Excavating the postwar sex district in San Francisco

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 355-379

  Sides, Josh ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Feminism; Pornography; San Francisco; Sex districts; Urban renewal

Indexed keywords

FEMINISM; PROSTITUTION; URBAN RENEWAL;

CALIFORNIA; NORTH AMERICA; SAN FRANCISCO; UNITED STATES;

EID: 33646251638     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144205282713     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. On Carol Doda's career, see San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 1965; May 11, 1965; December 9, 1973; April 17, 1977; and April 19, 1980.
2. On the sexual revolution, see John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); and David Allyn, Make Love Not War: The Sexual Revolution, An Unfettered History (Boston: Little, Brown). On changing obscenity law, see Richard F. Hixson, Pornography and the Justices: The Supreme Court and the Intractable Obscenity Problem (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996).
3. In re Albert J. Giannini et al. on Habeas Corpus, Crim no. 11446, Supreme Court of California, 69 Cal. 2nd 563; and Bill Roddy to Mayor Shelley, October 20, 1965, box 5, folder 3, Jack Shelley Papers, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
4. H. Nawy, "The San Francisco Erotic Marketplace," in vol. 4 of Technical Reports of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970), 162; and Charles R. Gain to Dianne Feinstein, May16, 1978, file 239-78, San Francisco Board of Supervisors (hereafter SFBS)
5. Timothy J. Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920 (New York: Norton, 1992); George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Andrea Friedman, Prurient Interests: Gender, Democracy, and Obscenity in New York City, 1909-1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-century America (New York: Knopf, 2002). Onthe relationship between race and vice districts, see Kevin J. Mumford, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); and Mark Wild, "Red Light Kaleidoscope: Prostitution and Ethnoracial Relations in Los Angeles, 1880-1940," Journal of Urban History 28 (September 2002): 720-42.
6. See In re Albert J. Giannini et al. on Habeas Corpus (69 Cal. 2nd 563). This decision reversed a 1965 municipal court ruling in the East Bay city of San Pablo in which topless dancer Kelley Iser and nightclub owner Albert Giannini were found guilty of "willful and lewd exposure" and the solicitation of lewd conduct, respectively. According to arresting officers, Iser, wearing only tights on the lower half of her body, performed a dance called"Walking the Dog," during which she "'wiggl[ed] around'for about 30 seconds on her hands and knees with her breasts exposed." In the 1968 California Supreme Court opinion, justice Matthew O. Tobriner ruled that Iser's dance was protected under the First Amendment unless it was shown to violate "contemporary community standards" (defined as the statewide community). Prosecutors, Tobriner argued, had failed to demonstrate that Iser's dance violated such standards. For press coverage of the original arrests, see San Francisco Chronicle, November 19 and 23, 1965.
7. Patricia A. Carson to San Francisco Board of Supervisors, May 17, 1977, file 239-78, SFBS.
8. Nawy, "San Francisco Erotic Marketplace," 170; and Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, 122-23.
9. Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York: Capricorn Books, 1933; 1968), 108, 121, 115, 263.
10. According to the "Official Map of Chinatown in San Francisco" (ca. 1885, San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Public Library), Chinese prostitutes congregated most heavily in the alleys between Jackson and Pacific on both sides of Du Pont (now Grant) in the 1880s. Although popularly associated with Chinese men, these Chinese "cribs" were actually well patronized by white men who were probably lured by the cheaper price of Chinese prostitutes and their alleged racial inferiority, which allowed white patrons to propose "aberrant" sexual activities that they might not propose to white prostitutes. See Ivan Light, "From Vice District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Condition of American Chinatowns, 1880-1940," Pacific Historical Review 43 (1974): 369-71.
11. Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 25-26.
12. On sporadic efforts to restrict vice, see Neil Larry Shumsky and Larry M. Springer, "San Francisco's Zone of Prostitution, 1880-1934," Journal of Historical Geography 7 (1981): 83; Shah, Contagious Divides, 81; and Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1946-1856: From Hamlet to City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974), 255-58.
13. During the famous San Francisco graft prosecution of 1907, it was revealed that political boss Abe Ruef and Mayor Eugene Schmitz had regularly been collecting up to a quarter of the profits from a large brothel on Jackson and Kearny, dubbed the "Municipal Brothel," at least since 1904. See Walton Bean, Boss Ruef's San Francisco: The Story of the Union Labor Party, Big Business, and the Graft Prosecution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 46.
14. Under Rolph's administration, the city established a remarkable, if short-lived, San Francisco municipal-clinic for treating prostitutes. Even as hewas bombarded with mail from reform groups like the California-Federation for the Suppression of Vice, he denounced the antivice jeremiads as "self-advertising Pharisees" and "well meaning hysterics." See folders 70A and 71A in the James Rolph Jr. Papers, North Baker Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, California. Quotation unmailed letter, James Rolph to J. C. Westenberg, August 9, 1913, James Rolph Jr. Papers, as cited in William Issel and Robert Cherny, San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 108. For an additional account of Rolph's tolerance of prostitution, see Sally Stanford, The Lady of the House: The Autobiography of Sally Stanford (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1966), 75-80.
15. Shumsky and Springer, "San Francisco's Zone of Prostitution," 84.
16. San Francisco Examiner, September 12, 1913; September 22, 1913; September 26, 1913; and September 28, 1913.
17. Shumsky and Springer, "San Francisco's Zone of Prostitution," 83.
18. See Robert C. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
19. 19. Ettore Rella, A History of Burlesque: San Francisco Theatre Research Series. A Monograph History of the San Francisco Stage and Its People from 1849 to the Present Day (San Francisco: Work Projects Administration, Northern California, 1940), 313.
20. San Francisco Chronicle, September 2, 1963.
21. San Francisco Chronicle, November 14, 15, and 17, 1933. For more on Rand's life, see Holly Knox, Sally Rand, From Film to Fans (Bend, OR: Maverick, 1988).
22. These included strategically applied white theatrical cream, flesh-colored tights, disrobing behind backlit translucent screens, tassels, "pasties," and adhesive tape.
23. San Francisco Chronicle, November 5, 1933; December 5 and 11, 1933.
24. Statutes of California, 51st sess., 1935, chap. 330, p. 1150.
25. San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 1934.
26. Leonard V. Harrison and Elizabeth Laine, After Repeal: A Study of Liquor Control Administration (New York: Harper, 1936), 54.
27. San Francisco Chronicle, November 5, 1933.
28. In an article titled "Barbary Coast Brushing Up for Revival, but with Old Raucous Air Missing," the Chronicle described a sign posted on the front of a nightclub reading "Ladies' patronage solicited." See San Francisco Chronicle, November 5, 1933. Historic photographs in possession of the San Francisco Public Library offer a more compelling testament to the increased patronage of "respectable women" and heterosexual couples at post-Prohibition Barbary Coast clubs. See, for example, the following photographs: AAB-1158, AAB-1154, AAB-1193, AAB-2580, Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
29. San Francisco Call-Bulletin, December 18, 1937; and San Francisco Chronicle, January 5, 1939.
30. Allan Bérubé, "Dignity for All: The Role of Homosexuality in the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union (1930s-1950s)" (Paper presented at Reworking American Labor History, Madison, WI, 1993), as cited in Gayle S. Rubin, "The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather, 1962-1997," in Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture: A City Lights Anthology, ed. James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy J. Peters (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998), 251. For a firsthand account of the "cruising" scene at the Embarcadero and Market in the 1920s and 1930s, see Toto le Grand's column "The Golden Age of the Queens," in Bay Area Reporter, vol. 4, nos. 18-21 (1974). See also the database of "Gay Bars, Bathhouses and Restaurants in San Francisco," compiled by the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California, San Francisco. For other histories of gay San Francisco, see Susan Stryker, Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996); and Boyd, Wide Open Town.
31. Boyd, Wide Open Town, 48-56.
32. D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 288-95.
33. John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 23-39.
34. On the transformation of the Black Cat, see Henry Evans, Bohemian San Francisco (San Francisco: Porpoise Bookshop, 1955), 16. Evans complained that "the place changed hands and the newowner encouraged the fruit and the place went to hell." See also Herb Caen's column in San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 1963. On Sarria's life and career, see Boyd, Wide Open Town, 20-24, 57-62; and Michael Robert Gorman, The Empress Is a Man: Stories from the Life of José Sarria (New York: Haworth Press, 1998).
35. California Commission on Organized Crime, Final Report of the Special Crime Study (Sacramento, CA: Author, 1953), 82-92.
36. San Francisco Chronicle, September 9, 1953; and July 16, 1954. For a firsthand account of "turning B-girl," see "'Peggy'Reveals Inside Story of Life as a B-Girl," San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 1953. For "B-girl" statute, see Statutes of California, 1953 Regular Session (Sacramento, 1953), 1024.
37. George Dorsey, Christopher of San Francisco (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 106-20. 106-120
38. Records of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, California, box 6, files F3718:386, 3718:391, 3718:395; box 7, files 3718:372, 3718:410, California State Library, Sacramento.
39. On the Black Cat case, see legal briefs for Stoumen vs. Munro (1963).
40. San Francisco Chronicle, June 4, 1957.
41. San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 1957.
42. San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 1963.
43. Nancy J. Peters, "The Beat Generation and San Francisco's Culture of Dissent," in Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture: A City Lights Anthology, ed. James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy J. Peters (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998), 211. For more on the San Francisco literary renaissance of the 1950s, see Michael Davidson, The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community in Midcentury (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Steven Watson, The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944-1960 (New York: Pantheon, 1995).
44. Watson, Birth of the Beat Generation, 4.
45. See, for example, descriptions of North Beach in Helen M. Abrahamsen, A Complete Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area: Places, Food, Fun (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books, 1954), 53; Your Guide to San Francisco and Its Nearby Vacationlands (San Francisco: Californians Inc., 1957), 6; "SF Guide Folders," San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Public Library. By the early 1960s, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported, tour buses regularly introduced passengers to "North Beach - home of the Italian colony and the beatniks of San Francisco" San Francisco Chronicle, September 16, 1963.
46. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page series on the North Beach nightlife revival from September 16 to 18, 1963.
47. In April 1965, Ray Goman, owner of Goman's Gay 90s Restaurant complained to the Board of Supervisors about the nighttime street crowds in North Beach: "We should break up crowds on the sidewalks.... They look in windows at dancers, nude girls, everything" San Francisco Chronicle, April 7, 1965. See also photograph AAB-9665, Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
48. San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 25, and 31, 1965.
49. San Francisco Chronicle, April 24 and 7, 1965.
50. San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 1965.
51. On topless raids and trials, see San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 29, 30, and May 4, 7, 9, 11, 1965. On Governor Brown's support of Shelley, see San Francisco Chronicle, May 12, 1965.
52. San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 1965.
53. California v. LaRue, 409 U.S. 109 (1972).
54. See Roth v. United States, 352 U.S. 964 (1957); and Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413 (1966).
55. Nawy, "San Francisco Erotic Marketplace," 160-67.
56. Ibid., 185-86.
57. See San Francisco Chronicle, October 29, 1976; and July 1, 1980.
58. During Shelley's topless raids, for example, members of the league picketed, carrying signs that read "Queen Victoria Is Dead." The position of the organizationwas considerably more complex than this protest would indicate, however: Its membership also protested the opening of the Playboy Club in North Beach in 1965 because of Hugh Hefner's staunch policy prohibiting "bunnies" from dating coworkers and patrons. In carton 2, folder 4, "San Francisco Newsletters, 1965-1970," Sexual Freedom League Records, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
59. 59. Sexual Freedom League, "Monthly News Magazine" 2, no. 6 (1971): 5.
60. Timothy J. Gilfoyle, "From Soubrette Row to Show World: The Contested Sexualities of Times Square, 1880-1995," in Policing Public Sex, ed. Dangerous Bedfellows (Boston: South End Press, 1996), 281.
61. See "Reported Offenses by District" for 1970 to 1979, Public Affairs Office, San Francisco Police Department. A major limitation of these statistics is that the Central District figures include reported crimes from the Tenderloin, Chinatown, and North Beach, giving the impression that the high crime rate was a districtwide phenomenon when anecdotal evidence (see San Francisco Chronicle, December 8, 1969, 2, for example) suggests that it was predominantly concentrated in the Tenderloin. Furthermore, a special report by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) revealed that in 1978, there were 8,403 reported crimes in the Tenderloin but only 804 in North Beach (Charles Gain to Dianne Feinstein, Letter, May 16, 1978, file 239-78, SFBS). The Tenderloin continued to have such a high crime rate, in fact, that the SFPD created a Tenderloin Task Force in the 1990s, and in 2002, it disaggregated the Tenderloin from the Central District and created a new Tenderloin station.
62. San Francisco Chronicle, June 5, 1977.
63. Dianne Feinstein to Thomas M. O'Connor, Letter, December 4, 1970, box 5, folder 38, Joseph L. Alioto Papers, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
64. San Francisco Chronicle, January 7 and February 14, 1973. This ordinance, still in effect, is now Article 11.2 of the San Francisco Police Code.
65. Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1977.
66. Salvatore M. Giorlandino, "The Origin, Development, and Decline of Boston's Adult Entertainment District: The Combat Zone," (master's degree in city planning, MIT, 1986), 22-27, 39, 40-41.
67. See, for example, Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1977.
68. On Feinstein and feminism, see Kirsten Amundsen, "Dianne Feinstein: Now That Was a Mayor!" in Women Leaders in Contemporary U.S. Politics, ed. Frank P. Le Veness and Jane P. Sweeney (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987), 30-31.
69. See, for example, Dworkin's speech, "Pornography and Grief," first presented at the First Feminist Conference on Pornography, just prior to the November 1978 march on Broadway; see also "Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography, and Equality" and Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1993).
70. For detailed descriptions of protests, including flyers, photographs, and guidelines for protestors, see boxes 1 and 2 of the Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media Collection, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society, San Francisco California (hereafter WAVPM Collection).
71. San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 1979.
72. 72. Ibid.
73. See Lederer to Feinstein, July 27, 1997; and August 2, 1977; and Feinstein to Lederer, August 4, 1977, box 1, "Correspondence-Administrative Files," WAVPM Collection. In 1980, Lederer also edited a collection of essay onwomen and pornography. See Laura Lederer, Take Back the Night (New York: William Morrow, 1980).
74. Young v. American Mini Theaters Inc., 427 U.S. 50 (1976). On the Supreme Court and obscenity, see Richard F. Hixson, Pornography and the Justices: The Supreme Court and the Intractable Obscenity Problem (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996).
75. San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 1977.
76. San Francisco Chronicle, January 19, 1977.
77. All quotes from letters of support in file 239-78, SFBS.
78. John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 42, 155.
79. Chester Hartman, City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 161-62, 239.
80. San Francisco Chronicle, January 19, 1977.
81. "Statement of Arthur Brunwasser," November 21, 1978, file 239-78, SFBS.
82. San Francisco Chronicle, May 18, 1977.
83. San Francisco Chronicle, August 2, 1977.
84. San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 1980.
85. San Francisco Chronicle, September 26, 1983. Commercial property was exempted from the city's historic rent-control law passed in 1979.
86. San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 1986.
87. The Condor later reopened as a 1850s-style saloon with a fully clothed variety show and then as an Italian café and bar, its current incarnation at the time of this writing.
88. San Francisco Chronicle, January 2, 1988.