Great Gay, Lesbian, and LGBTQ Bars in the San Francisco-Bay Area | Eater SF

"Though it looks nothing like it did back then, and barely like it did a few years ago thanks to a recent remodel, the White Horse is very possibly the oldest continually operating gay bar in the country. As the story goes, when Prohibition ended, the owners had the bar building moved across the city line from Berkeley to Oakland, because in 1933 Berkeley briefly became a dry city. This means the bar’s official opening date was in 1933, but it seems highly likely that it was operating as a gay speakeasy catering to the liberal university crowd during the 1920s. Longtime White Horse regulars still remember going there in the 1950s and ’60s, during a time when gay and lesbian bars in San Francisco were constantly getting raided and shut down by the police, though for reasons now unknown, the White Horse was always left alone. These days the big dance floor in the back provides a regular weekend escape for LGBT kids from Cal, and the front bar is a regular weeknight hangout for East Bay lesbians, gays, and their friends. Note that the pool table up front, which now adjoins a front smoking porch, can get very smoky and is walled off from the rest of the bar." - Paolo Bicchieri