay sports have gone together for more than half a century.