Cruising, especially in parks, was once a staple of gay life in big cities.

Long before social media and hook ups like Grindr, it was the primary way that many gay men met for sex. Cities like San Francisco whose dense urban population and incredibly huge parks provided a landscape to lust in especially under the cover of nightfall.

The history of cruising dates back to the 1810s in England, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that cruising had its hyperlocal bloom as SF became the gay capital of America.

SF Gate:

Ever since then, Buena Vista Park — the 37-acre park that was established in 1867, first as “Hill Park ” — has been one of the most notable locales to find a discreet public sex partner. It’s been a well-known historical landmark, whose reputation has carried forth into the digital age via the queer cruising app Sniffies, which launched in 2018 and now has millions of users. The app’s geolocation data shows that the elevated green space is one of the most frequented cruising spots in San Francisco; one description calls Buena Vista Park “the most notorious cruising park in SF.”

On any given day, dozens of — sometimes, over a hundred-plus — Sniffies users visit the park. The area’s “wall,” which serves as a community forum for people to post, is always filled with posts from people looking to meet up in and around the park; many users state that the park serves as a “warmup” for sexual acts that, say, require a room with well-fastened wall hooks.

Local gyms, like the Fitness SF location in the Castro and Equinox’s Sports Club San Francisco gym off Market Street, are also popular cruising spots on Sniffies — reminiscent of the bygone era of local queer bathhouses, which all shuttered by 1984.

Check out the Sniffies app here.