reasons. One of the most important is it's reputation as the North American mecca for homosexuality.Many associate homosexual San Francisco with the Castro neighborhood, but it is little known that San Francisco is home to two, not just one, of the nation's densest gay neighborhoods. Actually, six of America's ten most dense gay-centric districts can be
found in San Francisco. Finding this data online, I began to wonder what the other five neighborhoods are and came up with a good list, but it's hard to say just which one is the nation's #2.Although the most famous of homosexual migrations in this city's history was during the 1970s with Harvey Milk's activism the
capstone of that influx, historians on the subject trace the 'reason for so many gays' all the way back to the Gold Rush of the 1840s when the city went from village to cosmopolitan center rivaling New York in less than a decade. During those years, thousands of gold 
seekers made the long, 12 hour journey by boat from the East Coast, alone. The city's population grew to 300,000 with only one woman for every nine men. Single men seeking female companionship had to pay an equivalent of $4000-8000 in today's dollars per night. So, men turned to men for friendship of all kinds.During World War II, thousands more single men joined the
population as they came to the Bay Area to work in the war industries. It is during this time that many gay-friendly businesses began to appear in San Francisco. Our city has come a long way from a time when there was only one gay. Today, there are more than 130,000.
The Castro boasts the highest per capita gay population in the world and 16% of San Franciscans (compared to 6% nationally) are gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual. The Castro is a place with a tangible sense of community and a pride, confidence and freedom that can be felt in the streets and in the faces of its residents and that's just the kind of place we love to spend our time.
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