Lynnie is the Queerest Thing on This Street

BERNAL HEIGHTS is a quiet San Francisco neighborhood these days.

I think the turning point came, long before the Google bus, when someone bought the Beatle House, a stucco two-story on Precita Street that sported a spectacular roof-to-cellar mural of the Fabs, from Hamburg to "Let It Be."

The new owners painted it gray. All the flippers painted their houses gray. A block down from the Beatle house, was once the site of Patty Hearst's SLA hideout, and across from that house is the formerly notorious "Needle Park."

Today the hot topic at Precita Park is whether or not to build a low fence around the children's playground. I still stumble over a beer can in the sandbox now and then, but it's not the same. It hasn't been the same since Lynnie left.

© H.L. Cottrell, “Linda and Lynnie, Manchester Street,” 1981

Gay Day morning, 1981:

I had a packed house, with friends visiting all the way from Santa Cruz, sleeping in the living room. I felt so civic-minded and hospitable on Gay Day. Banana pa…