Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: San Francisco Was a Wide-Open Town Oral History: Jose Sarria 1. Transgender and Gay Male Cultures from the 1890s through the 1960s Oral History: Reba Hudson 2. Lesbian Space, Lesbian Territory: San Francisco's North Beach District, 1933--1954 Oral History: Joe Baron 3. Policing Queers in the 1940s and 1950s: Harassment, Prosecution, and the Legal Defense of Gay Bars Oral History: Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon 4. "A Queer Ladder of Social Mobility": San Francisco's Homophile Movements, 1953--1960 Oral History: George Mendenhall 5. Queer Cooperation and Resistance: A Gay and Lesbian Movement Comes Together in the 1960s Conclusion: Marketing a Queer San Francisco Appendix A: Map of North Beach Queer Bars and Restaurants, 1933--1965 Appendix B: List of Interviewees Notes Index Plates follow page

About the Author

Nan Alamilla Boyd is Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Sonoma State University.

Reviews

"For anyone interested in as-yet-untold queer history, this is a must-read." - New York Blade News "Shows that as far back as the Gold Rush of 1849, [San Francisco] manifested a charmingly lax attitude toward enforcement of public morals - gaining a reputation as a "wide-open town" - Publishers Weekly"

"For anyone interested in as-yet-untold queer history, this is a must-read." - New York Blade News "Shows that as far back as the Gold Rush of 1849, [San Francisco] manifested a charmingly lax attitude toward enforcement of public morals - gaining a reputation as a "wide-open town" - Publishers Weekly"

San Francisco and Seattle both began as frontier towns, and both are ports on the U.S. Pacific Coast, but they are as different as the Transamerica Tower and the Space Needle, and their respective queer communities have evolved along parallel but diverging paths. In Wide-Open Town, Boyd (women's studies, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) depicts a San Francisco where a bar-based gay culture emerged from roots in the all-male saloons and drag shows of the notorious Barbary Coast and Tenderloin, which was later mimicked by lesbians after the repeal of Prohibition. Faced with increasing civic harassment after World War II, both male and female communities politicized, mutated, and eventually collaborated in the homophile movement of the Fifties and Sixties. Boyd provides deeply detailed context by relating the broader American social and historical forces at work, as well as the personal perspective of oral histories. The only flaw in this excellent chronicle is that it ends in 1965, before the heyday of gay liberation in the Seventies and the rise and assassination of Harvey Milk in the city. Atkins (communication, Seattle Univ.; coauthor, Reporting with Understanding) begins his fine Gay Seattle in the 1890s, at roughly the same time as Boyd's book, and in outline the first part of his book is not dissimilar. Seattle has never had San Francisco's "wide-open" reputation, however, and the author's choice to begin with Washington State's 1893 sodomy law indicates a darker story. Atkins takes a more parochial approach, focusing on queer life in the city through the mid-1990s, mostly implying the larger social forces Boyd details explicitly, but his broader chronological coverage permits a vivid description of the devastation wrought by AIDS. Both books compare favorably with works such as George Chauncey's Gay New York and Charles Kaiser's The Gay Metropolis, and both are recommended for gay studies collections. But as San Francisco is virtually gay Mecca, Wide-Open Town is recommended for large public libraries as well, while Gay Seattle is optional outside the Pacific Northwest.-Richard J. Violette, Special Libs. Cataloguing, Victoria, B.C. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.