by Fred Kuhr

Bob Ross, co-founder and founding publisher of San Francisco-based Bay Area Reporter (B.A.R.), was honored with a plaque on the city’s Rainbow Honor Walk in the Castro. The plaque was unveiled during an outdoor November 17 ceremony outside 508 Castro Street, near the site of the former Harvey’s bar and restaurant, where Ross’ honor is located.

The Rainbow Honor Walk is a nonprofit organization and installation that honors LGBTQ individuals who have made a significant difference to society in California, the U.S. and countries around the world, according to its website. Ross died in 2003 due to complications from diabetes at the age of 69.

Politicians, activists and other members of the B.A.R. family attended the event. Gay former state legislator and San Francisco supervisor Mark Leno told the small crowd that Ross was from a different era, according to the newspaper’s reporting.

“Bob was from a generation of queer folks who came to San Francisco about 20 years before I did,” said Leno, as quoted in the newspaper. “But things were beginning to change and Bob Ross was so much a part of that.” Ross was born in New York City in 1934 and moved to San Francisco in 1956.

Before creating B.A.R. with friend Paul Bentley, Ross worked as a chef. “He believed that the LGBTQ community had strength in numbers. He knew gay bar owners who were tired of paying off the police to stay in business, so they created the Tavern Guild. It met regularly to discuss issues affecting the community,” B.A.R. reported.

The two men “hit on the idea that gays and lesbians in the Bay Area needed better community information than that provided by the gossip sheets found in bars,” according to his obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Yet bars were where the nascent gay community got much of its information, so the friends named their new paper the Bay Area Reporter — B.A.R. — and made it available for free atop the cigarette machines of local bars.”

Last month, a plaque honoring Irish human rights activist Roger Casement was unveiled on the other side of  Castro Street from the site of Ross’ plaque, the newspaper reported. Four more plaques currently held in storage are set to be unveiled in early 2026.

IN THE NEWS
Volume 27
Issue 11