Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965Wide-Open Town traces the history of gay men and lesbians in San Francisco from the turn of the century, when queer bars emerged in San Francisco's tourist districts, to 1965, when a raid on a drag ball changed the course of queer history. Bringing to life the striking personalities and vibrant milieu that fueled this era, Nan Alamilla Boyd examines the culture that developed around the bar scene and homophile activism. She argues that the communities forged inside bars and taverns functioned politically and, ultimately, offered practical and ideological responses to the policing of San Francisco's queer and transgender communities. Using police and court records, oral histories, tourist literature, and manuscript collections from local and state archives, Nan Alamilla Boyd explains the phenomenal growth of San Francisco as a "wide-open town"—a town where anything goes. She also relates the early history of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement that took place in San Francisco prior to 1965. Wide-Open Town argues that police persecution forged debates about rights and justice that transformed San Francisco's queer communities into the identity-based groups we see today. In its vivid re-creation of bar and drag life, its absorbing portrait of central figures in the communities, and its provocative chronicling of this period in the country's most transgressive city, Wide-Open Town offers a fascinating and lively new chapter of American queer history. |
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Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 Nan Alamilla Boyd No preview available - 2003 |
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ABC Files agents Allan Bérubé American arrested bar owners bar-based Barbary Coast bars and taverns became behavior Beige Room Black Cat Broadway butch California Charlotte Coleman Chronicle city’s civil rights Club crime D'Emilio dance Daughters of Bilitis entertainment female impersonators Finocchio's gay and lesbian gay bars gender gender-transgressive girls GLBT Historical Society harassment homophile activists homophile organizations homosexuals interviewed by Nan José Sarria lesbian lesbian and gay lesbian bars liquor license male Martin Mattachine Review Mattachine Society military Mona's movement Nan Alamilla Boyd nightclubs North Beach Open Town History Paper Doll patrons political popular postwar Press Prohibition prostitutes public space queer communities queer culture raid Reba Hudson Rikki Streicher San Fran Sex Deviate sexual SFPD social Stoumen Street tape recording Tavern Guild TGSF tion Tommy's Tommy’s Place tourist Town History Project transgender urban vagrancy vaudeville vice Wide Open Town women World World War II York