Babylon in San Francisco: Beach Blanket Babylon is one of the longest-running attractions of the City by the Bay. But is it gay? Well, thereon hangs a tale.

It's one of those endearing San Francisco institutions, like painted Victorian houses and cable cars. And as it marks its 30th anniversary in June, Beach Blanket Babylon is still packing 'em in. Essentially Babylon is a musical revue of fast-cutting scenes and celebrity spoofing songs. Characters change depending oil the news of the day: Paris Hilton and P. Diddy are currently in the mix, and there's a number about San Francisco's gay marriage boom sung to "Get Me to the Church on Time."

But it's the trademark oversize hats that audiences remember. The hats include giant pizza boxes, towering tropical drinks, a stupendous pink pompadour, and the traditional finale, a 200-pound chapeau rendering of the city skyline, complete with twinkling bridges, skyscrapers, and fog. It appears on the bead of longtime star Val Diamond as the audience claps along to the title song of the 1936 Jeanette MacDonald saloon and earthquake movie, San Francisco.

It's curious how something with the air of an indulged curio has endured so strongly--although that could also be said of San Francisco. The show was the brainchild of Steve Silver, a local art student and street performer who started a business in the early 1970s called Rent a Freak. The idea was to dress up in wild costumes and attend Pacific Heights society parties and other "happenings," just to provide a little edge. With the support of key people like the city's former chief of protocol, Silver brought his freak show to the stage, added parody songs, and appended the "beach blanket" theme because he liked the bouncy energy of the old Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello movies. He also found a perfect creative partner in out hatmaker Alan Greenspan, who's been constructing Babylon's millinery visions since 1978.

"Steve loved the idea of the beach," says Jo Schuman Silver, his best friend and confidante who is the guiding force behind today's show. She married Silver two years before his death from AIDS complications in 1995 and remains devoted to his memory. "This show all came from his imagination," she says, sitting at a cocktail table at the cozy Club Fugazi in the city's North Beach district. "We still go back to his sketches for inspiration."

On a recent night an older gay couple from Santa Rosa, 50 miles away, brought their niece and her boyfriend from Kentucky; a group of loud sorority sisters was seated on the side; and throughout the audience there were husbands and wives out for the night. Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft came recently; Queen Elizabeth saw a show in 1983.

Yet Schuman Silver says 70% of the credit cards used to purchase tickets are from the Bay Area. The show will mark its 30th birthday with benefit performances for Bay Area arts organizations, including the San Francisco Opera, the Matin Theatre Company, and the Berkeley Rep.

Ironically, for all the show's over-the-top irreverence, Steve Silver never came out as gay, maintaining a spritely ambiguity to the end (he was 51 when he died). "Steve was Steve," Schuman Silver says. "He never discussed his sexuality. He felt it was nobody's business."

Yet Silver was tireless in his support of AIDS charities in an era when the virus was stigmatized as a gay man's disease, and the show's aesthetic is as gay as it gets. Silver may not have talked about his sexuality, but he couldn't keep it under his hats.

Levy is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.