Part of the Gay San Francisco Guide — bars, events & things to do.
San Francisco, California
One of the Castro's largest gay dance clubs, over Harvey Milk Plaza.
The Cafe is the Castro's largest LGBTQ+ nightclub, sitting on Market Street with a balcony that looks straight out over Harvey Milk Plaza and Castro Street. It opened in 1976 as the Cafe San Marcos, for years a women's bar, dropped the San Marcos name in 1992, and reopened after a full multimillion-dollar remodel in 2009 as the dance club it is today: three full bars, a main dance floor with an interactive LED grid, pool tables, and a heated outdoor patio. In 2025 ownership passed to Louis Caputo, who started there as a floor person back in 1992 and spent two decades as general manager, alongside his husband Jeffrey Grannis, so the new era is run by someone who's been in the room the whole time. It's a weekend-nights, 21-and-up dance club with rotating DJs and themed parties, and that balcony is the real signature, one of the best perches in the neighborhood for watching the Castro move below. For travelers it's the easy, central answer to where to dance tonight: you can't miss it coming off Market, and it's been a fixture of the city's queer circuit for decades.
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