Description
Book SynopsisA history of San Francisco that studies change in the postwar urban landscape in relation to the city''s queer culture.
The City Aroused is a lively history of urban development and its influence on queer political identity in postwar San Francisco. By reconstructing the planning and queer history of waterfront drinking establishments, Damon Scott shows that urban renewal was a catalyst for community organizing among racially diverse operators and patrons with far-reaching implications for the national gay rights movement.
Following the exclusion of suspected homosexuals from the maritime trades in West Coast ports in the early 1950s, seamen’s hangouts in the city came to resemble gay bars. Local officials responded by containing the influx of gay men to a strip of bars on the central waterfront while also making plans to raze and rebuild the area. This practice ended when city redevelopment officials began acquiring land in the early 1960s. Ai
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Exodus on the Eve of Destruction
- 1. The Changing Sexual Geography of the Waterfront
- 2. The Birthplace of Modern San Francisco
- 3. Hanging Out at the Ensign Café
- 4. A Queer History of 90 Market Street
- 5. The Demise of the Queer Waterfront
- Conclusion: Destruction and Creation
- Notes
- Index
