Longtime Castro restaurant and establishment abruptly closed

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Harvey’s on Castro at the corner of 18th Street and Castro Street suddenly closed over the weekend. Open since 1996 and named after slain San Francisco inspector and world-famous LGBTQ+ rights activist Harvey Milk, it has long been a popular brunch and dinner spot known for both people-watching and eggs Benedict and Bloody. Marys.

As a touring bar and grill with a predominantly gay clientele, Harvey’s interior has soaked up the area’s queer history almost as hard as the Hard Rock Cafe doubles down on guitar Americana. It sits at the same crossroads as the area’s rainbow-colored pedestrian crossings, directly across from Bank of America, which has long served as a memorial to queer residents who have died.

The closure was abrupt: Harvey’s latest Facebook post, dated Jan. 5, announces a new late-night drag show on Thursday. On Sunday, the establishment posted a brief ad on Instagram that seems to suggest the financial difficulties many San Francisco restaurants are suffering from: “Now text on the wall. We will always love you!”

The accompanying image showed a sidewalk sandwich panel with the message: “This is our last day we’re open. What’s next? We don’t know, but we will miss you all.”

The Standard contacted Harvey’s to confirm the closure and find out the circumstances behind it.

500 Castro Street was originally a pharmacy. In the 1970s, it became Elephant Walk, a famous gay venue where Sylvester and others performed. On the bar’s fourth anniversary, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot dead by the former soup. Dan White, who received what many perceived as a lenient sentence for his crimes. In May 1979, during the White Night riots, numerous gay men and their allies stormed police cars and smashed city hall windows, and the San Francisco Police Department retaliated in part by raiding Elephant Alley, beating visitors and severely damaging its interior.

The anniversary of this date is now officially celebrated as Harvey Milk Day. Milk’s place in American history gained wider recognition with the release of the 2008 biopic starring Sean Penn, and with schools incorporating LGBTQ+ culture into social studies curricula. San Francisco International Airport renamed Terminal 1 after Milk in 2019.

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