History of U.S. Urban Vice Districts, 1960's and 1970's

FAIN: FT-53480-05

Josh Sides
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Pomona, CA 91768-2557)

In his bestselling 1963 novel CITY OF NIGHT, American writer and part time street-hustler John Rechy described the gritty metropolitan world in which he lived and worked: "Later," he wrote, "I would think of America as one vast City of Night stretching gaudily from Times Square to Hollywood Boulevard --jukebox-winking, rock-n-roll-moaning: America at night fusing its darkcities into the unmistakable shape of loneliness." My current book project, EROTIC CITY: SEXUAL REVOLUTIONS AND THE AMERICAN METROPOLIS, is a history of those "darkcities" Rechy described. It is unique in its methodology, its findings, and its interdisciplinarity, and will be, I believe, an important contribution to the fields of American studies, the history of sexuality, and urban history.

Associated Products

Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco (Book)
Title: Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco
Author: Josh Sides
Abstract: Since the 1960s, San Francisco has been America's capital of sexual libertinism and a potent symbol in its culture wars. In this highly original book, Josh Sides explains how this happened, unearthing long-forgotten stories of the city's sexual revolutionaries, as well as the legions of longtime San Franciscans who tried to protect their vision of a moral metropolis. Erotic dancers, prostitutes, birth control advocates, pornographers, free lovers, and gay libbers transformed San Francisco's political landscape and its neighborhoods in ways seldom appreciated. But as sex radicals became more visible in the public spaces of the city, many San Franciscans reacted violently. The assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were but the most brazen acts in a city caught up in a battle over morality. Ultimately, Sides argues, one cannot understand the evolution of postwar American cities without recognizing the profound role that sex has played. More broadly, one cannot understand modern American politics without taking into account the postwar transformation of San Francisco and other cities into both real and imagined repositories of unfettered sexual desire.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryAmerican/Since1945/?view=usa&ci=9780195377811
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780195377811
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Book Award
Date: 9/1/2010
Organization: Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

Lewis Mumford Prize
Date: 9/1/2011
Organization: Society for American City and Regional Planning History

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