Update: This is the language from the Castro Street cam page:

“A goal of the Castro Street Cam is to help those who are isolated for any reason to be able to see the vibrant Castro neighborhood and enjoy the views. Visit the cams 24/7 to see what’s going on or how’s the weather and the traffic. Check out the views up and down Castro Street, in Harvey Milk Plaza and Jane Warner Plaza. It’s all there for you….Castro Street Cam #2’s camera, which was damaged in a recent rain storm, has been replaced.. Thanks to our viewers who have expressed concern and let us know that they are regular viewers of the Castro Street Cam system. Occasionally a camera may go offline and we apologize for the inconvenience. The cameras are rebooted once daily.“

Lies. But then lying is the norm these days. The Castro nazis turned the cams off entirely on the Friday of “Pride” weekend 2024 so that “those who are isolated for any reason” could not, not see The Castro during “Pride” weekend. What are the nazis who run this thing at that hardware store afraid of? They seem to be afraid of their own fucking shadow. Why would there be any credible reason to turn all the cams off for the “Pride” weekend? Insanity. The “Pride” weekend is when most people would want to use the cams and see The Castro.

Someone, perhaps Tech Incorporated, needs to come up with a credible cam system completely independent of and having nothing to do with any of these idiot conservative merchants who think they own the place and who ramrod things in the Castro just because they have a store in The Castro and think they know what’s best for all. Fuck off! Do we understand each other? Who did they think they were “protecting” by turning the cams off for the “Pride” weekend? And again, so much for the lie that the cameras are rebooted once daily. That didn’t happen at all during “Pride” 2024 weekend. And if it were a credible cam system, why would it need to be rebooted once daily? Frankly, it should be rebooted any time it’s down, idiots, not “once daily.” Have I told you how much I can’t stand these busy-bodied nazis who run things in The Castro? Ugh. Can’t stand them. I won’t have it!

End of Update.

The cameras? They’re constantly down. It’s the most unreliable live cam system I’ve seen.

Here we are in the Tech Capital and this is the best they can do for the Castro Cams? And what does a hardware store know about tech and running a cam system? Apparently nothing, so why are they running this?

If you go to the Castro Street Cam page, despite what it says on that page about the operation of the cams, one or more of the cams are down or they go down every day and not “occasionally” as they say on their page. Even though it says the cams are “rebooted once daily,” that’s a lie too. Lying is the norm these days. The cams are not rebooted once daily. And if it were a viable, credible system, why would they need to be rebooted daily? “Vibrant” is one of the most overused, misused and abused words of our day (along with the pop culture words “awesome” and “amazing” over the most mundane things). “Vibrant” is also used on the cam page to describe The Castro. And anything that is dying with lots of boarded up store fronts is called “vibrant” these days including the Castro neighbourhood.

The Castro is nothing like it was during the Gay Mecca decades. In fact, one could accurately say it’s the opposite of what it was. It’s very conservative now and it’s been made that way by the conservative merchants and self-entitled homeowners. The hateful conservatives sanitised The Castro years ago to make it “family friendly” (roll eyes) as heterosexuals began moving in. Why alleged heterosexuals want to live or hang out in a neighbourhood over-saturated with rainbow flags, rainbow imagery and the rhetoric/language of The Gay Agenda everywhere you look is beyond some of us. What is that about? We don’t understand it. Or are they really not heterosexuals? All that some of us can figure is that either him, her or both are bi or queer but in the closet — and think it might be easier to get “discreet” sex on the side in The Castro — as they push their required-black baby stroller around the neighbourhood, and that’s why they deliberately chose to live in the former Gay Mecca area, when they could have chosen to live anywhere else in San Francisco. I won’t forget what a friend of mine in The Castro told me years ago as he was packing up moving to San Diego. He said, “Welcome to the heterosexual Castro.” All that the conservative merchants and those conservative busy bodies who run those useless neighbourhood associations would say was, “The neighbourhood is changing” but they never said how it was changing. That’s because they didn’t want to offend the heterosexual dollars that might come into their business.

If I had a girlfriend, I certainly wouldn’t be living or hanging out in a neighbourhood with rainbow flag images everywhere you look that still tries to give the illusion to tourist$ and for tourist$ dollars that the area is still a gay mecca, so spend your money here. Because I suspect my girlfriend would begin to question me and my sexuality, “I thought you were straight. Why do you insist that we keep coming over here or living over here IF you’re truly heterosexual?” She would have a very valid point.

Some credible people who know something about video streaming and live cams need to take over the Castro cams because the group running it now is inept, incompetent and doing a pathetic job running it. Maybe they should grab some of those techies who are on those 2-story tall tech shuttles with their blackened windows that run up and down Castro Street daily to run the thing. I don’t think they could do a worse job, although upon reflection look at the mess G**gle has made of YT.

Venice Beach in Los Ángeles, for example, has a 24 hour cam and it’s never or rarely down and it’s a moving cam. With Castro, one, two or all four of the Castro cams are frequently down, nearly every day. It’s expected. They’re unreliable. And one of the cams is completely useless because of the water vapor on the lens. No one ever thinks to clean the lens of that cam. You really can’t see a thing with that one, so that leaves three cams. Then the one facing the Jane Warner Plaza is frequently down, so that leaves two cam which is the case as of this writing (4 November 2023). Inept. Here is a link to those cams. Good luck. They may all be down when you go there. Update: They did finally replace the camera that was constantly blurry — and had been blurry for a long time having nothing to do with some “recent storm” (another lie) — that camera is facing Castro and 18th Streets, but since then, that’s the camera that is most often down. (roll eyes). Inept. Incompetent. Insipid.