Cultural district expresses concerns about new Castro Theatre plan
With the recent news of the management and programming changes at the Castro Theatre, the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District made a list of demands of the new management in a letter it published January 20.
As the Bay Area Reporter This text will be the linkreported> January 19, it was announced that the co-producer of the Outside Lands music festival — Another Planet Entertainment — will be in charge of programming at the Castro Theatre after the hundred-year-old movie palace is renovated.
Programming will be expanded to include live music, comedy, and community events in addition to films. Another Planet Entertainment CEO and co-founder Gregg Perloff said that he wants to maintain the theater's role as a community space, but longtime neighborhood denizens and theater fans are very concerned about what they see as another example of gentrification in the Castro.
For example, Marc Huestis, a gay man who has put on 55 shows at the theatre in the past 40 years, said he was "very sad." "The way I and others were able to do events there — it was not cheap, but it was affordable," Huestis recently told the B.A.R. "Castro is a place like no other.
