Castro Camera

Castro Camera was a camera and film-processing shop at 575 Castro Street in San Francisco, run by Harvey Milk from 1972 until his assassination in 1978. The storefront became far more than a business. Milk used it as a base to register voters, mediate neighborhood disputes, and build the coalition that helped elect him to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, making him one of the first openly gay elected officials in the country. He also founded the Castro Street Fair from the shop in 1974. The location was named a San Francisco city landmark in 2000 and remains a touchstone of LGBTQ+ political history.