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City of Vice

Transience and San Francisco's Urban History, 1848–1917

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City of Vice

By: James Mallery
Narrated by: Chaz Allen
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About this listen

San Francisco’s reputation for accommodating progressive and unconventional identities can find its roots in the waves of transients and migrants that flocked to San Francisco between the gold rush and World War I.

In the era of yellow journalism, San Francisco’s popular presses broadcast shocking stories about the waterfront, Chinatown, Barbary Coast, hobo Main Stem, Uptown Tenderloin, and Outside Lands. The women and men who lived in these districts did not passively internalize the shaming of their bodies or neighborhoods. Rather, many urbanites intentionally sought out San Francisco’s “vice” and transient lodging districts. They came to identify themselves in ways opposed to hegemonic notions of whiteness, respectability, and middle-class heterosexual domesticity.

With the destabilizing 1906 earthquake marking its halfway point, James Mallery’s City of Vice explores the imagined, cognitive mapping of the cityscape and the social history of the women and men who occupied its so-called transient and vice districts between the late nineteenth century and World War I.

The book is published by University of Nebraska Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2024 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska (P)2024 Redwood Audiobooks
Gender Studies State & Local Urban

Critic Reviews

“A fascinating account of San Francisco’s past.” (Clare Sears, author of Arresting Dress)

“A vibrant history of San Francisco’s multiracial transient living and entertainment districts.” (Nayan Shah, author of Contagious Divides)

“A lively, thoroughly researched, and necessary corrective to the history of cities.” (Jessica Ellen Sewell, author of Women and the Everyday City)

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