Excavating the Postwar Sex District in San Francisco

Abstract

This article traces the emergence of the postwar sex district in San Francisco, in particular, and in the metropolitan United States, in general. The author argues that the sex district of the 1960s and 1970swas not simply a relic from the first half of the twentieth century but rather a fundamentally newphenomenon. Infused by the libertinism of the sexual revolution, the eroding legal criteria of “obscenity,” and the immense profitability of pornography and other forms of commercial sexual entertainment, owners of sex businesses brought an element of explicit, public sexuality to the streets of San Francisco and other American cities that had not existed since the nineteenth century—and then only to a much lesser degree. Furthermore, the sex district played a crucial, though relatively unknown, role in municipal politics during the era of urban renewal and redevelopment.