T he Castro District (a.k.a “the Castro”), San Francisco’s beloved gayborhood, is a boisterous slice of urban splendor. It houses one of the city’s densest groupings of late-night LGBTQI+ watering holes and clubs — most of which see healthy promenades of queer frivolity, throughout the week. Restaurants here frequently don’t close their doors until after 11 p.m. or midnight. Hot Cookie serves dick-shaped baked goods (and the occasional fit of controversy) up until 1 a.m.; one of San Francisco’s last remaining 24/7 drug stores, the Walgreens location at 498 Castro Street, sits inside the neighborhood, as well.

All of this is to say that the Castro isn’t exactly synonymous with meditative stillness and silence. This is why it’s all that more perplexing why a recently opened neighborhood hotel near The Mix is requiring guests to keep the noise levels they make to no more than 75 decibels (dB) — or about the same volume as a running vacuum cleaner. For context: Heavy traffic usually registers around 80dB.

God forbid a guest produces more noise than a Dyson, the property management company representing said new luxe hotel might contact their room to issue a warning. For heaven’s sake they receive a follow-up notice regarding the room’s noise level, their payment method on file could be charged a $500 penalty fee.

“T he new hotel in the Castro has noise monitoring,” freelance writer and drag queen extraordinaire Joe Wadlington writes on Twitter. Interested in staying at The Hotel Castro — a new boutique lodge recently opened at 4230 18th Street that offers “private terraces, roof deck, and a design celebrating LGBTQ+ heroes connect you to the neighborhood” — Wadlington reached out to the management company overseeing the hotel, Kasa Living Inc., with questions about some of the hotel’s suspicious guest policies.

Wadlington was also quick to point out that Kasa requires guests to submit a valid government photo ID (of course) and a profile photo (what?) in order to book a reservation, per information received in a follow-up email from Kasa.

“I’m …. so creeped out,” Wadlington adds, mentioning later that he’s “so disappointed” about The Hotel Castro’s guest policies — “I thought we were getting a cute, local boutique hotel.”

A read of Kasa’s Guest Accommodation Agreement shows that Wadlington has every right to feel more than a bit uneasy concerning the property management’s in-room surveillance methods. According to the web document, guest rooms at their properties not only have high-speed Wifi connections and Nespresso makers, they, too, come with sound monitoring systems. In some Kasa properties, devices that can detect tobacco and marijuana use are also installed; it’s unclear if such machines are currently inside guest rooms at The Hotel Castro.

Mind you: These surveillance devices inside certain hotel rooms are still included after guests have already allowed Kasa to perform a background screening and criminal history check on them that allows the business entity to “suspend, cancel, block, restrict or terminate your access to our services or reservations made or contemplated, based on our evaluation of such reports.”

It all sounds a bit Orwellian, frankly. But at least you’ll be able to rest your anxiety-ridden self down on top of a memory-from mattress while you doomscroll into the digital oblivion on your iPhone SE, courtesy of Kasa’s complimentary high-speed internet.

K asa’s guest policies enveloping The Hotel Castro are antithetical to those included by other popular queer hotels, like Becks Motor Lodge and Guerneville’s R3 Hotel, which have far more lenient and pro-human policies. Becks Motor Lodge goes as far as to say that it “doesn’t discriminate against any human” in its online Hotel Policies document. (Both Becks Motor Lodge and the R3 Hotel, however, do mention no in-room smoking rules.) And for a specialty hotel that purports to be “community-powered,” as is splayed across its website, The Hotel Castro’s current guest policies sit as an odious dichotomy to that very sentiment.

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If The Hotel Castro does, in fact, wish to embody and actualize that belief, perhaps… I don’t know, hire community members to help run and operate the hotel, rather funnel responsibilities to a largely absent digital apparition.

Celebrating the free-wheeling spirit of the Bay Area — one sentence at a time.

SF transplant, coffee shop frequent; tiny living enthusiast. iPhone hasn’t been off silent mode in nine or so years. Editor of The Bold Italic.