A Self-Guided Audio Walking Tour
Exploring the Threads of Queer Counterculture in the Haight
Beneath the surface of the Haight-Ashbury lies a hidden history: this was ground zero for gay liberation, radical creativity, and gender revolution in the 1960s and 70s. The people who lived it are still here. Feel their presence, and experience the profound, radical, joyful history that happened right beneath your feet.
This is their story, this is my story, and it might be yours too.
Will you walk with me?
WALK WITH ME is a first-of-its-kind GPS-guided audio experience through San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury. Download the app, put in your earbuds, and let your phone guide you block by block as stories auto-play exactly where they happened. Hear 20+ elders who lived it—artists, activists, drag queens, poets—share memories in their own words. Stand outside Victorians that housed radical collectives like the Cockettes House. Walk through Buena Vista Park where gay men cruised, sunbathed, held spiritual ceremonies, and claimed public space as their own. Discover the seven legendary gay bars that once lined these streets.
Illustration of the Cockettes by Reese Dallas Bice
Written and narrated by Eye Zen founder Seth Eisen (who also goes by his Radical Faerie name, Gingie), this intimate six-episode journey weaves the voices of a chorus of elders with Seth's own story of arriving in 1994 to be near his brother Steve—searching, like so many before him, for chosen family and a place to belong.
WHERE DO I BELONG?
Through historic archival media, immersive soundscapes by James Ard and hand-painted illustrations by award-winning artist Reese Dallas Bice, hear stories of building chosen family, surviving devastating loss, and passing the baton of radical creativity from generation to generation.
Illustration of Gus’s Pub by Reese Dallas Bice
discover the hidden stories of queer luminaries and radical groups such as…
Peggy Caserta - inventor of bell-bottom jeans and entrepreneur
Arthur Evans - Gay Liberation Front member, rabble-rouser, and author of Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture who hosted the first Faerie Circles
The Cockettes - the gender-bending performance troupe
The Diggers - the anarchist street theater collective
…and many more LGBTQ+, Black, Trans, Femme, and Gender-Nonconforming revolutionaries
Want to get involved?
Support Our Project
Check out our Walk With Me QR Code Project: Queer History Happened Here
Take a Walk With Me
Test Tour
See the latest updates of Walk With Me on our Instagram!
EPISODE GUIDE
Episode 1
We arrive in San Francisco alongside a chorus of queer elders in the 1960s and 70s, and our narrator, Seth, in 1994. Climb Adah's Stairs and take in the natural world around you as the layers of history converge.
Episode 2
Gay Liberation, Black Power, feminism and anti-war explode into an embodied revolution. Out of this churning mire of possibility grows the foundation for communal life, creative intervention, psychedelics, and genderfuckery.
Episode 3
A reverence for the natural world and a rebirth of Gay spirituality shapes radical lives and rural sanctuaries. Stroll with Seth and Steve through Buena Vista Park where a chorus of ancestors cruised, protested, sunbathed, and gathered for ceremony. Follow us to a path paved with tombstones and a secret treehouse where we’ll picnic amongst ghosts and forgotten stories.
Episode 4
Out of the bars and into the streets! As we land at the commercial center of Haight Street, political action leads to claiming public space. Seven iconic gay bars and businesses flourished here with rising queer visibility and new found freedoms.
Episode 5
The Summer of Love is over as the drugs get harder and disease begins to descend on what was once a utopian enclave of the Haight. AIDS forever alters the fabric of queer life in San Francisco, and Seth reflects on the growing distance between him and Steve.
Episode 6
How do we find belonging in a fractured city where our histories have been erased? How does the proverbial baton get passed down from generation to generation of queer artists, activists, change-makers, and community members? We end our story with new beginnings and a call to action.
This exciting project is generously supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission and California Arts Council.
Poster artwork by award-winning queer illustrator Reese Dallas Bice.
This project was created in collaboration with and dramaturgy by Jax Blaska.
Photos by Gary Ivanek.