This week’s red carpet premier for the second season of “Looking” used the kind of backdrop that might have seemed fitting for a show about gay men digging through lust, love and angst in San Francisco. The stars stood underneath the Castro Theatre’s neon sign with a drag queen on the sidewalk nearby and several gay dance clubs across the street.
But on the show, the Castro doesn’t see as much screentime as you might expect for a district considered San Francisco’s “gayborhood” for a half-century. (You can see the proof in this nifty map that Curbed SF compiled.) Instead, characters jump from SoMa restaurants to Mission clubs to Oakland basement apartments to raves in Muir Woods in scenes filmed on site instead of on a soundstage.