Polk Street is a street in San Francisco, California, that travels northward from Market Street to Beach Street and is one of the main thoroughfares of the Polk Gulch neighborhood traversing through the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, and Russian Hill neighborhoods. The street takes its name from former U.S. President James K. Polk. The street remains a busy business district with many restaurants, cafes, home decorating and hardware stores.[1][2]
As the original center of the city's LGBT community, it has remained one of the core centers along with The Castro and the South of Market (SOMA); Polk Street was the location of the first official San Francisco Gay Pride Parade in 1972. In the 1950s through the 1970s Halloween on Polk Street became a major attraction for tourists and locals. In the 1990s and 2000s the neighborhood started to gentrify.[3] It remains prominent for its nightlife although prostitutes and their pimps are still a common sight on the street.[4]
The street also has bike lanes, which were approved in 2002, and has both slowed down the traffic and greatly increased a neighborhood feel.[5]
Polk Gulch is the neighborhood around a section of Polk Street, and its immediate vicinity, that runs through the Nob Hill and Russian Hill neighborhoods from approximately Geary Street to Union Street. The name, somewhat humorous, arises because the street runs over an old stream at the bottom of a gently-sloped valley. The neighborhood is sometimes referred to as Lower Nob Hill or the Tendernob.
Polk Gulch was San Francisco's main gay neighborhood before 1970, when many gays began to move to The Castro (formerly Eureka Valley) and SOMA because many large Victorian houses were available for low rent or could be purchased with low down payments. Several gay, lesbian, and transgender bars and clubs remain in the area.
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