More Than 40 Years of Dancing, Friendship & Community in San Francisco
Foggy City Dancers is one of San Francisco’s longest-running LGBTQ+ square dance clubs: a community built around dancing, friendship, inclusion, and the simple pleasure of bringing people together.
Our story stretches back to the earliest days of LGBTQ+ square dancing in America. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a group known as Foggy City Squares began dancing and performing in San Francisco. By 1981, it was one of only a handful of openly gay square dance groups in the United States, emerging at a time when LGBTQ+ San Franciscans were creating new social spaces and communities of their own.
Square dancing offered something distinctive: a way to meet people, make friends, and share an activity together outside the traditional bar and nightclub scene. It was social, welcoming, energetic, and perhaps most importantly, everyone had a place in the square.
That spirit continues today.
From Foggy City Squares to Foggy City Dancers
The original Foggy City Squares was more than a dance group. It helped spark several organizations that became part of San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ country and western dance community.
Some members became interested in clogging and went on to form the Barbary Coast Cloggers in 1981. Others wanted to pursue mainstream modern western square dancing, helping give rise to Western Star Dancers in 1982.
When Foggy City Squares itself came to an end, its legacy didn’t. In 1983, Foggy City Dancers was born, carrying the Foggy City tradition forward as a modern western square dance club.
The following year, Foggy City Dancers became a member of the International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs (IAGSDC), joining a growing movement of LGBTQ+ square dancers across North America and, eventually, around the world.
More than four decades later, we’re still dancing.
Part of LGBTQ+ History
The rise of gay square dancing might seem like an unlikely chapter in LGBTQ+ history, but San Francisco played an important role in making it happen.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, LGBTQ+ dancers began adapting a traditionally American pastime to create something distinctly their own. Traditional expectations about who danced with whom gave way to a much simpler idea: anyone could dance with anyone.
The result was a community that maintained the structure, challenge, and teamwork of modern western square dancing while creating an environment in which LGBTQ+ people could participate openly and comfortably.
Foggy City was there near the beginning.
The original Foggy City Squares appeared at community events in San Francisco as early as 1981, and the growing gay square dance movement soon extended well beyond the Bay Area. In 1983, representatives of early gay square dance clubs gathered in San Francisco to discuss creating a formal organization connecting the emerging clubs: a movement that would become today’s IAGSDC.
Foggy City Dancers became an IAGSDC member in 1984 and remains an active member today.
Dancing Through the Decades
Generations of dancers have passed through Foggy City’s squares since 1983.
Classes have introduced newcomers to square dancing from the very first calls, while experienced dancers have continued through Plus, Advanced, and other levels of modern western square dancing. Along the way, Foggy City dancers have participated in local dances, exhibitions, LGBTQ+ square dance conventions, special events, and decades of San Francisco community life.
By the 1990s, the club was holding regular classes and dances in the Castro, including at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center and other neighborhood venues. Foggy City also had a performance team, with surviving recordings documenting performances at LGBTQ+ square dance conventions in 1992 and 1993.
In 1996, San Francisco hosted the IAGSDC convention, “Stars, Thars & Cable Cars,” bringing LGBTQ+ square dancers from around the country and beyond to the city.
And in 2003, Foggy City celebrated its 20th anniversary with “Shoot the Star in San Francisco,” a special anniversary weekend featuring nationally known callers.
The locations, callers, dancers, and even the music have changed over the years, but the reason for getting together has remained remarkably consistent: dance, community, and connection.
Our Traditions
Foggy City has developed a few traditions of its own.
Our calendar has included dances such as Pride Promenade, celebrating San Francisco Pride; Leather & Lace, held around San Francisco’s leather celebrations; our annual Anniversary Dance; and Walk & Dodge the Rain, our early-year dance.
Another longtime Foggy City tradition is Squareoling, which combines square dancing with a little holiday cheer and has been part of the club’s calendar for many years.
These events connect today’s dancers with decades of Foggy City history while giving us plenty of opportunities to create new traditions along the way.
Everyone Is Welcome
Foggy City Dancers grew from San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community, and we’re proud of that heritage.
We’re equally proud to welcome everyone who wants to dance.
LGBTQ+ dancers, friends, allies, experienced square dancers, returning dancers, and people discovering square dancing for the first time can all find a place here.
You don’t need cowboy boots.
You don’t need a partner.
And you certainly don’t need to know what you’re doing before you begin.
Square dancing is inherently social. You learn together, make mistakes together, laugh together, and eventually discover that a collection of individual dancers has somehow started moving as one square.
That’s part of the magic.
Square Dancing, the Foggy City Way
Modern square dancing probably isn’t quite what you remember from school.
A caller guides dancers through a sequence of movements, combining individual calls into constantly changing patterns. There’s teamwork, memory, movement, and just enough unpredictability to keep things interesting.
But the calls are only part of it.
For Foggy City, square dancing has always been about the people standing beside you.
For more than four decades, people have walked into a Foggy City dance knowing few (or sometimes none) of the people in the room and walked out as part of a community.
Friendships have begun here. People have traveled together, attended conventions together, learned together, volunteered together, and kept coming back year after year.
That’s the tradition we’re carrying forward.
Keeping San Francisco Dancing
Today, Foggy City Dancers continues to bring modern western square dancing to San Francisco through regular dancing, classes, special dances, and community events.
We’re also helping preserve something larger: a remarkable piece of San Francisco LGBTQ+ history that began when a small group of dancers decided there should be another way to meet, socialize, and belong.
More than 40 years later, the music is still playing.
Come dance with us.
Whether you’ve been square dancing for decades or have never heard a caller say “Square your sets,” there’s a place for you at Foggy City.
No partner required. No experience necessary to start. All are welcome.