Civic Center, San Francisco Civic Center, San Francisco The Civic Center in San Francisco, California, is an area of a few blocks north of the intersection of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue that contains many of the city's largest government and cultural institutions. It has two large plazas (Civic Center Plaza and United Nations Plaza) and a number of buildings in classical architectural style. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (formerly the Exposition Auditorium), the United Nations Charter was signed in the War Memorial Veterans Building's Herbst Theatre in 1945, leading to the creation of the United Nations. It is also where the 1951
LGBT culture in San Francisco Gay Democratic Club in 1976 and received its current name in 1978. Both of the Democrat groups raise money during the Alice Pride breakfasts, held each June and attended by the Mayor of San Francisco and other area politicians. In 2012 members of the Barack Obama reelection campaign attended the breakfast. Lynn Rapoport of the "San Francisco Bay Guardian" stated that in San Francisco there are "possibly even some Log Cabin Republicans." The political participation for and against California Proposition 8, which sought to outlaw gay marriage, depended on race, age, level of education, and religious affiliation; there were high