Description
Book SynopsisJoseph Plaster focuses on San Francisco's Tenderloin to explore the informal networks of economic and social support that enabled young people marginalized by gender and sexuality to survive in tenderloin districts across the United States.
Trade Review"
Kids on the Street is an admirable, thoroughly researched, and carefully documented history of the once vibrant queer culture of the Tenderloin and Polk Street. Featuring scores of interviews with one-time Polk Street denizens, it is also a lament for the displacement of the multiracial, multigender culture of San Francisco’s first post-Stonewall queer district. Drawing attention to that once-thriving, often overlooked culture, the book is a valuable contribution to queer history." -- Hank Trout * Gay and Lesbian Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. A Performance Genealogy of US Tenderloins 33
2. Street Churches 69
3. Urban Reformers and Vanguard’s Mutual Aid 108
Intervention 1. Vanguard Revisited 155
4. The Urban Cowboy and the Irish Immigrant 174
5. Polk Street’s Moral Economies 220
Intervention 2. Polk Street Stories 258
Conclusion 276
List of Abbreviations 291
Notes 293
Bibliography 329
Index 345
