S5, E6: This Theater Was a Refuge for Queer Americans. Now It’s Been Reborn.

She’s 104 years old, newly renovated, and she’s ready for her close-up.

On this episode of Unpacked: America 250, host Aislyn Greene talks about the newly renovated ⁠Castro Theatre⁠ in San Francisco, a $41 million transformation of one of America’s most beloved LGBTQ+ landmarks.

Aislyn sits down with Mary Conde, SVP at ⁠Another Planet Entertainment⁠, the independent concert promoter behind the renovation, to explore what it took to bring this icon back to life, and why this was always about more than a building.

Transcript

Friday night in the Castro. Friday night and the weekend saves me.

Aislyn Greene: If San Francisco’s Castro Theatre were a drag queen. Let’s just say that three years ago her wig was a little askew and her sequins were beginning to fade. In other words, it was a little dingy. The seats weren’t really that comfortable. There were several decades of tobacco sludge on the walls, and there was no central air at all. So no heating, no air conditioning. But she was still the Castro. She was a gay icon. I mean, I remember moving to San Francisco and going to my first Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sing along.

Do the time warp again. It’s just a jump to the left.

Aislyn: The sing-alongs were so fun you wouldn’t actually hear the movie at all, but there would be drag performances and costume contests and everyone just belting out the lyrics to every song on. In this theatre, I felt like I’d found my people, and we were in the heart of one of the most important LGBTQ+ neighborhoods in the country. In 2026, after a $41M renovation that was not without its drama, the Castro is back and arguably better than ever.

Before. Here is your wandering one hundred.

Aislyn: I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked: America 250 in this episode, come along with me as I tour the theater, go behind the scenes of its painstaking renovation, and explore why this San Francisco icon still matters a century after she made her debut. Before we get to the drag queens, the rainbow flags, the sequins, we have to go back a few years to 1899 specifically. Because that’s when Abraham Nasser arrived in San Francisco from Lebanon and moved into the neighborhood that later became the Castro. Abraham opened a grocery store, and in 1907, he decided he wanted to entertain people as well as feed them. So he started projecting, moving pictures on the back wall of his store. This was back in that silent film era. So no talkies yet. But soon more people were coming for the movies than for groceries. So Abraham, smart businessman that he was, had his 7 sons. Yes, he had 7 sons open a Nickelodeon called Liberty Theater.

And if you’re wondering what a Nickelodeon is, well, it’s a movie theater where you would pay 5 cents for a showing. So the name combines nickel and the Greek word for theater Odeon. People went nuts for the theater, so the brothers expanded again, moving a few years later to a 600-seat theater just down the street from the current Castro location.

Then, in 1922, the family opened the 1,400-seat Castro Theater at 429 Castro Street, and that is its current location. The architect behind it, one Timothy L Pflueger. And that is Pflueger with a P.

Mary Conde: I have really been a fan of Timothy Pflueger for decades, and I didn’t even know at the time that it was Timothy Pflueger or what drew me to it.

Aislyn: That’s Mary Conde. Mary is a native San Franciscan, one who has actually shaped the local music scene here for years. She’s also the senior vice president at Another Planet Entertainment, an independent concert promoter that’s responsible for events like outside lands and even the recent inauguration party for the mayor. So they’re a big deal here. They’re also the company that bravely tackled the renovation of the Castro Theater. Mary clued me in to Pflueger’s influence in San Francisco and how she came to know his work.

Mary: I get super nerdy. There’s 140 New Montgomery, which used to be the Pacbell building. There is 450 Sutter, which is where everybody in town has a doctor or dentist. There’s the Paramount Theater in Oakland. So I had been to all of those places as a young, up and coming production assistant, and I was attracted to the size and the scope and the scale and the intricacies of the design. And at some point, it kind of like burrowed into my head like, oh, that’s architecture. And it’s the same person that did them all. Timothy Pflueger, who also designed the Castro Theater.

Aislyn: Pflueger’s movie theater cost $300,000 to build. That’s equivalent to about $6M today. But the investment paid off. The San Francisco Chronicle at the time hailed it an indication of great progress. The facade was Spanish Baroque, and inside it was ornate and grand with these hand carved plaster flourishes throughout. The ceiling was designed to mimic an Arabian tent with rondels gilded with 24 carat gold leaf. Elaborate murals were painted on the walls. I mean, it was a big deal for San Francisco. The mayor even attended the opening. And if you’re wondering what they screened at that first showing, well, it was a film called Across the Continent, a Paramount race car picture starring Wallace Reid. It was a packed house, and it signaled the beginning of something big. For decades, the Castro was simply a great place to see a movie. But in the 1960s, the culture began to shift.

Mary: The Castro Theatre, aside from being a very notable architectural gem, is really the heartbeat of the LGBTQ community here in San Francisco.

Aislyn: And to understand how it became that heartbeat, you again have to go back in time.

Mary: And I think if you go back to like the mid-60s. The Stonewall riot in New York is very, very well known. Some people think of that as like the first moment of LGBTQ activism and standing up for your rights. But prior to that, in 1966, there was an event called the Compton Cafeteria Riots, and Compton’s cafeteria was a little tiny, dingy diner in the tenderloin.

Aislyn: The cafeteria was a popular queer gathering place, and in August 1966, according to historical records, a trans woman, tired of being harassed by police, tossed coffee in an officer’s face. You might imagine what happened next, but it sparked a riot and an uprising. It was a transformational moment here in the city, and part of a larger groundswell that was taking place.

Mary: That era, the mid-60s, late-60s, ties into Harvey Milk being the first out LGBTQ person elected in San Francisco, brutally murdered by another member of the Board of Supervisors who got off on the Twinkie defense. Like, if you don’t know about this, Google it. The Twinkie defense. This man was acquitted of murder because his lawyer said he had too much sugar in his system, that he had a Twinkie for lunch. What nonsense is that? How is that even a thing? So they call it the White Night riots because the community lost their mind. Like, what are you talking about? Murder. Murder occurred. So you go from that straight into the AIDS crisis and President Reagan not caring and going out of his way to, like, cut federal funding. So when you think about a community that’s been so under siege from the 60s, 70s, 80s, there had to be a place to retreat. There had to be a place to call home. And that became the Castro Theatre.

Aislyn: In 1967, the Castro Theatre introduced LGBTQ programming, and in 1981, the non-profit Frameline Film Festival made Castro Theater its home base.

Mary: This is a cultural touchstone, and it’s known throughout the world because this became a safe harbor. And I’ve met or read so many stories of people who say like, you know, I came out to my family, they kicked me out of the house. I got on the Greyhound bus, I wound up in San Francisco, and they all told me, go to the theater, you’ll find your people. So this became a place for community that has to be honored. You can’t come here into this building and not respect that place in history.

Aislyn: When. Several years ago, Another Planet Entertainment took over management and announced the renovation. The community had feelings, really big feelings. There were campaigns and op eds. Even a Save the Seats movement, there were a lot of concerns about another planet converting the theater into more of a live music venue that also happens to screen films. But a month after the theater has reopened, now in 2026, the headlines seem mostly positive. When Mary and I met to tour the theater, she said she understands the discomfort, and as a local, she’s really thinking long term.

Mary: We, another planet wanted to come in here and make an investment in the community, make an investment into our city like we’re. We are San Francisco. We love this city. I’ve never worked anywhere else. I’ve gone on tour. I’ve been around the world with a lot of fun rock bands, and I’ve had some adventures. But I always wanted to come back home and I longed for fog. Yes, it is a business and we do hope to make some money here someday. But this is really, more than anything, a legacy project to leave a gift and a mark behind for San Francisco.

Aislyn: That gift includes air conditioning for the first time in 104 years. It also includes full ADA access throughout. Before the renovation, wheelchair users were confined to the very last row of the orchestra. There’s a new 4K digital projector, but they’ve kept the 35mm and 70mm projectors so the Castro can still screen classic films. There are seats that are almost like trundle beds, so they can be pulled out for film screenings and tucked away for concerts. There’s also the organ, which we’re going to get to in a moment. But first, let’s talk about the dramatic transformation of the ceiling.

Mary: In 1989, we had a big earthquake in San Francisco, so half of the ornamentation broke off of the ceiling. The folks that were here running the theater at the time got a varnish that was the wrong material. So by the early ‘90s, the ceiling just looked like a muddy brown. You couldn’t see any of the architectural detail. You couldn’t see the artwork, you couldn’t see the design. So the conservation team that we worked with, they came in and honestly, inch by inch by inch, they were up there on scaffolding for over six months like this intricate, loving, faithful reproduction.

Aislyn: The preservation team also had to reckon with about a century of dirt.

Mary: Everything had about a two inch thick layer of goop that was 50 years of nicotine and cigarette smoke, which is really sticky and disgusting. And then 100 years of dirt. So it was. And I’m the kind of person that when someone says, oh, that’s really sticky, I go stick my finger in it and go, oh, how sticky is it? It’s very sticky and disgusting was what I learned the hard way.

Aislyn: And then there’s the Art Deco chandelier designed by Pflueger in 1937. Mary said that Pflueger was really ahead of his time.

Mary: Yeah. We modernized the chandelier and put in color changing LED lights, which, after doing a little bit more research on Timothy Pflueger, he was a student of lighting design. He actually received several patents in the late ‘30s, in 1939. So he was a fan of color changing lights. And in the sort of crude 1937 technology that was available to him, he had wired the lights. So like all the red bulbs were on one circuit, all the white bulbs were on a circuit, the blue bulbs were on a circuit. So he could do color changing in a sort of like, really, you know, not elegant way. And now we have this beautiful chandelier with color changing light diodes, and it can literally light up all the colors of the rainbow.

Aislyn: While designed by Pflueger, the chandelier was built by a company called Phoenix Day. And here’s the really cool part. During the renovation, the preservation team tracked down the current owners of Phoenix Day, and it turns out it’s still run by the same family.

Mary: It’s the great great nephew of the person who built the chandelier in 1937. Was the person who did all of the historic lighting refurbishment. This go around, so we were really happy to find them and to be able to allow them to, you know, they were very honored to be able to continue their great uncle’s work.

Aislyn: No episode about the Castro Theatre is complete without talking about the organ or really multiple organs. They are characters unto themselves. So there’s the original Robert Morton pipe organ, and that was installed when the theater opened in 1922. It was removed in the 1950s, and there was a stand in for a while. And then in 1979, a man named Ray Taylor and his two sons began assembling a mighty Wurlitzer from parts sourced across the country. It took about 3 years, and for decades that organ became synonymous with the Castro. And so did its primary organist, David Hegarty, who would play the song San Francisco, which you heard at the top of the episode before screenings. And then he would play again during intermission. And in 2015, the Taylor family moved to Sacramento, and they took a large amount of the piping with them. So when it was time to renovate the Castro, there had to be a new organ. Enter the new symphonic digital organ.

Mary: Mr. Hegarty, who is the organ, the person who performs the organ here, he designed and built to his specifications, this symphonic digital organ. That’s insane. Like it’s so elaborate. I can’t even imagine the talent required to play this thing because there’s so many stops on it. It’s like seven different keyboards. It’s beautiful. It’s carved wood. It’s gold inlay. But it’s heavier, bigger, wider, taller. Than anything that’s ever been in this building before. The organ debut will be on March 17th, when we’re showing John Waters serial Mom, and that’s a fundraiser for the Frameline Film Festival, which is the largest, one of the largest LGBTQ film festivals in the world. So we’re excited. We think that’s a very appropriate day to bring the organ up out of the pit and show it off to everybody.

Aislyn: Mary and I were at the Castro two days before it reopened. There were about 80 people milling about around us as we watched a lighting designer program, the new LEDs, and listened to audio techs tuning the Meyer sound system. I asked Mary about their first month of events.

Mary: We start off with 20 sold out concerts with Sam Smith. What? Sometimes it’s hard to wrap my brain around that. 20 sold out concerts with Sam Smith. We’ve got film programming. We’re showing Showgirls with Gina Gershon. We’re doing a sing along Sound of Music. We’re showing Serial Mom with John Waters in the audience. We’ve got shows coming up with like Tyco and Kim Petras. Alyssa Edwards, it’s so eclectic and there’s something for everybody. And I really hope that at some point, people in the neighborhood have guests coming from out of town and it’s like, hey, come to my house and visit this weekend. We’ll go to the Castro. What’s there? It doesn’t matter. It’s the Castro. We’re going to go. It’ll be great and we’ll have a fun time.

Aislyn: The Castro Theater turns 104 years old on June 22nd, 2026, and it has witnessed so much over its lifetime. Earthquakes, Harvey Milk’s candidacy and death, the AIDS crisis, a pandemic and a two inch thick layer of goop. And now, with a fresh lease on life, she’s ready to welcome the next generation.

I’m Aislyn Green and this is Unpacked: America 250. If you’re heading to San Francisco this year, I surely hope you’ll get to the Castro. If you can come for a sing along. You might not hear the movie, but it’s quite possible you’ll find your people.

Can you describe the best sequin outfit in your wardrobe?

Mary: I have this twin set eggplant, aubergine colored sequined tank top jacket combo with matching pants. I think of it as cruisewear.

Aislyn: Where does one find sequin outfits?

Mary: No, I’m. I’m a good shopper, and I’ve been hitting it hard. And, uh. P.S. if you’re looking for sequins, they go on sale after Christmas, so stock up.

Aislyn: All right. Makes sense. And I will be googling you at one of these shows and your sequins.

Mary: You’ll see me. I’ll be the one from space. I’ll be the one in the back that looks like a mirrorball.