A monthslong fight over an ID-scanning system that photographs arriving patrons at Castro gay bars has come to a head, with all three venues known to use it — Badlands, Toad Hall, and most recently The Mix — halting the practice under pressure from privacy advocates. But the retreat from the ID-check tool, called PatronScan, hasn’t settled the question at the heart of the fight: whether the added security is worth the privacy trade-off. On one side are patrons and digital-rights groups warning that ID-scanning kiosks amount to surveillance in LGBTQ+ spaces at a moment when many in the community feel exposed at a moment of heightened federal scrutiny of queer and trans people. On the other side are bar owners and staff citing documented incidents — including a brutal assault (opens in new tab) on a Mix employee — as the reason they wanted the extra layer of security. Evan Greer, head of Fight for the Future, which spearheaded a boycott campaign against the bars, celebrated the news as “a huge step in the right direction.” The Mix hasn’t stopped using PatronScan altogether — it paused only the camera function of the company’s Guard+ kiosk, which photographs each patron. The bar still scans government IDs to verify age and authenticity, the way it did before. Mix manager Nick Kealy said he didn’t even want to suspend the photo-taking portion of PatronScan, and neither did his staff who credit the tool with making the bar safer after a brutal attack on a former staffer. The assault happened on March 9, 2025. A doorman ousted three unruly patrons from The Mix earlier in the day, according to the Bay Area Reporter, including one who bit him on the finger. That evening, the bouncer was hunted down and beaten a couple of