San Francisco is a far cry from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee that raised Dolly Parton, but the city mourns the rhinestone-studded singer, who died Tuesday at the age of 80, like one of our own.
On Tuesday afternoon, the marquee at the Castro Theatre reads “We will always love you Dolly Parton.”
A champion for the queer community, Parton was the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’s muse for Pride month this year. The group devoted an entire concert to her music and legacy. “We’ve lost a timeless, irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind icon whose music, heart, humor, and humanity have meant so much to our community and to the world,” the group wrote in a post on Instagram on Tuesday.
San Francisco has always loved Parton. Her 2005 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass set attracted a crowd of over 200,000; the festival organizers said they debuted a new stage to accommodate her production. “Legend has it that the entire Castro Street Fair turned direction and headed to Golden Gate Park that afternoon,” festival organizers wrote in a post honoring the singer on Tuesday. “It was a landmark day for Hardly Strictly, and her boundless energy was on display for all.”
Parton’s iconic big wigs, bright smile, and countrypolitan style fit right in the wood-panelled and tinsel-drenched dining room of Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack at 3230 Mission St., where a large shrine is dedicated to her. A few doors down, bar El Rio has held an annual Dolly Parton Hoot for 20 years. The event features a Dolly dance-off, a T-shirt contest, and trivia.
This week, Emmy’s will be offering their Dolly Cosmo, a vodka, lime, homemade raspberry liqueur, and prosecco slushie, in her honor. At $15 apiece, $2 from every Dolly Cosmo will be donated to Parton’s Imagination Library, the book-giving charity she founded in 1995. The organization has distributed more than 300 million books to children under the age of 5.
At another Parton shrine across town, the Scarlet Fox wine bar at 1690 Hayes St. in NoPa, which features a lifesize Parton poster and scattered memorabilia throughout the bar, will be hosting an event tonight to celebrate Parton’s life, music, and legacy. They’ll be playing her catalogue all night long. Fans of Parton’s are invited to the bar to “raise a glass of wine together, share big hugs, and lean into the warmth and love she gave the world for so many years,” the business wrote in a post online.
So put on your sparkliest outfit, fluff up your hair, pick your chin up and go honor, as Rolling Stone described her, “the unsinkable Dolly Parton.”
